We all love bank holidays. In the UK, we only get eight bank holidays in one year, and at least five of those occur around Christmas time and Easter time! A bank holiday is a British English term. This is an official day that is decided by the government, when banks, shops and offices close for the day even though it's a weekday—usually a Monday, and a lot of people have a day off work.

    Bank holidays are different in Colombia—firstly, they are called “festivos”. There are twenty festivos for the whole country in one year! In Britain ，people get more holiday allowance(津贴)than Colombians but fewer bank holidays. There can be even more festivos in Colombia, depending on which region of Colombia you live in. This is because different regions have their own holidays. For example, some regions have a patron saint(守护神) in their region, so they have an extra festivo to celebrate that saint.

    However, there are some days that are national holidays for historical reasons. There is an Independence Day celebration on July 20 every year. This is just like Bastille Day in France on July 14, or Independence Day in the United States on July 4. Other important festivos in Colombia are :Labour Day, on May 1, and Columbus Day on October 12. Columbus Day is a historical bank holiday that almost every county on the continent of America celebrates. This includes Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Mexico and the United States. It is a memorialization of the day that the Italian sailor, Christopher Columbus, first reached land on the continent in the year 1492. Many people criticize this day and say it is not something to celebrate because of the way Columbus and his teams treated the people that were already living there.

    Best Travel Guides by Continent

    We've broken down (分类)the best travel guides, by continent, to help you find student discounts and travel like a local on your next adventure.

    Europe—let's Go Europe 2019: The Students Travel Guide

    Let's Go was founded about 56 years ago when a Harvard student had an idea to provide accessible, budget travel tips for young people. Students love its amusing pages. let's Go Europe 2018 has everything you need for your trip—from the best beer in Brussels to how to avoid the lines at the Louvre.

    Africa—The Rough Guide to Cape Town, the Winelands, and the Garden Route

    With its colorful photos and detailed tips on how to make the most of South Africa, The Rough Guide is the book to get when visiting Africa. You may not have access to Google Maps when you're out exploring but that's OK. The Rough Guide also comes with easy use to maps. It can be purchased as an eBook, or as a paperback (平装本).

    Asia—Lonely Planet: South –East Asia on a Shoestring

    This guide is perfect for those backpacking through the hidden treasures of South-East Asia. With detailed recommendations from experts in the area, this guide helps first-times as well as experienced backpackers. This book can be purchased as a paperback travel guide. A download for an eBook or separate chapters can be purchased to serve as a guide to specific cities.

    North America—Lonely Planet USA Travel Guide

    With detailed reviews of the best places to eat, sleep, and explore, Lonely Planet is linked with budget-friendly attractions and that is why it makes our best travel guides list. This travel guide is available in paperback.

    The national environmental watchdog has declared that boosting efforts to cut air pollution in northern China, especially winter smog from the burning of coal, is a mission for this year.

    Burning coal for winter heating has been listed as one of the primary causes of air pollution, Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said on Monday at the annual meeting on environmental protection in Beijing.“As much as 60 percent of smog content is caused by coal burning in the starting phase of each smog”, said Fang Li, an official with Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau. Therefore, Beijing has declared that it will wipe out coal use in its most rural areas by 2020.

    To start with, Beijing will replace coal-fired heating stoves with those powered by electricity or gas in 400 villages this year, before taking the campaign to the districts of Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai and Shijingshan by 2017,said Guo Zihua, a municipal rural development official. Beijing's downtown districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng eliminated coal burning last year, officials said.

    The capital and other places in northern China experienced several smog alerts in November and December, when peak readings were many times higher than the national safety level. Obviously, the situation is deteriorating, and will become a norm. So the government came up with a “smog subsidy (津贴)” for those who work outdoors, and 95 percent of the respondents to a survey support it.

    The Trade Union in Zhengzhou City surveyed subscribers to its official WeChat account and found that 88 percent of nearly 400 respondents said priority should be given to outdoor workers on smoggy days But 9 percent said air pollution affects everyone so it would be unfair to only address the concerns of people who work outdoors.

