Living and dealing with kids can be a difficult job these days, but living and dealing with parents can be even more complex.

    If I have learned anything in my 16 years, it is that communication is very important. With any relationship, you need to let other people know how you are feeling. If you are not able to communicate, you drift apart (疏远). When you are mad at your parents, or anyone else, not talking to them doesn't solve anything.

    Communication begins with the concerns of others. It means that you can't just come home from school, go up to your room and ignore everyone. To keep a good relationship, you must keep communication, even if it's just by writing a note.

    When dealing with parents, you always have to make them feel good about how they are doing as a parent. If you are trying to make them see something as you see it, tell them that you'll listen to what they have to say, but ask them politely to listen to you. Yelling or walking away only makes the situation worse.

    This is an example: one night, Sophie went to a street party with her friends. She knew she had to be home by midnight after the fireworks, but she didn't. She was late getting home. Her parents were mad at first, not giving Sophie a chance to explain why she was late. Later, they kept calm and listened to her. Communication is the key factor here. If Sophie's parents had not been willing to listen, Sophie would have been in a lot of trouble.

    It is quite natural for all of us to want to preserve and protect the foods we purchase. With that in mind, we always think that the best way to do that is by putting them in our refrigerators. However, the following foods should never be placed in the fridge.

    Bananas

    Bananas should never be placed inside the refrigerator because they keep nutrients better outside the fridge. Bananas are better kept on the counter until they ripen. The cold temperatures actually slow down the ripening process of the bananas, while the wetness and darkness of the fridge will only lead to rotting.

    Potatoes

    Potatoes should be placed in a cool, dry and dark space. The cold temperature of the fridge can turn starch (淀粉) into sugar more rapidly. It is also recommended that potatoes be removed from plastic or paper bags they may have been placed in. Also, keep them unwashed, as well in an uncovered cardboard box.

    Garlic(大蒜)

    Placing garlic in your refrigerator will actually cause it to shoot. The garlic will also rotten and even rubbery. Moreover, inside your fridge, the look of the garlic will rarely change. This means you won't be able to tell if it's any good until you finally slice it open.

    Onions(洋葱)

    Placing your onions inside your refrigerator will eventually end up turning them rotten and soft. Unpeeled onions should be kept out of plastic bags and fridge. One of the reasons for this is because unpeeled onions require and need air exposure for maximum life. If you have peeled (剥皮) an onion though, then you should keep it in the fridge, in a covered container.

    These days, it seems that almost all of us are too serious. My older daughter often says to me, "Daddy, you've got that serious look again." Even those of us who are committed to non-seriousness are probably too serious. People are frustrated and anxious about almost everything—being five minutes late, witnessing someone look at us wrong or say the wrong thing, paying bills, waiting in line, overcooking a meal, making an honest mistake -- you name it, and we all lose perspective（理性判断）over it.

    The root of being anxious is our unwillingness to accept life as being different, in any way, from our expectation. Very simply, we want things to be a certain way but they're not a certain way. Life is simply as it is. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best: "Our limited perspective, our hopes and fears become our measure of life, and when circumstances don't fit our ideas, they become our difficulties." We spend our lives wanting things, people, and events to be just as we want them to be—and when they're not, we fight and we suffer.

    The first step in recovering from over-seriousness is to admit that you have a problem. You have to want to change, to become more easygoing. You have to see that your own anxiety is largely of your own creation—it's made up of the way you have set up your life and the way you react to it.

    The next step is to understand the link between your expectations and your frustration level. Whenever you expect something to be a certain way and it isn't, you're upset and you suffer. On the other hand, when you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you're free.

    A good exercise is to try to approach a single day without expectation. Don't expect people to be friendly. When they're not, you won't be surprised or bothered; if they are, you'll be delighted. Don't expect your day to be problem-free. Instead, as problems come up, say to yourself, "Ah, another barrier to overcome." As you approach your day in this manner you'll notice how elegant life can be. Rather than fighting against life, you'll be dancing with it. Pretty soon, with practice, you'll lighten up your entire life. And when you lighten up, life is a lot more fun.

    Nola (August 21, 1974 -November 22, 2015) was a northern white rhino who lived at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park near Escondido, California. At her death, she was one of only four remaining northern white rhinos in the world. The other three lived in Kenya. World Rhino Day, held on September 2, is to raise awareness(意识) of the less than 30,000 other rhinos left on Earth.

