Choose Your One-Day-Tours!

    Tour A - Bath &Stonehenge including entrance fees to the ancient Roman bathrooms and Stonehenge -￡37 until 26 March and ￡39 thereafter. Visit the city with over 2,000 years of history and Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent and the Costume Museum, Stonehenge is one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments dating back over 5,000 years.

    Tour B - Oxford & Stratford including entrance fees to the University St Mary's Church Tower and Anne Hathaway's -￡32 until 12 March and ￡36 thereafter. Oxford: Includes a guided tour of England's oldest university city and colleges. Look over the "city of dreaming spires(尖顶）"from St Mary's Church Tower. Stratford: Includes a guided tour exploring much of the Shakespeare wonder.

    Tour C - Windsor Castle &Hampton Court: including entrance fees to Hampton Court Palace -￡34 until 11 March and ￡37 thereafter. Includes a guided tour of Windsor and Hampton Court, Henry VILL's favorite palace. Free time to visit Windsor Castle(entrance fees not included).With 500 years of history, Hampton Court was once the home of four Kings and one Queen. Now this former royal palace is open to the public as a major tourist attraction. Visit the palace and its various historic gardens, which include the famous maze(迷宫)where it is easy to get lost!

    Tour D –Cambridge including entrance fees to the Tower of Saint Mary the Great -￡33 until 18 March and ￡37 thereafter. Includes a guided tour of Cambridge, the famous university town, and the gardens of the 18th century.

    Poet William Stafford once said that we are defined more by the detours (绕行路) in life than by the narrow road toward goals. I like this image. But it was quite by accident that I discovered the deep meaning of his words.

For years we made the long drive from our home in Seattle to my parents' home in Boise in nine hours. We traveled the way most people do: the fastest, shortest, easiest road, especially when I was alone with four noisy, restless kids who hate confinement (限制) and have strong opinions about everything.

    Road trips felt risky, so I would drive fast, stopping only when I had to. We would stick to the freeways and arrive tired.

    But then Banner, our lamb was born. He was rejected by his mama days before our planned trip to Boise. I had two choices: leave Banner with my husband, or take him with me. My husband made the decision for me.

    That is how I found myself on the road with four kids, a baby lamb and nothing but my everlasting optimism to see me through. We took the country roads out of necessity. We had to stop every hour, let Banner shake out his legs and feed him. The kids chased him and one another. They'd get back in the car breathless and energized, smelling fresh from the cold air.

    We explored side roads, catching grasshoppers in waist-high grass. Even if we simply looked out of the car windows at baby pigs following their mother, or fish leaping out of the water, it was better than the best ride down the freeway. Here was life. And new horizons (见识).

    We eventually arrived at my parents' doorstep astonishingly fresh and full of stories.

    I grew brave with the trip back home and creative with my disciplining technique. On an empty section of road, everyone started quarreling. I stopped the car, ordered all kids out and told them to meet me up ahead. I parked my car half a mile away and read my book in sweet silence.

    Some road trips are by necessity fast and straight. But that trip with Banner opened our eyes to a world available to anyone adventurous enough to wander around and made me realize that a detour may uncover the best part of a journey—and the best part of yourself.

    What is it that makes people laugh? More than two thousand years ago the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defined (定义) jokes as the pleasure that results from a feeling of triumph(胜利) by showing we're better than someone else in a certain way. According to Aristotle and many other philosophers，all jokes depend mainly on showing inferiority in another person or group of persons—that is，putting it clearly，on showing that they are worse off than ourselves. Jokes raise our good opinion of ourselves at someone else's expense.

Showing how much better than other people we are is only one reason we like jokes. Someone may also use a joke to express their anger or their cruelty or any other kind of action that is not acceptable to us. We feel free to laugh when we hear about someone sliding on a banana skin. The joke lets us express those attitudes which are usually unacceptable to society. This is probably the reason why some of the jokes，especially those involving cruelty，are so popular with certain people.

    Besides，all jokes depend on our enjoyment of laughing at something that is strange and out of place because it's different from things which are happening around it. The same situation can be either sad or pleasant，depending entirely on how strange and out of place it is. If a girl in a bathing suit falls into a swimming pool，we don't laugh because nothing unusual has happened. But if a man in a smart suit falls in，the situation is at once unusual in a pleasant way and we laugh. A good joke-teller will always try to build up a situation in which one thing is expected until something unexpected suddenly happens，and so we laugh.

    Many people wrongly think that cities don't have farms and fruits and vegetables are only grown in the country. Believe it or not, there are more urban farms popping up in cities all over the world.

