Guided Walking Week April 2016

          Dates: April 30th-May 7th 2016

          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, 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@abdet. com.

    Do you know what a big dream is? {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Or, is a big dream something that provides only entertainment? Children dream big dreams, but there are three barriers to realizing dreams. They often kill them before they ever have a chance to grow.

    The Self

    Immediately following the birth of a big dream, a negative self-talk takes over and gives all the reasons why it cannot happen. This inside voice is the ego (自我). It's there for protecting and should be listened to. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Most people are influenced by the inside voice. That's why only a handful of people make their dream come true.

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    Family and friends are a lot like the ego. They want to protect those they love, so they will often list all the reasons why the big dreams won't come true. Sometimes, family and friends destroy dreams of those they love most, out of their own fear of being left behind.

    The World

    If one gets past the first two barriers, one has to face the world. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} In the past, big dreamers were locked up and sometimes even killed when they were shown to the world. Fortunately, in most of the world today, big dreamers just get laughed at.

    The way to realize a big dream is with confidence and action. When children have confidence and then take action, they will be ready to accept any failure. The truth is that every great dreamer whose dreams have never seen the light of success knows failure well. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Family and Friends

B. How Big Dreams Die

C. Does a big dream show one's future?

D. They simply fail until they succeed.

E. Sometimes it is right, but more often it is wrong

F. It is the last and the most terrible barrier.

G. And their big dream is to be a rock star or a famous artist.

    A man once said how useless it was to put advertisements in the newspapers．“last week, ”said he, “my umbrella was stolen from a London church．As it was a present, I spent twice its worth in advertising, but didn't get it back．”

    “How did you write your advertisement?” asked one of the listeners, a merchant．

“Here it is,” said the man, taking out of his pocket a slip cut from a newspaper．The other man took it and read, “Lost from the City Church last Sunday evening, a black silk umbrella．The gentleman who finds it will receive ten shillings on leaving it at No.10 Broad Street．”

    “Now, ”Said the merchant, “I often advertise, and find that it pays me well ． But the way in which an advertisement is expressed is of extreme importance．Let us try for your umbrella again, and if it fails, I'll buy you a new one．”

The merchant then took a slip of paper out of his pocket and wrote：“If the man who was seen to take an umbrella from the City Church last Sunday evening doesn't wish to get into trouble, he will return the umbrella to No.10 Broad Street．He is well known．”

    This appeared in the paper, and on the following morning, the man was astonished when he opened the front door．In the doorway lay at least twelve umbrellas of all sizes and colors that had been thrown, and his own was among them．Many of them had notes fastened to them saying that they had been taken by mistake, and begging the loser not to say anything about the matter．

    One of the simplest and the most effective forms of communication involves nothing more than the movement of facial muscles. What am I talking about? Smiling! Everyone understands what a smile means, and everyone also understands what a frown means. In fact, these two basic facial expressions can be recognized across countries, across the world and across the globe, regardless of the language spoken or the culture lived in.

    Moreover, hugs are so beautiful! When you give someone a hug or someone comes up and gives you a hug, this simple act of a hug can “speak” volumes about how much you care for the other person, how much love you want to share with the other person, how much you have missed the other person. This hug has so much to say, and yet there never has to be any words spoken.

    And, who needs to say the words “yes” or “no” when a movement of the head says the same thing. These basic examples show just how powerful body language can be. Just knowing how to read and use body language effectively, makes it really easy to see why it is not always a bad thing to be lost for words.

    Body language in the world of love is a very common thing and sometimes the only thing. And, most of the time, body language is the very first words “spoken” before any words are. The old saying is “love at first sight”, not “love at first word”. Across a crowded room, their eyes meet and linger, he winks at her, and she raises an eyebrow. The connection is made without any words needed. These displays of body language say it all. In fact, sometimes they can say more than words can.

    I'd like to share 4 of my favorite blogs with you today. I'm guessing you know about some, but I'm hoping there might be a few new treasures for you to discover.

    Design for Mankind

    A lifestyle blog by Erin Loechner, filled with beautifully written articles on everything from design to parenting, to marriage, to work, to travel and more. And I have completely enjoyed the blog for six years.

    A Cup of Jo

    A lifestyle blog by Joanna Goddard, full of free topics, questions and regular posts on everything from food, design, travel, relationships to motherhood. This is another six-year read for me.

    Enjoy it

    A lifestyle and DIY blog by Elise Blaha Cripe, full of great ideas for all things DIY (memory-keeping, home decoration, photography, gardening...). I have been following Elise's blog since ten years ago.

    Cupcakes & Cashmere

    A lifestyle and fashion blog by Emily Schuman, full of all sorts great posts on everything from fashion, to decoration, to recipes, to work, to attitudes towards life. I had always heard people talk about this blog, but didn't start following regularly until a year or two ago.

Few people enjoyed getting shots at the doctor's office. But many of these shots are important vaccines (疫苗) that help prevent us from getting certain diseases or types of infection.

Vaccines got their start in Europe in the 1720s, when a British woman named Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was visiting Turkey. She saw Turkish doctors purposefully inoculating (接种) people with small amounts of smallpox. Smallpox is a painful, deadly disease that had no cure at the time. But Lady Montagu was amazed that the patients not only recovered, but then proved to be immune (免疫的) to the disease!

Lady Montagu quickly returned to England, excited to share this new procedure. But inoculation took many years to catch on. One problem was that no one had a correct way of inoculating people safely. Occasionally, patients would become fully infected and then begin spreading the disease. However, inoculation eventually saved enough people for it to become the common practice for preventing smallpox.

Some years later, a scientist named Edward Jenner discovered that people who had been infected with a disease called cowpox became resistant to smallpox. Cowpox was less much harmful than smallpox. Jenner convinced doctors to inoculate people with cowpox, which led to a very safe vaccine and far fewer outbreaks of smallpox. Finally, a French scientist named Louis Pasteur realized that Jenner's idea could be used to treat other diseases. Since then, vaccines have been made for many other diseases, such as polio, tetanus, and rabies.

Today, scientists and doctors continue to create new vaccines that could potentially save millions of lives worldwide.