Sunday, November 2, 2008

The world's remotest school

Children in a remote part of China face a hazardous walk to school - because it is halfway up a sheer cliff.
The school in Gulu village, Sichuan province, lies halfway up a mountain and climbing up from the base takes five hours.
The elementary school has only one teacher who has been there for 26 years.
Villagers say going to school is very dangerous for the children, since the path is only 1ft 4ins wide at the narrowest point and has a sheer drop on one side.
Walking along the narrow, zigzagging path also makes the children feel dizzy, they say.
The school has five concrete buildings and a playground with a basketball hoop made of two wooden poles and a broken blackboard.
However, the children are allowed to only pat the balls, as if they throw them and they go over the edge of the cliff, it would take half a day to retrieve them.
Shen Qijun, 45, the teacher, has threatened to quit several times, but each time the villagers plead with him to stay as there would be nobody else to teach their children.
Shen teaches Chinese and Math to the students, but says only two students in 26 years have gone on to university because of the isolation.
A volunteer who has been teaching there for three months said: "The students work very hard, but they have never seen computers, cars or even flushing toilets."

Funny Animals

A Raccoon plays a watery harp

.
The Great Escape Dog

.
Puppy Kisses

World’s Smallest Dog: 12.4 cm (4.9-inch) tall

At 1.4 pounds and 4.9 inches tall, Ducky, a yappy short-coat Chihuahua from Charlton (Massachusetts, USA), holds the Guinness World Record for the world's smallest living dog (by height). Ducky succeeds Danka Kordak of Slovakia, a Chihuahua who measured 5.4 inches tall. The smallest dog ever, according to Guinness, was a dwarf Yorkshire terrier who stood 2.8 inches tall.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Cute Alert!
















Oops! Error ends up on sign.

The English is clear enough to lorry drivers - but the Welsh reads "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

Friday, October 31, 2008

Fall Colors

RAINBOWS OF FALL... [12 Photos]

Hide and go Seek


North Carolina Police Stop Traffic to Aid Momma Bear

WOODFIN, North Carolina — Police had to halt traffic on a highway in North Carolina to help a mother bear get to her cub after it was struck by a vehicle.
Police say the cub was struck Tuesday afternoon and the driver didn't stop.
Officers in the western North Carolina town of Woodfin halted cars for about 20 minutes after the mother bear had failed twice at trying to get her 80-pound cub off the busy highway.
Sgt. Dawn Roberts says officers stood with rifles while others pulled the cub to the side of the road near the mother. She says the mother bear grabbed the cub and ran off into the woods to tend to its body.

Diarrhea 'no excuse' for speeding

A woman from southern Sweden has lost her bid to have a speeding fine overturned on the grounds that she was suffering from diarrhea at the time of the offence.
The 49-year-old woman from Trelleborg explained to the local district court that she was experiencing stomach problems when she was pulled over for driving 86 kilometres per hour in a 70 km/h zone. But the court ruled that a case of the runs did not equate to a need for speed. A situation can only be classed as an emergency if somebody's life is in danger or if a driver hits the gas in an attempt to prevent a serious crime. As the woman's desire to get home to her toilet did not fit into either category, the court ordered her to pay the speeding fine.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Pumpkitten