Cold weather can hard on pets, just like it can be hard on people. Sometimes owners forget that their cats are just as used to the warm shelter (住所) as they are. Some owners will leave their animals outside for a long period of time, thinking that all animals are used to living outdoors. This can put their pets in danger of serious illness. There are things you can do to keep your animal warm and safe.

Keep your pets inside as much as you can when the weather is bad. If you have to take them out, stay outside with them. When you’re cold enough to go inside, they probably are too. I you must leave them outside for a long time, make sure they have a warm, solid shelter against the wind, thick bedding, and plenty of non-frozen water.

If left alone outside, dogs and cats can be very smart in their search for warm shelter. They can dig into snow banks or hide somewhere. Watch them closely when they are left outdoors, and provide them with shelter of good quality. Keep an eye on your pet’s water. Sometimes owners don’t realize that a water bowl has frozen and their pet can’t get anything to drink. Animals that don’t have clean and unfrozen water may drink dirty water outside, which may contain something unhealthy for them.

       Growing up inPuerto Rico, our family was no different from so many others. My parents got married after my father came back when the war ended. Both of my parents were struggling with the hard economic realities of the time. But somehow, they found time to cherish those cultural values that shaped our everyday life.

     In our daily life, we celebrated together with our friends or family members every birthday, every graduation, and all holidays with music and dancing, typical foods. When we visited our family in the countryside－a trip that took about two hours in a car, with five children fighting as to who would get a window or the front seat－we would break into a song, and somehow the trip would turn into one full of happiness and fun. We would sing not only interesting children’s songs but also beautiful love songs－songs about the love of the country though we didn’t understand the meaning of the words many times.

     I came to Philadelphia for the first time in 1973 to do a residency (实习) in family medicine. I remember the many hours of work. I was facing issues of life and death and suffering the clearly social unfairness and issues of poverty and race. These were all aggravated by my feeling of cultural differences.

      An important turning point in my life happened one Saturday night when I attended a concert of Puerto Rican singer and composer  Antonio Cabán Vale. The music showed my familiar rhythms, and the words spoke to my heart. I had found a space to express, celebrate, and share my culture in Philadelphia. Therefore, I believe diversity is seen as an advantage and not as a disadvantage. As a Puerto Rican, I am a mixture of races and I believe in my strength because of this.

     One of the biggest social issues in Japan is the increasingly low marriage rates among young people and the low birth rates, which lead to an aging and eventually shrinking (萎缩) population. Most young Japanese women simply don’t seem interested in having many children.

      Now what began in Japan is happening globally. As David Brooks wrote, birth rates are becoming lower in much of the world, from Iran－1，7 births per woman－to Russian, where low birth rates connected with high death rates mean the population is already shrinking. And this includes the US, which has long had higher birth rates than most developed nations. Aging countries will face the burden of caring for large elderly populations without a larger resource of young workers.

     It’s true that global aging is going to present some major challenges. Who will take care of the elderly? Will an older world be less active and slower to change and adapt? It’s all true. Sometimes I worry about a coming generational war over resources, just as I worry about how Iwill take care of my own parents in their old age, just as I worry about who might take care of me.

But here’s the thing: an older world may have less pressure on the environment. As we all know, the environment is the real victim of overpopulation.

     So maybe a world that grows slower and grows older will put less pressure on the environment, and buy us a few more years to ensure our energy use, along with our birth rates, reaches a sustainable (可持续的) level. After all, we’re supposed to get smarter as we get older. Hopefully that holds true for the planet as well.

Welcome to City Year UK

       City Year UK is founded on the belief that young people can change the world. As “near peer” role models and tutors, our volunteers support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to enjoy and succeed at school. But that’s not all. Over the course of their City Year, they also have the opportunity to develop as leaders, with the passion, values, experience and skills to go on to lead change in their communities long after their year of service.

Our Goal

     Our mission is to inspire the role models to help children in need succeed in school:

We give our volunteers the training and personal development they need to become powerful and effective leaders.

We show the power of individual action to drive collective impact.

Our Values

    PROGRESSION: we are devoted to the personal and professional development of all.

ACTION: we don’t just talk, we do. We are always ready.

EXCELLENCE: we struggle for nothing less, no matter where we start.

Our Future Plans

       We believe that the cumulative (渐增的) effect of the work of many devoted people and organizations can have a great impact. We are committed to increasing opportunities for young people to “act” and to create more hope.

     Our ambition is that, by 2020, 10 years after launching in the UK, we will have at least 500 young people a year serving around 40,000 children across five cities.

Our History

       Click here for further information about our history, development and achievements.

My color television has given me nothing but a headache. I was able to buy it a little over a year ago because I had my relatives give me money for my birthday instead of a lot of clothes that wouldn’t fit. I let a salesclerk fool me into buying a discontinued model. I realized this a day later, when I saw newspaper advertisements(广告) for the set at seventy-five dollars less than I had paid. The set worked so beautifully when I first got it home that I would keep it on until stationssigned offfor the night. Fortunately, I didn’t get any channels showing all-night movies or I would never have gotten to bed.

Then I started developing a problem with the set that involved static (静电) noise. For some reason, when certain shows switched into a commercial (商业广告), a loud noise would sound for a few seconds. Gradually, this noise began to appear during a show, and to get rid of it, I had to change to another channel and then change it back. Sometimes this way would not work, and I had to pick up the set and shake it to remove the sound. I actually began to build up my arm muscles (肌肉) shaking my set.

