Many teenagers feel that the most important people in their lives are their friends．They believe that their family members, especially their parents, don't know them as well their friends do．In large families, it is often for brothers and sisters to fight with each other and then they can only go to their friends for advice．It is very important for teenagers to have one good friend or many friends．Even when they are not with their friends, they usually spend a lot of time talking among themselves on the phone．This communication is very important in children's growing up, because friend can discuss something difficult to say to their family members.

    However, parents often try to choose their children's friends for them．Some parents may even stop their children from meeting their good friends．The question of “choice” is an interesting one．Have you ever thought of the following questions?

    Who choose your friends?

    Do you choose your friends or your friends choose you?

    Have you got a good friend your parent don't like?

    If you enjoy fall activities, the state of Virginia is the place to be. There are many festivals to choose from. Here are four I believe will be great fun.

Henry Street Heritage Festival

    It will last from Saturday September 21^st 2014, 11:00a.m,until 10:00 p.m .The festival is held by the Harrison Museum of African American Culture. This public festival takes place in Elmwood Park in downtown Roanoke. It is a celebration of the culture, history, and arts of African Americans and there is always a lot of entertainment, which includes local and national talent.  Last year entrance was $10.00

    Mountain magic crafts festival

    This festival takes place on Saturday October 5^th, 2014, at 19753 Main Street, in Buchanan, Va. The time is 10:00a.m. until 5:00p.m .This will be a celebration of the region's heritage(遗产), through history, crafts and music. There will be free, live music throughout the day, and plenty of arts and crafts plus delicious food.

    Massanutten fall festival

    The time and location is Saturday October 12^th,2014, 11:00a.m. until 5:00 p.m. at the Massanutten Ski Area. This Fall Festival will feature more than 60 arts and crafts vendors(小贩), food vendors, live music, wine tasting, children's activities, and more. Tickets are $5 in advance, and $10 at gate. Children under age 8 are admitted free. Rides will run between the hours of 11:00am to 3:00 pm. Be in line with your ticket; no later than 2:30 pm.

    Children's Arboretum(植物园) Festival

    The fun takes place, on Saturday October 19^th, 2014 from 1:00 pm until 5:00 pm at the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum. There will be musical instrument shows and performances, singers, crafts, dance exhibitions and lessons. There will also be seed collecting trail activities, trail tours, story time, and snacks. This fall festival is a free event

    If you get into the forest with your friends, stay with them always. If you don't, you may get lost. If you really get lost, this is what you should do. Sit down and stay where you are. Don't try to find your friends—let them find you by staying in one place.

    There is another way to help your friends or other nearby people to find you. Give them a signal (信号) by shouting or whistling (吹口哨) three times. Any signal given three times is a call for help.

    Keep up shouting or whistling always three times together. When people hear you, they will know that you are not just making noise for fun. They will let you know that they have heard your signal. They give you two shouts, two whistles, or two gun-shots (枪声). When someone gives you a signal, it is an answer to a call for help.

If you don't think that you will get help before night comes, try to make a little house—cover up to the holes with branches (树枝) with lots of leaves. Make yourself a soft bed with leaves and grass.

    What should you do if you get hungry or need drinking water? You would have to leave your little house to look for a river. Don't just walk away. Pick off small branches and drop them as you walk so that you can find your way back. The most important thing to do when you are lost is—stay in one place.

    January means it's time for coats and gloves and cold weather. While many of us are preparing ourselves for the cold weeks ahead, in some cities winter is the “hottest” season of all because it's the time for winter festivities.

    Every year 2 million people visit the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan. This internationally well-known event began in 1950, when some local high-school students built six snow statues in Odori Park. Since then, the festival has grown to include lots of snow sculptures as well as a snow-sculpting contest that draws competitors from all over the world.

    In December, Finland created its 13th annual Snow Village, which will remain open until April, if weather permits. Snow Village lies nearly 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. The village is designed by builders skilled in working with snow and ice. Visitors can take a tour of the village, eat in a restaurant made of ice or go dancing in the disco igloo(拱形圆顶小屋). They can also spend the night in a hotel made of snow. There's even an ice chapel(小礼拜堂) for couples who want to get married in Snow Village.