    Over half of the respondents think the extra subsidy, if applied, could come in the form of protective tools or cash. Twenty-two percent said money is the easiest way. To finance the proposed subsidy, 53 percent think the government and companies should jointly pay the bill, while 44 percent said central and regional governments should be responsible.

    Pablo Picasso was an amazing painter who experimented with colour and shape. Picasso wanted to find ways to paint emotions. His paintings opened people's minds and showed there were many ways to express ideas.

    Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso learned to paint at an early age because his father was a painter. At fourteen, Picasso began attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelnoa. Although Picasso did well, his teacher wouldn't let him develop his own style. So he change schools. Though his new teachers praised his work, they still criticized it as being too different. Picasso made up his mind to express himself in his own way.

    Disappointed with his career in Spain, nineteen-year-old Picasso moved to Pairs, where he learned about abstract art. He started copying famous paintings so he could paint in any style. However, an important development in his own style came along when his best friend committed suicide（自杀）. Picasso was so upset that he painted only in blue and gray. He painted the poor and the disabled. This is known as his "Blue Period".

    In 1904, his painting style changed again when he fall in love with an artist's model. He began painting everything with colors of rose, red and pink. He mainly painted artists during this time, called his "Rose Period."

    Picasso's style went through style change as he began to learn African art and geometry（几何学）. Instead of painting with different colors, he used different shapes. His paintings made people surprise because they looked like they had been broken and put back together incorrectly. Everything was geometric and abstract. Picasso's new style became known as "Cubism." Cubism was so unique it became very popular.

Pablo Picasso in most remembered for his Blue, Rose, and Cubist periods. But Picasso never stopped experimenting with painting. His painting styles kept changing until his death at the age of ninety-two.

    One of the first things that Jim discovered while living with the Greens was that there were different television channels(频道)in Britain, the BBC broadcasts on two channels: BBC1 and BBC2. There is a mixture of serious and light programmes on BBC1; there are mainly serious programmes on BBC2. ITV is an independent(独立的)channel which carries advertisements(广告). There are no advertisements on the BBC, so everyone must pay some money to the BBC each year. There are both serious and light programmes on ITV. Because of the different channels, it is not surprising that you often see each member in Mg. Green's house wants to choose his or her own favorite channel. This is the sort of thing you hear:

    "There's sports programme on ITV."

    "What's that, children?"

    "We were wondering if we could watch the sports programme on ITV."

    "But I was wondering whether to watch the other programme on BBC1." And so on. The children like ITV; mother prefers BBC1; father prefers BBC2. Jim hasn't made up his mind.

"WOW, THIS is not what I was expecting at all," says Allison, a nurse, remembering the first romance novel she ever read. Having shared the general literary bias (偏见) towards romance novels, she is now crazy about this genre (体裁). Allison was browsing in The Ripped Bodice, a romance-novel shop that recently opened in Brooklyn. The day the shop opened, the queue to get in was more than an hour long. The shop, which is uniquely-decorated, is serious in its devotion to romance novels.

The popularity of The Ripped Bodice (the second chain store devoted to romance in the district) is part of a larger shift. During the pandemic, when many were stuck at home and looking for escapist reading, fictional romance blossomed. In the year to May, romance print sales were up by 52%, according to a market-research firm. List-price sales grew by 74%. Annual growth in sales went from 6% in 2020 to more than 50% last year.

Readers have changed too. Newer fans are mostly young adults and many are teenagers. They are keen on romance novels with a central love story and a happy ending. 

"The industry has a lot of respect for what has been happening with romance," says Kristen, the manager of the market-research firm. "Now modern authors want to seek something deeper. Love is a powerful feeling. I wish that the writers could all see their way past thinking that those emotions are somehow less valuable than emotions that are built out of pain and sorrow," says Sarah, author of "Knockout"－a best-seller about romance in this season.

Librarians have noticed the shift too. Stephanie Anderson, of BookOps, which buys books for public libraries in New York and Brooklyn, notes that "the biggest challenge with romance at this point is finding the money and space to keep up with all the popular titles."