Did you know that, in 2016, over 18 million people attended classical concerts in Germany? That's more people than those who went to main league football matches! Earlier this year, Germany continued its celebration of classical music with the opening of a new concert hall in the heart of Hamburg. Germans are incredibly proud of it  and it's the first thing I show to my friends when they come to visit.

    Known as the ‘Elphi' by the locals, the Elbphilharmonie is a beautiful tower of glittering glass sitting atop an old warehouse by the banks of the river Elbe. The plaza(露天广场)is open to the public and from the middle of he city's tallest building, you can gaze across the harbour, miles of rooftops and passing ships below.

    The main concert hall seats over 2000 people and is one of the most advanced music venues in the world. Two smaller concert halls are used for jazz, world and contemporary music. In addition, if you're unbelievably rich, you can buy one of the 45 luxurious apartments lying within the building.

    Construction began in 2007 with a budget of € 241 million and a two-year period. Fast forward ten years, the building eventually opened with a final price tag of over 800 million!

    I consider myself very lucky that the Elbphilharmonie opened during my time living in Hamburg, but unfortunately I haven't yet been able to attend a concert. Everything is sold out for six months! For now, I'm content to visit the plaza to enjoy the impressive views over the  docks and see the innovative architecture up close. Hopefully one day soon. I'll be lucky enough to grab a last-minute concert ticket!

    Were dinosaurs (恐龙) warm-blooded or cold-blooded? According to a new study, scientists have found that they were somewhere in the middle. This new study shows that dinosaurs were very different from most of today's animals that are either warm or cold-blooded.

    “I think we were all surprised by this,” said Felisa Smith from the University of New Mexico. “The idea certainly took some getting used to.”

    A study by a team of scientists led by John M. Grady of the university studied many different kinds of dinosaurs in their research. They looked at growth rate (比率), body temperature and body size of different kinds of dinosaurs.

    How are warm-blooded animals different from cold-blooded animals? Warm-blooded animals like humans can control their body temperature. They eat a lot, and burn calories (卡路里) quickly. They have a more active lifestyle than cold-blooded animals. While cold-blooded animals such as snakes do not control their body temperature. Instead, they must use sunlight to keep warm, and they move much more slowly. Cold-blooded animals do not need to eat very much. Their bodies slow down in colder temperatures.

    Besides dinosaurs, there are other animals that are not completely warm-blooded or cold-blooded, such as great white sharks.

    My son Cameron who was 16 years old came up with this crazy idea to make his own survival show. Well I thought it was just another one of his “phases” but he began to sound more and more serious about it. He's a big outdoors man and has always loved the idea of surviving in the woods by himself, but he has never done anything like this. Anyway, he somehow raised $4,000 for his idea. With the money he bought a nice camcorder(摄像机) ;that's when I realized that he was really serious about this whole thing.

    Cameron organized the trip all by himself. I just put out a few rules that he had to follow and rented a satellite phone so that he could contact us on his journey. My son traveled nearly 50 miles, while surviving for four days and three nights alone in the wilderness. He had no food or water, only his knife, and a camera. The journey was difficult as he traveled through valleys, up and down big waterfalls, all while he was filming his entire journey. The wilderness we dropped him off in was a wild forest that is made up of untouched land; he found his way to the beautiful lake where we picked him up. In the end he made the most amazing movie that I have ever seen in all my life.

    My son's courage should be recognized. That is why I am trying my hardest to get him seen by the rest of the world. Cameron recently turned 17. He already has plans for his next adventure and I have no hope in stopping him from completing it. This next summer he plans on surviving for two or three weeks on a desert island in Fiji or Tonga. No teenage kid has ever done anything close to what my son Cameron has done.

    According to Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, reading aloud was a common practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers were “listeners attentive to a reading voice,” and “the text addressed to the ear as much as to the eye.” The significance of reading aloud continued well into the nineteenth century.