    “Rhinos need our help today, not tomorrow,” Nola's lead keeper Jane Kennedy said. “Last year we lost over 1,200 rhinos just in South Africa. If we continue to lose more than 1,000 rhinos a year, in 10 to 20 years all the rhinos on the planet will be gone.”

    “Unfortunately, most animals are in danger of dying out because of humans,” Kennedy says.“ Humans have either poached animals, or because there are over seven billion of us, we've taken up too much of the world's resources”. Poachers illegally hunt rhinos for their horns. They sell the horns for thousands of dollars per pound, to be used for art, jewelry, and decorations. Experts believe that one rhino is poached every eight hours.

    In 1975, the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research started the Frozen Zoo, a program through which researchers have collected cell (细胞) samples from more than 8,000 different types of animals, including the northern white rhino. Scientists hope that by studying the rhino cells, they will get greater understanding of it, and will find ways to increase its numbers.

    Jane Kennedy describes World Rhino Day as “a celebration of rhinos along with an awareness campaign for everybody across the world to know that rhinos need our help.”At the San Diego Zoo, children and adults are welcome to visit and speak with zookeepers to learn about rhinos. But you don't have to live in San Diego to celebrate World Rhino Day. It is observed around the world, with zoos and wildlife parks holding special events and programs to teach people about rhinos, and enable them to see the animals up close. For more information, go to www.worldrhinoday.org.

    A while back I caught a news report on something called couch surfing and the network of trusting souls who make this phenomenon possible. They offer to put up travelers free of charge and help them on their ways. At first, it sounded unbelievable. I mean, inviting strangers into one's home for one or two nights? Give me a break.

    However, I was intrigued. I decided to find it out. The only way to truly learn about this phenomenon was to dive in. So I planned a trip to Finland, a country I've always wanted to explore. I would couch surf at every stop there.

    If ever any anxiety existed when stepping into the unknown, it disappeared when my first host met me at the train station. Ari looked like my idea of a typical Finn: tall and blue-eyed. Finns were also supposed to be famously reserved (寡言少语的). Ari was anything but. He was a live wire, giving me a warm welcome and walking with me to his apartment, where he showed me the sleeper sofa, served me tea, and engaged me in warm conversations. He also handed me a key to come and go as I pleased.

    If this was what couch surfing was all about—trust and friendship—then I had gotten off to a good start. As I boarded my next train to continue my journey, I began to think about this couch-surfing idea. What encouraged these people to open their homes to strangers? I concluded that there was a desire to lend a hand to like-minded folks who might enrich their own lives.

    Seven cities in 14 days. Seven hosts. Seven new friends. If couch surfing taught me anything, it's this: Most people are good and generous. Where will couch surfing take me next? Who knows? But I can't wait to find out.

    ①An increasing number of young people tend to rent clothes recently. Clothing rental is a hot new industry and retailers are entering this in hopes of attracting newly conscientious shoppers. This past summer alone, Urban Outfitters, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, American Eagle, and Banana Republic have all announced rental services—a sure sign of changing times.

    ②But is renting fashion actually more environmentally-friendly than buying it, and if so, how much more? Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline explored into this question and she concluded that it's not as sustainable as it seems.

    ③Take shipping, for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented—receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest carbon footprint(碳足迹)of our collective fashion habit after manufacturing.

    ④She writes, "An item ordered online and then returned can emit(排放)20 kilograms of carbon each way, and up to 50 kilograms for rush shipping. By comparison, the carbon impact of a pair of jeans purchased in physical stores and washed and worn at home is 33.4 kilograms, according to a 2015 study by Levi's."

    ⑤Then there's the burden of washing, which has to happen for every item when returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry-cleaning, a high-impact and polluting process. 70 percent of US dry cleaners used perchloroethylene, a carcinogenic(致癌的)air pollutant, which can produce harmful waste and air pollution .

    ⑥Le Tote is the only service that uses 'wet cleaning' for 80 percent of its items and strives to avoid dry cleaning unless absolutely necessary.

    ⑦Lastly, Cline fears that rental services will increase our appetite for fast fashion, simply because it's so easily accessible. There's something called ‘share-washing' that makes people engage in more wasteful behaviors precisely because a product or service is shared and thus is perceived as more eco-friendly.

    ⑧Renting clothes is still preferable to buying them cheap and pitching them in the trash after a few wears, but we shouldn't let the availability of these services make us complacent(自鸣得意的). There's an even better step --and that's wearing what is already in the closet.