A Koala Isn't a Bear

    Koalas remind people of teddy bears. They have thick fur and large ears. Their broad, flat nose makes them look cute, similar to teddy bears. In fact, koalas aren't cute. They have sharp teeth and very sharp claws! Koalas are marsupials. This means the mother carries her baby in a pocket while it develops, similar to a kangaroo. The baby koala lives in its mother's pocket for the first six months of its life.

    The name “koala” comes from a native Australian word that means “no drink”. The koalas get almost all their water from the eucalyptus (桉树) leaves they eat. That's where they get their food too. Koalas eat only eucalyptus leaves, and only the leaves of certain eucalyptus trees. The eucalyptus trees are where the koalas live. It's also where they sleep. Koalas sleep about nineteen hours a day!

    Why do they sleep so much? Some people think it's because they're lazy. But koalas aren't lazy. They sleep so much because there isn't much nutrition in eucalyptus leaves. Koalas store hardly any fat, so they must save their energy. One way to do this is to move slowly and sleep a lot.

    After a day of sleeping, they like to move around and eat just after sunset. They live alone most of the time. Koalas are very protective of their trees. If a koala sees another koala eating in its favorite tree, it might tell the other koala to leave by “barking” at it. Koalas do “talk” to each other. Besides barks, the males make a deep grunting sound. The mothers and babies talk in soft clicking sounds. If they get scared, they may scream like a baby.

    Guided Walking Week April 2018

    Date: April 30th—May 7th 2018

    Location: Abdet, Costa Blanca

    A week of guided walking in the mountains around Abdet. Highlights include the climbing of Valencia's highest summit (Sierra de Aitana)，traveling completely around the impressive Puig Campana, and several explorations in the Sierra de Aitana. Ancient trails lead through spectacular canyons (峡谷) to abandoned settlements situated high in the mountains. You will discover the snow trader routes which lead from the incredible snow holes high in the mountains down to the villages and towns on the coast. These years, golden eagles have made a return to this area, and you may also see other animals—wild goats, foxes, wild pigs and red squirrels.

    As part of the week you are invited to help clear some local walking paths. This involves clearing collapsed walls and rocks, cutting back fallen trees. This is of course optional and is just for half a day, and it's actually great fun!

Price: $499

Includes:

    Accommodation in the beautiful mountain village of Abdet

    All food—good home cooking

    Beer, wine, soft drinks Snacks and post walk treats

    Packed lunches & drinks (except café/bar visits)

    Expert guiding

    Photos/Videos of your days in the mountains

    Airport pick-up/return $25 each way (fly to Alicante)

    Single room supplement $75

    To book or get further information, please contact info@abdct.com.

    As long as people have been telling stories, crones(丑陋的老太婆)have been scaring the wits out of children. "Nags(怨妇),witches, evil stepmothers, cannibals(食人妇). It's quite dreadful," says Maria Tatar, who teaches a course on folklore and mythology at Harvard. "But old women are also powerful—they're often the ones who can work magic." In the Disney film Snow White, there's a scene in which the beautiful, charming, wicked queen turns into an old hag and poisons Snow White so she'll sleep forever. The old lady in Hansel and Gretel wants to roast children in her oven and the witch in The Little Mermaid cuts out Ariel's tongue.

    Tatar says old women villains (恶人)are especially scary because，historically, the most powerful person in a child's life was the mother. "Children do have a way of splitting the mother figure into...the evil mother—who's always making rules and regulations, policing your behavior, getting angry at you—and then the kind mother—the one who is giving and protects you, makes sure that you survive."

    Veronique Tadjo, a writer who grew up in the Ivory Coast, thinks there's a fear of female power in general. She says a common figure in African folk tales is the old witch who destroys people's souls. Still, they're not all bitter and evil hags. Elderly women in folk tales often use their knowledge and experience of the world to guide the troubled protagonist(主人公). Tadjo points to the Kenyan story Marwe In The Underworld about a girl who commits suicide by drowning herself and enters the Land of the Dead where she meets an old woman. "That old woman teaches her quite a lot of things," Tadjo says. "And also, when Marwe starts longing for the world of the living, she helps her go back to the surface with a lot of riches. And we understand that Marwe has been rewarded for her goodness." In other words: Do your chores and you'll be rewarded. The point of these ancient tales, no matter what continent they come from, may have been to scare children into behaving.

    Perhaps the scariest old woman character—the ugly Baba Yaga—comes from Russia. She's bony with a hooked nose and long, iron teeth. Her hut(小屋)stands on chicken legs and she kidnaps children and eats them. Safe to say Baba Yaga has been making Eastern European children sleepless for centuries. In one interpretation, a mean stepmother sends the young girl Vasilisa to Baba Yaga's hut in the woods to get a candle. The girl is sure she's being sent to her death. Baba Yaga forces her to cook and clean, and Vasilisa does everything she's told. In the end, the old crone gives her what she needs and sends her home. "You see this kind of double face of the hag,"Maria Tatar says. "On the one hand: aggressive, threatening. And on the other hand: sometimes to make sure that there is a happily ever after."

    There's that power again. In Japanese folklore, the Yama Uba(山姥)is an equally ambiguous old woman. She's a mountain witch who, like Baba Yaga, lures people into her hut and eats them. But she'll also help a lost traveler. Noriko Reider is a professor at Miami University of Ohio who's done extensive research on Yama Uba stories. "She brings fortune and happiness," Reider says. "She can also bring death and destruction for those who are not very good."