    Using Charles Dickens's nineteenth century as a point of departure, it would be useful to look at the familial and social uses of reading aloud and reflect on the functional change of the practice. Dickens habitually read his work to a domestic audience or friends. In his later years he also read to a broader public crowd. Chapters of reading aloud also abound in Dickens's own literary works. More importantly, he took into consideration the Victorian practice when composing his prose, so much so that his writing is meant to be heard, not only read on the page.

    Performing a literary text orally in a Victorian family is well documented. Apart from promoting a pleasant family relationship, reading aloud was also a means of protecting young people from the danger of solitary（孤独的）reading. Reading aloud was a tool for parental guidance. By means of reading aloud, parents could also introduce literature to their children, and as such the practice combined leisure and more serious purposes such as religious cultivation in the youths. Within the family, it was commonplace for the father to read aloud. Dickens read to his children: one of his surviving and often-reprinted photographs features him posing on a chair, reading to his two daughters.

    Reading aloud in the nineteenth century was as much a class phenomenon as a family affair, which points to a widespread belief that Victorian readership primarily meant a middle-class readership. Those who fell outside this group tended to be overlooked by Victorian publishers. Despite this, Dickens, with his publishers Chapman and Hall, managed to distribute literary reading materials to people from different social classes by reducing the price of novels. This was also made possible with the technological and mechanical advances in printing and the spread of railway networks at the time.

    Since the literacy level of this section of the population was still low before school attendance was made compulsory in 1870 by the Education Act a considerable number of people from lower classes would listen to recitals of texts. Dickens's readers, who were from such social backgrounds, might have heard Dickens in this manner. Several biographers of Dickens also draw attention to the fact that it was typical for his texts to be read aloud in Victorian England, and thus literacy was not an obstacle for reading Dickens. Reading was no longer a chiefly closeted form of entertainment practiced by the middle class at home.

    A working class home was in many ways not convenient for reading: there were too many distractions, the lighting was bad, and the home was also often half a workhouse. As a result, the Victorians from the non-middle classes tended to find relaxation outside the home such as in parks and squares, which were ideal places for the public to go while away their limited leisure time. Reading aloud, in particular public reading, to some extent blurred the distinctions between classes. The Victorian middle class defined its identity through differences with other classes. Dickens's popularity among readers from the non-middle classes contributed to the creation of a new class of readers who read through listening.

    Different readers of Dickens were not reading solitarily and “jealously,” to use Walter Benjamin's term. Instead, they often enjoyed a more communal experience, an experience that is generally lacking in today's world. Modern audiobooks can be considered a contemporary version of the practice. However, while the twentieth and twentieth-first-century trend for individuals to listen to audiobooks keeps some characteristics of traditional reading aloud—such as “listeners attentive to a reading voice” and the ear being the focus—it is a far more solitary activity.

Atlantis Waterpark is a great day of fun featuring pools, a giant dumping bucket, hair-raising waterslides, great food, cool souvenirs and fun-filled activities for kids and adults of all ages! Atlantis is open annually from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day. Our snack bar – Neptune Reef – features all the food, beverages and sweets you'd hope to find.

Bear Path Acres Zoo is a non-profit animal shelter. You get to meet the animals up close and personal! We take pride in working with each animal to make it a wonderful learning experience. We are conveniently located in Southampton County, just 9 miles south of Franklin. Spend an hour or pack your lunch and spend the day!

Belvedere Plantation is a 645 acre heritage farm, built in the 1760s on the historic Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg, Virginia. It is a working farm, with grain crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans. Come for picnics and parties. Enjoy fall harvest time with pumpkin picking, bonfires, and even a cornfield maze. Group and educational programs available.

Come on out to Hunt Club's Petting Farm for a day of family fun on the farm. Visit everyone's favorite place where you can spend all day feeding and petting our goats, sheep, chickens, and more! Take the time to explore the farm so you don't miss the pigs, rabbits and cows. Our guests love to get to know the animals and we encourage it!