In the middle of the 20th century people were worried about whales.The number of whales killed worldwide came up to 66,000 per year.However,people weren't worried about the whale as an endangered animal.Instead,they were worried about the whale industry,which would disappear if there were no whales.In 1946,the International Whaling Commission was established.It limited the whale hunting for every country and controlled the whale industry.But the commission recognized that the limitation wasn't enough.They set a worldwide law against hunting whales with only two exceptions: the hunt for scientific research and "aboriginal whaling".Aboriginal whaling allows some countries to hunt a limited number of whales because it is a part of their culture.Some countries like Japan and Norway don't care about the law;they make excuses to hunt whales and sell the products.They only care about the money.

    Many fishermen complain that dolphins,also a kind of whale,steal their fish.Therefore,they kill thousands of them.In fact,this is not the truth.In reality there are so many fishermen who steal the fish from each other.Some whale hunters say that they catch the animals for scientists.They have to research what whales are eating.For that, they kill them and look into their stomach.The truth is that they only want to sell the meat.Today scientists want to observe live whales for their research.

    Many whale families are not protected and thousands of them are killed.Nobody knows if all whale families would survive,even if humans end all whale hunting today.The pollution of the oceans increases fast and the poison gets into the bodies of the animals.Many of them get sick and die.The human being has killed 90%-95% of many whale families.Others are already extinct.

    Today some international organizations try to protect whales.They make reports to explain how important and endangered whales are.Now people are becoming more interested in whales and a complete new industry has developed,whale watching,which you may want to learn about.

    Homestay provides English language students with the opportunity to speak English outside the classroom and the experience of being part of a British home.

    What to Expect

    The host will provide accommodation and meals. Rooms will be cleaned and bedcovers changed at least once a week. You will be given the house key and the host is there to offer help and advice as well as to take an interest in your physical and mental health.

    Meal Plans Available

    Continental Breakfast

    Breakfast and Dinner

    Breakfast, Packed Lunch and Dinner

    It's important to note that few English families still provide a traditional cooked breakfast. Your accommodation includes Continental Breakfast which normally consists of fruit juice, cereal(谷物类食品), bread and tea or coffee. Cheese, fruit and cold meat are not normally part of a Continental Breakfast in England. Dinner usually consists of meat or fish with vegetables followed by dessert, fruit and coffee.

    Friends

    If you wish to invite a friend over to visit, you must first ask your host's permission. You have no right to entertain friends in a family home as some families feel it is an invasion of their privacy.

    Self-catering Accommodation in Private Homes

    Accommodation on a room-only basis includes a shared kitchen and bathroom facilities and often a main living room. This kind of accommodation offers an independent lifestyle and is more suitable for the long-stay student. However, it does not provide the same family atmosphere as an ordinary homestay and may not benefit those who need to practise English at home quite as much.

    Almost every machine with moving parts has wheels, yet no one knows exactly when the first wheel was invented or what it was used for. We do know, however, that they existed over 5,500 years ago in ancient Asia.

    The oldest known transport wheel was discovered in 2002 in Slovenia. It is over 5,100 years old. Evidence suggests that wheels for transport didn't become popular for a while, though. This could be because animals did a perfectly good job of carrying farming tools and humans around.

    But it could also be because of a difficult situation. While wheels need to roll on smooth surfaces, roads with smooth surfaces weren't going to be constructed until there was plenty of demand for them. Eventually, road surfaces did become smoother, but this difficult situation appeared again a few centuries later. There had been no important changes in wheel and vehicle design before the arrival of modem road design.

    In the mid-1700s, a Frenchman came up with a new design of road—a base layer (层) of large stones covered with a thin layer of smaller stones. A Scotsman improved on this design in the 1820s and a strong, lasting road surface became a reality. At around the same time, metal hubs (the central part of a wheel) came into being, followed by the pneumatic tyre (充气轮胎) in 1846. Alloy wheels were invented in 1967, sixty years after the appearance of tarmacked roads (柏油路). As wheel design took off, vehicles got faster and faster.

    If you're feeling overwhelmed by all the features and apps available on smart phones these days and miss the good old days when mobile phones were simple communication tools, you'll probably love Light Phone 2, a stylish " dumb phone" designed to remove time-wasting distractions(使人分心的事物) from your life.

