Do you want to get home from work knowing you have made a real difference in someone's life?

    If yes, don't care about sex or age! Come and join us, and then you'll make it.

Position: Volunteer Social Care Assistant

(No Pay with Free Meals)

Place: Manchester

Hours: Part Time

    We are now looking for volunteers to support people with learning disabilities to live active lives! Only 4 days left. Don't miss the chance of lending your warm hands to help others!

Role:

    You will provide people with learning disabilities with all aspects of their daily lives. You will help them to develop new skills. You will help them to protect their rights and their safety. But your primary(首要的;主要的) concern is to let them know they are valued.

Skills and Experience Required:

    You will have the right values and great listening skills. You will be honest and patient. You will have the ability to drive a car and to communicate in fluent written and spoken English since you'll have to help those people with different learning disabilities. Previous care-related experience will be a great advantage for you.

    The technology is great. Without it we wouldn't have been able to put a man on the moon, explore the ocean's depths or eat microwave sausages. Computers have revolutionized our lives and they have the power to educate and pass on knowledge. But sometimes this power can create more problems than it solves.

    Every doctor has had to try their best to calm down patients who've come into their surgery waving an Internet print-out, convinced that they have some rare incurable disease, say, throat cancer. The truth is usually far more ordinary, though: they don't have throat cancer, and it's just that their throats are swollen. Being a graduate of the Internet “school” of medicine does not guarantee accurate self-health-checks.

    One day Mrs. Almond came to my hospital after feeling faint at work. While I took her blood sample and tried to find out what was wrong, she said calmly, “I know what's wrong；I've got throat cancer. I know there's nothing you doctors can do about it and I've just got to wait until the day comes.”

    As a matter of routine I ordered a chest X-ray. I looked at it and the blood results an hour later. Something wasn't right. “Did your local doctor do an X-ray?” I asked. “Oh, I haven't been to the doctor for years,” she replied. “I read about it on a website and the symptoms fitted, so I knew that's what I had.”

    However, some of her symptoms, like the severe cough and weight loss, didn't fit with it—but she'd just ignored this.

    I looked at the X-ray again, and more tests confirmed it wasn't the cancer but tuberculosis (肺结核)—something that most certainly did need treating, and could be deadly. She was lucky we caught it when we did.

    Mrs. Almond went pale when I explained she would have to be on treatment for the next six months to ensure that she was fully recovered. It was certainly a lesson for her. “I'm so embarrassed,” she said, shaking her head, as I explained that all the people she had come into close contact with would have to be found out and tested. She listed up to about 20, and then I went to my office to type up my notes. Unexpectedly, the computer was not working, so I had to wait until someone from the IT department came to fix it. Typical. Maybe I should have a microwave sausage while I waited?

    In England, we look forward to our birthdays for 364 days a year! We invite special people to celebrate it with us.

    The Presents

    Presents are opened as soon as the children are awake. They can't wait for the birthday cake later in the day!

    The Cards

    Friends and family send birthday cards. Sending birthday cards is a custom that began in England about 100 years ago.

    The Party

    The birthday child will have a party to which friends and family are invited. Visitors to the party bring presents for the birthday child. The children play games such as Musical Chairs and Pass the Parcel.

    The Cake

    The birthday cake is decorated on a theme(主题). A candle for each year is lit and placed on top and the child blows out the candles making a wish. We don't put objects inside the cake as shown on many websites.

    The Bumps

    It used to be traditional for the birthday child to have the bumps. Friends would hold the child by the child by the legs and under the arms and lift the child up and down bumping them gently on the ground. The number of bumps given is the age of the child plus one for extra good luck. As this can be dangerous, clapping is often done instead.

    The Sweets

    Some children do take sweets into school to share with their classmates on their birthdays.

    Alexander John Jordan was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1914. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin. After about one year of college, Alex dropped out.