    According to Cuban-American writer Alma Flor Ada, in Hispanic(拉美地区的)culture old women are multi-talented. Ada is co-author of Tales Our Grandmas Told, which includes a story about Caliph's son who becomes seriously ill. After "all of the best physicians in the land" fail to cure him, Caliph sends his messengers searching for help. Then one morning, an old woman arrives with this advice: To get well, the prince must wear the overcoat of a man who is truly happy. And of course it works.

    Humans are social animals. They live in groups all over the world. As these groups of people live apart from other groups, over the years and centuries they develop their own habits and ideas, which are different from other cultures. One important particular side of every culture is how its people deal with time.

    Time is not very important in nonindustrial societies. The Nuer people of East Africa, for example, do not even have a word TIME that is in agreement with the abstract thing we call time. The daily lives of the people of such nonindustrial societies are likely to be patterned around their physical needs and natural events rather than around a time schedule(时间表)based on the clock. They cook and eat when they are hungry and sleep when the sun goes down. They plant crops during the growing seasons and harvest them when the crops are ripe. They measure time not by a clock or calendar(日历),but by saying that an event takes place before or after some other event Frequently such a society measures days in terms of "sleeps" or longer periods in terms of "moons." Some cultures, such as the Eskimos of Greenland measure seasons according to the migration of certain animals.

    Some cultures which do not have a written language or keep written records have developed interesting ways of "telling time". For example, when several Australian aborigines want to plan an event for a future time, one of them places a stone on a cliff or in a tree. Each day the angle of the sun changes slightly. In a few days, the rays of the sun strike the stone in a certain way. When this happens, the people see that the agreed-upon time has arrived and the event can take place.

    In contrast(成对比), exactly correct measurement of time is very important in modern, industrialized societies. This is because industrialized societies require the helpful efforts of many people in order to work. For a factory to work efficiently (well, quickly and without waste), for example, all of the workers must work at the same time. Therefore, they must know what time to start work in the morning and what time they may go home in the afternoon. Passengers must know the exact time that an airplane will arrive or depart. Students and teachers need to know when a class starts and ends. Stores must open on time in order to serve their customers. Complicated(复杂的)societies need clocks and calendars. Thus, we can see that if each person worked according to his or her own schedule, a complicated society could hardly work at all.

I'm a standup comic. One day, a woman from The Daily News called and said she wanted to do an article on me. When she had finished interviewing me for the article, she asked, "What are you planning to do next?" Well, at the time, there was absolutely nothing I was planning on doing next, so I asked her what she meant, pausing for a moment. She told me she was interested in me! So I thought I'd better tell her something. What came out was, "I'm thinking about breaking the Guinness Book of World Records for Fastest-Talking Female."

The newspaper article came out the next day, and the writer had included my parting remarks about trying to break the world's Fastest-Talking Female record. At about 5: 00 p.m. that afternoon I got a call from Larry King Live, which I had never heard of, asking me to go on the show. They wanted me to try to break the record, and they told me they would pick me up at 8: 00—because they wanted me to do it that night!

Then I sat down to figure out what on earth I was going to do on the show. I called Guinness to find out how to break a fast-talking record. They told me I would have to recite something either Shakespeare or the Bible. Shakespeare and I had never really gotten along, so 1 figured the Bible was my only hope. I began practicing and practicing, over and over again. I was both nervous and excited at the same time.

Then I decided just to give it my best shot, and I did. I broke the record, becoming the World's Fastest-talking Female by speaking 585 words in one minute in front of a national television audience. I broke it again two years later, with 603 words in a minute. My career took off.

People often ask me how I did that. I tell them I live my life by this simple philosophy: I always say yes first; then I ask, "Now, what do I have to do to accomplish that?" Then I ask myself, "What is the worst thing that can happen if I don't succeed? The answer is, I simply don't succeed! And what's the best thing that can happen? I succeed!

What more can life ask of you? Be yourself, and have a good time!

We use both words and body language to express our thoughts and opinions in our interactions with other people. We can learn a lot about what people are thinking by watching their body language. Words are important, but the way people stand, hold their arms, and move their hands can also give us information about their feelings.

Just like spoken language, body language varies from culture to culture. The crucial thing is using body language in a way that is appropriate to the culture you are in. For example, making eye contact—looking into someone's eyes—in some countries is a way to display interest. In other countries, by contrast, eye contact is not always approved of. For example, in many Middle Eastern countries, men and women are not socially permitted to make eye contact. In Japan, it may demonstrate respect to look down when talking to an older person.

The gesture for "OK" has different meanings in different cultures. In Japan, someone who witnesses another person employing the gesture might think it means money. In France, a person encountering an identical gesture may interpret it as meaning zero. However, you should avoid making this gesture in Brazil and Germany, as it is not considered polite.

Even the gestures we use for "yes" and "no" differ around the world. In many countries, shaking one's head means "no", and nodding means "yes". By comparison, in Bulgaria and southern Albania, the gestures have the opposite meaning. There are also differences in how we touch each other, how close we stand to someone we are talking to, and how we act when we meet or part. In countries like France and Russia, people may kiss their friends on the cheek when they meet. Elsewhere, people favour shaking hands, bowing from the waist, or nodding the head when they meet someone else.

Some gestures seem to have the same meaning everywhere. Placing your hands together and resting them on the side of your head while closing your eyes means "sleep". A good way of saying "I am full" is moving your hand in circles over your stomach after a meal.

Some body language has many different uses. Perhaps the best example is smiling. A smile can help us get through difficult situations and find friends in a world of strangers. A    smile    can    break    down    barriers. We can use a smile to apologise, to greet someone, to ask for help, or to start a conversation. Experts suggest smiling at yourself in the mirror to make yourself feel happier and stronger. And if we are feeling down or lonely, there is nothing better than seeing the smiling face of a good friend.