The advice offered from any other 82-year-olds might have made young people yawn and roll their eyes. But when former South African president Nelson Mandela advised two dozen local youth leaders in Los Angeles to take education seriously, his audience was listening.

    The famed old man said to the young people that if they expected to improve the lives of others in the future, they must work at improving their own lives now. "Education is one of the most important weapons you have,” Mandela advised. “It will place you in a far better position to serve yourself and your community.”

“The point is, he was young once and rebellious(叛逆的)once and he kept his dream alive, just as you each have dreams,” explained South Africa's ambassador to the United States, Sheila Sisulu, as she introduced Mandela to the young crowd.

    Asked for specific advice about changing society by 21-year-old Ahmed Younis, Mandela suggested that somehow helping arouse more American interest in foreign affairs might be a start.

There is an impression that Americans, in general, have not followed international developments properly, Mandela said. “I'm not making that statement myself, but there are serious political analysts who say Americans are not well informed as to what has happened in the world.”

22-year-old Omari Trice said Mandela left him full of enthusiasm. “ He's a person who set the tone for an entire nation, said Trice. “You come away feeling you need to be a superman in order to get things done.”

    Some idiomatic phrases in English, often used in both spoken and written language, are very confusing! They don't even make sense when you first see them. However, using one of these phrases correctly when speaking or writing to an English speaker is very impressive and shows that you are comfortable with the language. Here are some wonderful and interesting British idioms. Use them wisely.

    When pigs fly!

This expression is one of my favorites and I use it all the time. It is used primarily when speaking, meaning that something is extremely unlikely or impossible. For example, "I will forgive him when pigs fly!" "When do you think you will get a gym membership, Lucy?" "When pigs fly!"

    A penny for your thoughts?

This question is used in a situation where someone appears thoughtful or is very quiet seeming lost in thought. But remember that you don't actually have to pay them a penny if they do tell you what is going on! For example, "You've been a bit quiet this evening, Pete. A penny for your thoughts?"

    It's the bee's knees

The phrase dates back to the 1920s, and refers to an extraordinary person, thing, idea, and so on. For example, "Try this chocolate. It's the bee's knees."

    To feel a bit under the weather

    I use this expression in many different situations but most use it to refer to feeling ill, or unwell. You would not use this phrase if you were feeling extremely unwell. It is only for those times when you are feeling a little ill or suffering from something slightly like a cold or a cough. However, this can also be used to refer to feeling emotionally low.

    For the business traveler who is all about efficiency: Check out these hotels that will get you in and out with a minimum of trouble. When you are pressed for time on a business trip, nothing can infuriate you more than a slow hotel check-in process. On your next trip, try these hotels that offer a speedier check-in process.

⒈Yotel New York

    The self-service kiosks at this high-tech New York hotel work just like the ones you'd see at an airport. There are just five-steps to register and obtain your card key. There is even a robotic luggage bellboy. You tap in the number of bags you are carrying and sizes, then wait for a robot arm to swing down and store your luggage in a locker (say, for a day trip). This also speeds up the check-in process if the first thing you need to do, like me, is head to a series of meetings.

⒉Marriott Detroit Airport

    Another option for business travelers in a hurry: Marriott is rolling out its mobile check-in app to 325 hotels this year, including the Marriott Detroit Airport hotel. (I've tested the app itself but not for a real visit quite yet.) Here is the basic idea: you download the iphone or Android app. The night before, you can “check-in” virtually. When you arrive, you get an alert that the room is ready and your key, which is already tied to your reservation, is waiting for you at the desk.

⒊Hyatt Regency Minneapolis

    I happened to stay at this hotel recently and liked how fast the kiosk check-in works. Like the Yotel, the kiosk asks you to insert your credit card, similar to an airport terminal. The whole process took about three minutes, when I left, I was equally impressed with the fast check-out. An agent meets you in the lobby with an ipad and asks for an email to use for a receipt. The big advantage: you never have to wait in line.

⒋Radisson: LaCrosse

    The Radisson is trying to make the kiosk process even faster, at a few select hotels like the Radisson Lacrosse in Wisconsin, you use a mobile app to register and then receive a barcode by email or text. When you get to the kiosk, you scan the barcode to get your key without any other steps required. It's super fast. You can find this new check-in system at the Radisson hotels in Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Phoenix as well.

Five years ago, when I taught art at a school in Seattle, I used Tinkertoys as a test at the beginning of a term to find out something about my students. I put a small set of Tinkertoys in front of each student, and said: "Make something out of the Tinkertoys. You have 45 minutes today - and 45minutes each day for the rest of the week."

    A few students hesitated to start. They waited to see the rest of the class would do. Several others checked the instructions and made something according to one of the model plans provided. Another group built something out of their own imaginations.

    Once I had a boy who worked experimentally with Tinkertoys in his free time. His constructions filled a shelf in the art classroom and a good part of his bedroom at home. I was delighted at the presence of such a student. Here was an exceptionally creative mind at work. His presence meant that I had an unexpected teaching assistant in class whose creativity would infect（感染）other students.

Encouraging this kind of thinking has a downside. I ran the risk of losing those students who had a different style of thinking. Without fail one would declare, "But I'm just not creative."

"Do you dream at night when you're asleep?"

"Oh, sure."

"So tell me one of your most interesting dreams." The student would tell something wildly imaginative. Flying in the sky or in a time machine or growing three heads. "That's pretty creative. Who does that for you? "

"Nobody. I do it."

"Really-at night, when you're asleep?"

"Sure."

"Try doing it in the daytime, in class, okay?"

    Living next to the Spellmans, our new neighbors, almost drove my mother crazy. If shewasn't shaming them for not attending church, or complaining to her sister Jackie about theway the Spellman girls dressed, then she was shoeing the Spellman's dogs out of our yard or filing noise complaints with the police, My mother had never been so busy.All she ever spoke of any more were the Spellmans and their wrongdoings.

    One Sunday afternoon after church service, my mother was driving old Ms Parker home to her house on the hill when we got a flat tire. As far as changing the tire, let's just say that we were at the mercy of the good Lord. Since old Ms. Parker lived so far up that hill, not a lot of traffic drove by us. It had been about fifteen minutes since the last car passed when we heard the rattling and puttering of an old pickup truck as it pulled over to assist us.

    The Spellman boys ran up on our car like a NASCAR pit crew. Before my mother could even protest, they had taken the tire off. "Her spare is flat," said the middle one to the big one. " Give her ours” replied the big one, barely acknowledging the sacrifice. My mother was stunned. "I don, t know what to say, "she stammered. The big one said, "Well, the Lord said love your neighbor, and we are neighbors, right?

    The next day when the Spellman's dogs went through my mother's flower garden, she put out a bowl of water for them. When she saw the Spellman girls walking out with nothing but a halter on, she lectured them about being upright ladies and offered them sweaters. And when she heard the Spellman's music through our walls, she tried to dance a little bit. She even invited the Spellmans to be part of the good neighbors committee. Now the neighborhood was a better place.

    In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible for social progress and prosperity(繁荣). Others say that competition is bad; that it sets one person against another; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.

    I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit of success, the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.

    However, while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players, they strongly blame competition. Among the most vocal are youngsters who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: "I may have lost, but it doesn't matter because I really didn't try."What is not usually admitted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of the true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistaken belief that one's self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others. Both are afraid of not being valued. Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to dissolve(缓解)can we discover a new meaning in competition.