    The original Light mobile phone could only be used to make and take phone calls, but its creators recently decided that in order to improve its usefulness while still keeping users safe from smart phone distractions, it needed a few extra features. They recently announced Light Phone 2 is just as tiny and stylish as the original ones, but also features text messaging functions and an alarm clock.

    Data from company Flurry shows that people in the US spend around five hours a day on their smart phones, while a study from the firm Asurion found that Americans check their phones an average of 80 times per day. Those are some pretty alarming numbers, and to make matters worse, scientists report that too much screen time has a bad effect on our brains, especially those of children.

    Light Phone 2 will never replace your Apple phone, but it can at least help you mitigate the effects of smart phone addiction by allowing you to "go light" every once in a while. You can stay in touch with the important people in your life, but you'll be free from the apps distracting you from the wonders of the colorful world.

    But becoming free of smart phone distractions doesn't come cheap. The Light Phone 2 is expected to be priced at around $400, which is far more expensive than some smart phones. However, a lot of people seem to think the phone and what it promises to do are worth the price, as evidenced by the success of Light's latest crowd funding(众筹) campaign. With 24 days left until deadline, the company has already raised $360,000, blowing past its $250,000 goal.

For about three years now, I have been writing poetry. It was not until my junior year in high school that I developed an interest, love and skill for writing poetry. 

Back in elementary school, I loved to write stories. I would write stories on post-it notes and anywhere I could. Yet when I had to write a limerick(五行打油诗) for an assignment, I could not wrap my head around poetry. I had a very hard time figuring out how to rhyme words and have the words make sense. I eventually tossed the paper with the attempted limerick in the trash. I did not try my hand at poetry again until several years later. 

Many years later in my freshman year of high school, my English teacher gave my class a poetry project as an assignment. I still remember my limerick assignment and was afraid of doing the poetry project. For the project, we had to analyse a poem and write a response to it. I chose to respond to Robert Frost's poem Fire and Ice. I also wrote my own poem first. I became really excited when writing the poem. 

Two years later, I started writing poetry as a hobby and for fun. To learn how good or bad my poems were, I handed them in to some magazines and contests. I won the second place in the North Carolina Poetry Society's Sherry Pruitt Award Contest, and had my two poems published as high quality poems. I have continued to write poetry, and have even self-published three collections of poetry in both print and e-book formats, which can be found in my store on Lulu. 

Now, I love writing poetry, but I don't hate writing short stories. I just find it more difficult and not my style of writing, even though I still write short stories occasionally. 

Norwegians would perhaps highlight their custom of "gå på tur"— going on a journey on foot or on skis. In Denmark, everyone knows what "hygge" is — to freely enjoy the good life with the people you love. They're the issues of "intangible cultural heritage", things that cannot be physically touched such as traditions, stories, music, dance and craft skills.

In 2003, UNESCO, the education, science and culture organization of the United Nations, adopted an agreement to "preserve the intangible" and many developing-world countries were quick to get their traditions included on the official list. But it would take almost 10 years for "Agreement for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage" to be approved by the Scandinavian countries.

Annika Sjöberg is responsible for managing the work of the agency in Sweden. She has been, and continues to be, flooded with suggestions of intangible cultural heritage worthy of protection, submitted by committed citizens and organizations wanting to see their particular traditions included on the list that should be ready sometime in the next couple of years.

Suggestions have also been received concerning various maritime traditions: old shipwright skills such as the building of wooden hulled vessels, are in decline and at risk of being lost forever.

"Our work has attracted considerable attention as it is regarded as being a little out in left field," says Sjöberg. "In addition, it's also opened people's eyes to the fact that the things we can't physically touch indeed have a major bearing on the way in which we live. Even in an urbanized society, there is knowledge we carry with us that we've inherited from previous generations-knowledge that's important to preserve and take care of."

Sjöberg explains that the point is not to preserve this cultural heritage in a stony rigid form, as traditions must be allowed to change and evolve. She also emphasizes that her work should not be interpreted as a nationalistic project, rather as a means of multicultural spreading.

It's actually a matter of documenting the knowledge that exists in the various traditions. What is most exciting is the diversity that now exists and the ways in which different cultures interact with each other.