Happy 2012 New Year!
Take a pick at our Article Highlights for the month of January...
Travel virtually to Hong Kong and find out how the city of life celebrates Chinese New Year (January 23, 2012)
Hong Kong is East Asia's most extraordinary city. Despite 150 years of British colonial rule and a cosmopolitan veneer, the vast majority of its people and customs are thoroughly Chinese. You can take English tea to the sound of a string quartet, there's cricket and pubs and cocktail lounges, but some 98 percent of the region's six million people are Chinese... Learn more.
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Eskimos have their igloos. Inuit have their ice caves. But for most of us, the extent of life under ice has been pretty limited. Since 1980, four ice hotels have set out to change that. These luxury igloos are full-size resorts built completely from ice. Contractors and ice artists piece together these luxury entities with 2-ton blocks of ice from a freshwater source. Then, naturally, they pray that global warming doesn't heat things up too dramatically after that. Icehotel in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden is Situated in the village Jukkasjarvi, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, the original Icehotel has been built every year since 1980. The facility didn't start out as a lodge... Read more.
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Garnet - "a gemstone for all seasons" is January's Birthstone
The oranges of autumn leaves, the glowing red coals of a winter fire, the sparkling green of a summer field, and the beautiful pinks and of spring flowers, garnet is a gemstone for all seasons. Garnets are a closely related group of gemstones that are available in every color. Dark reds, tangerine orange, vivid lime green, soft bluish-pink, garnet is all these colors and more. There are garnets that change color in different light, translucent green garnets that look like jade, garnets with stars... Read more.
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Curling - a popular Canadian sport, actually originated in Scotland
The precise beginnings of curling will always remain a mystery! However, it is not hard to imagine a man, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, who weighed a smooth, heavy rock in his hand, then watched and listened with fascination as he launched it along a glistening bed of ice on a frozen river. This "first curler" must have been intrigued by the way the rock moved and by the grumbling sound it made as it twisted... Read more.
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