    Alex then went from job to job. He drove a taxi and worked for Royavac. He also worked for his father's construction company, where Alex got his basic knowledge of construction.

    In the 1940s, Alex discovered Deer Shelter Rock and began having small picnics on the top of the rock. He then started bringing his tent and camping out. One night, his tent got blown away and from that day, Alex decided he wanted to build something more stable. That was the beginning of his dreams. Alex started off by renting the rock and a bit of land around it from a local farmer. He first built a small studio with a fireplace. Then Alex, with his parents' help, bought 240 acres of land, so he could build as he pleased. What took shape on and around Deer Shelter Rock was truly a wonderful achievement. More wonderful still is the fact that he built much of the original house by himself, carrying the materials up the 75-foot-high rock.

    As curiosity grew surrounding his project, more and more people came to visit the House on the Rock. Alex decided to charge people 50 cents to visit, thinking that would drive them away; however, people gladly paid the fee. In 1960, Alex decided to open the House on the Rock to the public. This increased the interest and the crowds grew. All of the money taken in over the years was put directly back into the House. Alex was devoted to the House on the Rock. It was his life and dream.

    Daniella was brushing her daughter's long brown hair when she noticed that bunches of it were coming out. That was January 1, 2017. Within 20 days, seven-year-old Gianessa's hair and eyebrows were completely gone, and her doctor said they would never grow back. Gianessa had become one of the 6.8 million Americans with alopecia, a disease that causes hair loss.

    Alopecia isn't painful, but for kids who suffer from it, the acute mental pain comes from standing out from the crowd. For the most part, the students in Gianessa's first-grade class in Salem, Utah, were understanding. But occasionally, she still felt like an outcast(被排斥者). "I did not want her to not feel beautiful," her mother told Today.

    Then the school announced its "Crazy Hair Day" competition in April, and Daniella and Gianessa decided that rather than hiding Gianessa's baldness(光头), they would celebrate it. Daniella bought sticker jewels and decorated her daughter's head with colorful designs. "They just fit her personality," Daniella told CNN. "She's so full of life."

    On the morning of the competition, Gianessa was nervous. Would her friends think it was funny? She had nothing to fear. Gianessa was a hit—and the winner of the crazy-hair competition. Gianessa is now glad she dared to go bare. "I was sad at first when I lost all my hair," she told People, "but now I love being bald. I can do things to my head that other kids can't. I'm thinking now it might be fun to decorate my head with some shiny butterflies and flowers."

One of the interesting things about languages is the way they change over time. In English, everything from spelling to vocabulary has 1  major changes over the years. In fact, to a modern speaker, the English of 1000 years ago looks like a 2  language!

The history of English dates back around 100 years. At that time, groups of Europeans 3  England, bringing their language with them. It developed into old English. Later in 1066, English was invaded by the Normans from France. The language went through an important shift leading to what we now call Middle English. Over the next 500 years, the language underwent 4  shifts, leading to modern English. As the language has developed over time, many things about it have changed.

5 is one of the most obvious areas. For example, in old English, people say "hus" and "mus". Now, we say house and mouse. These days there are many differences in the way English is pronounced in the U.S., India and elsewhere. When people live in groups separated by great distances, the 6 of change can be fast.

Vocabulary changes happen even more quickly. English has grown by borrowing words from languages such as French, Spanish and 7 , 8 . This often happens with types of 9 -for example, "tofu". Then there is slang which enters and 10 the language every year! Thirty years ago, one often heard people saying "groovy", meaning great. These days you rarely hear the word 11 on old TV shows or movies.

Because English is spoken by so many people worldwide, it really is an exciting time for the language. Just as American and British versions are always changing, so are versions 12  in Canada, 13  and elsewhere. At the same time, an entirely new version of English is appearing on the Internet with whole new 14  and writing styles. In a way, learning English is a never-ending process, even for native speakers! The atmosphere is as much a part of the earth as 15  its soil and water of its lakes, rivers and oceans.