    Since 1935, the Fur Rendezvous has been held every February in Anchorage, Alaska, America's most northern state. Among the festival's many attractions is the World Championship Sled Dog Race, which draws sled dog teams from many countries. Dogs also take center stage in the Dog Weight Pull, in which dogs compete to see which one can pull the heaviest weight. The festival features sports like skiing, basketball, boxing and softball as well as the Grand Prix Auto Race in downtown Anchorage. True to the festival's name, there's also a fur auction(拍卖), where buyers buy real Alaskan furs. The first Fur Rendezvous lasted only three days. Now it's a 10-day event that attracts thousands of visitors.

    Fireworks are exciting, but also hard to control. The Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang, though, has developed a way to harness the visual and physical power of fireworks to make art He recently used them to create a burning sculpture that stretched high into the sky. Guoqiang fittingly named the work Sky Ladder.

    Guoqiang built Sky Ladder by making a frame out of metal. He coated the frame with gunpowder, the main chemical material in fireworks.

    The artist tried one end of the frame to the ground and attached a large weather balloon to the other end. The balloon was filled with helium — a gas that is lighter than air. When released, the balloon floated upward, pulling the top of the ladder 500 meters into the sky. That's higher than the top of the Empire State Building.

    Guoqiang set fire to the bottom of the ladder, and the crackling（啪啪作响） flames raced skyward up the frame. The sculpture burned for two-and-a-half minutes before its flames began to die out from the bottom up.

    Dealing with explosive (炸药）is challenging, and conditions had to be perfect for Guoqiang to achieve his desired effect. He first attempted Sky Ladder in 1994, but bad weather prevented him from successfully completing the work. Guoqiang put Sky Ladder aside so that he could work on other projects, perhaps most famously the fireworks display that opened the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

    Finally, after two more failed attempts, Guoqiang successfully sent his flaming ladder skyward last year. He presented Sky Ladder in his hometown, a quiet fishing village near Huiyu Island, Quanzhou. He offered the work as a gift to his 100-year-old grandmother, other family members, his friends and his town.

    “Behind Sky Ladder lies a clear childhood dream of mine, "Guoqiang explains. “Despite all life's twists and turns, I have always been determined to realize it. The ladder rose toward the morning sun, carrying hope. For me, this not only means a return, but also the start of a new journey."

Extreme athletes have been using wingsuits (翼装) to fly for many years. However, the pull of gravity makes it impossible to speed up or fly higher. To push past the limitations, Peter Salzmann teamed up with German car maker BMW. The result is an electrified wingsuit, which allows flyers to rise to higher altitudes at the speed of up to 186 miles per hour!

The 33-year-old professional wingsuit pilot first thought of creating the design in 2017, "At the time, I was developing suits for skydiving with a friend," he explains. "One evening after a day of testing, we threw out lots of ideas about how we could improve performance. One of them was a supporting motor-and it's an idea I just couldn't shake off. I found the idea of being able to jump from my local mountain wearing the wingsuit and land in my garden exciting."

To help with the process, Salzmann reached out to the experts at BMW's Designworks Studio. It took the team three years and multiple test jumps to perfect the design. The result is an updated version of wingsuit with two 5-inch propellers (螺旋桨), Powered by a battery, the propellers can be controlled using an on/off switch and even stopped mid-flight using the emergency button, if the flyer encounters an airplane or a flock of birds.

On November 6, 2020, Salzmann, wearing his hi-tech suit, leaped from a helicopter from an altitude of 10,000 feet to soar around the mountain peaks. The expert pilot fired up the electric motors and rocketed forward, gliding above four mountain peaks. The task completed, the pilot opened his parachute (降落伞) and gently landed.

It is unclear if Salzmann and BMW plan to make the electrified wingsuits available to the general public. But, one can always hope!