When neither of these methods removed the static noise, I would sit helplessly and wait for the noise to go away. At last I ended up hitting the set with m y fist, and it stopped working altogether. My trip to the repair shop cost me $62, and the set is working well now, but I keep expecting more trouble.

John Sand was one of the most influential teachers I have ever met. During high school, he taught me more than any other teacher had been able to.

He developed unusual methods of teaching. He did not give us homework on the first day and have it due the next; instead, he gave us a homework schedule for the term and left it up to us to remember to do it. By doing so, he prepared us for life after high school, where it would be up to us to make our own work schedule.

Mr. Sand was a family man. He made use of whatever time we had left in class to show us his latest vacation videos or his children’s sports videos. It was nice to see a man who balanced his family and his career so nicely in a world where a broken home is the average home.

Mr. Sand always encouraged us to get out of our little close-minded society of Wethersfield and explore the cultures of the world. He would tell us stories of his travels across Europe and his adventures around the US. Many teachers just forced the idea of college and ignored our need to reach outside of what we know.

Many people may not ever have a teacher like Mr. Sand. I feel sorry for them. Mr. Sand taught me things that went beyond the curriculum(课程) and let me know how powerful a teacher’s influence could be.

I’ve learned several foreign languages as an adult and was able to learn French to fluent conversation in 17 days.

In 2005 I stayed with a French friend in a French village. No one in the village spoke English and my friend refused to speak English as well. I set up a way where I did the same things every day.

In the morning, I practiced writing vocabulary for 2 hours. I believe writing things out is the best way to memorize things.

While writing, I would listen to French learning MP3s. It’s really helpful to hear other students make mistakes that you can learn from, just like a regular classroom environment.

I had lunch with my French friends every day. As they refused to slow down when speaking to me in French, it was to learn or to starve!

In the afternoon, I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in French. Reading the children’s books you read as a child is a great way to learn new languages. Firstly, the language used is simple and secondly, knowing the story helps you to guess the meaning of new words and avoid using a dictionary.

I spent an hour writing basic essays about things that always get asked like “Where are you from?” “What do you do?”, which I had my French friend check for errors. By learning ready-made answers, you practice what you learned and build up your confidence.

Another good tip is to learn the filler words, which people say between sentences but have no real meaning, allowing you to buy time in conversation.

After 17 days I went to Paris, where I met a girl in a coffee shop. When I told her I had been learning French for 17 days, she insisted that I had lived in France for at least a year.

My color television has given me nothing but a headache. I was able to buy it a little over a year ago because I had my relatives give me money for my birthday instead of a lot of clothes that wouldn’t fit. I let a salesclerk fool me into buying a discontinued model. I realized this a day later, when I saw newspaper advertisements for the set at seventy-five dollars less than I had paid. The set worked so beautifully when I first got it home that I would keep it on until stationssigned off for the night. Fortunately, I didn’t get any channels showing all-night movies or I would never have gotten to bed.

Then I started developing a problem with the set that involved static noise. For some reason, when certain shows switched into a commercial, a loud noise would sound for a few seconds. Gradually, this noise began to appear during a show, and to get rid of it, I had to change to another channel and then change it back. Sometimes this technique would not work, and I had to pick up the set and shake it to remove the sound. I actually began to build up my arm muscles shaking my set.

When neither of these methods removed the static noise, I would sit helplessly and wait for the noise to go away. At last I ended up hitting the set with my fist, and it stopped working altogether. My trip to the repair shop cost me $62, and the set is working well now, but I keep expecting more trouble.

   A good reader becomes sooner or later a good book buyer．The sooner，the better. The reading done in a book drawn from a library can not be so pleasant at the moment nor so  permanently useful as the reading done in our own copy．

    A book which is worth reading is likely to be read more than once，and at each reading     some idea or some statement makes such an impression that we wish to refer to it again． Some readers underline the page as they read，but I find that a page which I have underlined can not give me so many fresh impressions as one which has no marks on it．My habit is to make my own index(索引)of a book as I read．I put down the number of the page and a word or two to identify the thought or the fact which I get from it．On a second or third reading I am likely to double or triple the size of this index．This is my substitute for underlining．Most of the books in my library are so indexed that I can find quickly the passage which from time to time I wish to look up．

    To use a book in this way，organizing it for continued usefulness year after year, we must，of course，do our reading in a copy which belongs to us．The books I buy are chiefly those of less expensive editions．

    As I have grown older and the number of books on my shelves has increased，I appre ciate editions which do not take much room．By careful and continuous selection I keep my librarv down to ten thousand books．This would be，of course，too large a number for any but a professional scholar or writer．But my advice to a book lover is to weed but his library at least once every two years，giving away the books which are not likely to be read again. And never never buy a book which you will not immediately read．A library bought only for looks is not literature，but indoor decoration．

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You are watching a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another hard. At the start they only fight with their fists. But soon they begin hitting one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes through a window and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead！Of course he isn't really dead. With any luck he isn't even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast moving trains, who crash cars of even catch fire, are professionals. They do this for a living. These men are called stuntmen. That is to say, they perform tricks. There are two sides to their work. They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall on to hard ground but on to empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress (床垫). Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar! But although their work depends on trick of this sort, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stuntman’s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is "blown up" in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.

Naturally stuntmen are well paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They often get seriously injured, and sometimes killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff (悬崖) a thousand feet high. His parachute (降落伞) failed to open, and he was killed. In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for men only. Men no longer dress up as women when actresses have to perform some dangerous action. For nowadays there are stuntgirls too！