    Alexandra Sullivan, a food systems researcher in New York, studies urban agriculture. Urban agriculture is another name for farming and gardening in a city environment. Ms. Sullivan studies everything from tiny gardens in empty lots between buildings to bigger fields that have been planted and grown. According to Ms. Sullivan, “Urban agriculture has existed since cities have, across the world.”

    The number of humans living in urban areas, or cities, is increasing. The amount of people who wanted to garden in urban areas is also rising. Ms. Sullivan says, “In small gardens, on rooftops and indoors, city residents grow fruits, vegetables, grains, and herbs, and raise animals to produce milk, eggs, honey, and meat. City residents use these foods as supplements to food produced by rural agriculture.” Even though some people who live in urban areas grow crops, urban residents still need to rely on food grown in rural areas. This is because a city doesn't have enough space to grow enough food for everyone living in it.

    In New York City, urban farmers have come up with many different ways to grow their own produce, even though there isn't a lot of room. For example, Brooklyn Grange is a farming operation that has two rooftop vegetable farms in New York City. All together, the farms are made up of 2.5 acres of rooftop space. This makes Brooklyn Grange one of the largest rooftop farming operations in the world.

    Brooklyn Grange grows all kinds of things. The farming company sells its vegetables to local residents and restaurants. And because the farms are on rooftops, they are specially adapted to their urban location. They use available space that is not needed for anything else. As more urban farmers find ways to grow food in cities, urban residents will be better able to get fresher materials for their meals.

    The University of Birmingham is the first excellent UK Russell Group university to announce that it will accept the "Gaokao" exam for high-flying Chinese students wishing to join its undergraduate courses in 2019.  High school students who complete the "National Higher Education Entrance Examination", or Gaokao, with top grades will be able to apply for direct entry onto Birmingham degree programmes without first completing a foundation year which is a routine for the freshman.

    Gaokao is usually taken by students in their last year of senior high school and, every year, each province in China sets the grades required to gain admission to its universities. It is usually held across China in early June.  Students are tested in Chinese, Mathematics, a Foreign Language and social sciences or natural sciences.

    University of Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood said: "The University of Birmingham has been challenging and developing great minds for more than a century. We welcome people from around the globe to study at Birmingham and Chinese students form an integral part of our education and research community. We are further opening access to Birmingham's wealth of education opportunities for the brightest and most dedicated Chinese students by accepting this strict and important qualification. I look forward to welcoming these high-flying students to the University of Birmingham. "

    Gaokao is increasingly accepted by universities in Australia, the USA, Canada and mainland Europe. Birmingham will only be considering high quality students who achieve a minimum 80% Gaokao score and meet additional academic and English language requirements.

    Professor J on Frampton, Director of the University of Birmingham's China Institute said:" The University of Birmingham has a long history of educating students from China and one of our most famous graduates is Li Siguang-the founding father of Chinese geology. I am delighted that the University is now accepting the Gaokao. This gives the brightest and best Chinese students an opportunity to move straight into the first year of our undergraduate programmes and experience the benefits of studying at a global Top 100 university, such as Birmingham. "

    There were no people on the park bench as I sat down to read beneath the branches of an old willow tree, with good reasons to sigh, for the world was dragging me down. At this time, a boy approached me. He stood right before me, and said with great excitement, “Look what I found!”

    In his hand was a flower, and what a pitiful sight, with its petals (花瓣) all worn. Wanting him to take his flower and go off to play, I managed a smile and then turned to the other side.

    But instead of leaving, he sat next to my side and placed the flower to his nose and said firmly and clearly, “It really smells pretty and it's beautiful, too. That's why I picked it. Here it's for you.”

    The flower before me was dying or dead. But I knew I must take it, or he might never leave. So I reached for the flower, and replied, “Just what I need.”

    But instead of placing the flower in my hand, he held it in mid-air. It was then that I noticed that the boy was blind.

    I heard my voice quiver (轻微颤抖), and at the same time my tears shone like the sun. As I thanked him for picking the very best one, he smiled and said, “You're welcome.”

    And then he ran off to play, not knowing the influence he'd had on me.

    I sat there and wondered how he managed to see a self-pitying woman beneath an old willow tree. Perhaps from his heart, he'd been blessed with true sight.

    Through the eyes of the blind boy, I could see the problem was not with the world; the problem was me. And for all of those times I had been blind. From now on, I promised to see beauty and appreciate every second. Then I held the flower up to my nose and breathed its fragrance and smiled as that young boy.