Visitors will find some of the best skiing in France. France offers a wide variety of skiing areas suitable for everyone, from beginners to the best in the world.

Val d’Isere

Val d’Isere, linked with the neighboring Tignes, makes up Espace Killy area. Named after the famous three — time Olympic gold medalist Jean-Claude Killy who grew up skiing in the area, the Val d’Isere base sits at 6,069 feet. This altitude is paired with consistent snowfall and Europe’s largest snow-making capacity.

La Rosiere

La Rosiere is a historic mountain town sitting in the heart of the Saint Bernard Pass. Because it’s close to the Italian border, it’s often called the most Italian area in Savoy. La Rosiere is an excellent destination for middle skiers and even advanced skiers.

Les Trois Vallees

Les Trois Vallees or the Three Valleys is home to a group of interconnected ski resorts that create the largest ski area in the world. Courchevel is the largest ski resort in the area, with over 90miles of skiable trails. This area attracts all levels, with almost a third of the routes being beginner-friendly. Courchevel is also known to attract a special crowd, including Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Avoriaz

You can find Avoriaz in the Portes du Soleil area, which makes up the second largest ski region in the country. The entire region comprises 12 resorts and over 40 miles of area that cross into Switzerland. One pass will grant you access to all the lifts in the area, making it possible to ski in two countries on the same day. Avoriaz is the snowiest resort in France and is also unique in that the resort itself is car-free! Visitors reach the resort by cable car and then get around by walking, skiing, or horse-drawn sleigh (雪橇).

Ida Keeling had grown up poor in Harlem and done hard, grinding work in factories during the Great Depression. She had lost her husband early to a heart attack, and two of her four children—both of her sons—died in accidents. Keeling had sunk into a deep depression. Her health had begun to slide and her daughter, Cheryl, began to worry that she soon might be losing her mother as well.

Keeling’s daughter is a lifelong athlete. That may be what would pull her mother out from under her dark cloud. She suggested a run. Not just a jog around the block, but an official run. At the time, Ida Keeling was 67.

It had been decades since Keeling had done any running, and she would later recall that the first “mini-run” was wonderful. “I just threw off all my bad memories,” Keeling says. She hasn’t stopped running since, and it’s no longer the difficulty it was during that first meet. Since then, Keeling has set records for 60 meters in the 95-99 age group, and in 100 meters for the over 100 group. “I was just exercising,” she says, “and now I’m all over the world.”

When she’s not running, she’s working out. She’s in the gym three to four days a week, running, working out with weights and pedaling on the exercise bike—and even exercising while she’s cooking. Part of her healthy diet is an occasional dose of red wine mixed with her coffee or water to aid blood circulation. She’s written a book about her experiences, titled Can’t Nothing Bring Me Down: Chasing Myself in the Race Against Time. Her philosophy is also fit for a runner: “Every day is another day forward.”

Curiosity is key to learning. In fact, studies show that, when we’re curious about a subject, we are much more likely to remember information we learned about that subject. If you’re an educational professional or are considering earning a teaching degree and entering the classroom, knowing how to enlighten students’ curiosity can help you improve learning outcomes.

Curiosity most often begins with “why”. Why does natural gas burn blue? Why is blue spelled blue and not blew? Why does the wind blow? If you want to fire up your students’ curiosity, you need to encourage them to ask and try to answer questions. That means you should avoid giving tedious lectures where you explain everything. Instead, try designing your classes so that you’re posing questions. And be sure to leave openings for students to participate and ask questions about what they’re learning.

Not every question your students ask will be a question you expect. But all questions prove a curious mind, so don’t dismiss questions that don’t fit with your lesson. Instead, leave unstructured time in class to address unexpected questions, or establish a system whereby unexpected questions can be “stored” for later, like on a whiteboard or in an online document.

In addition to making room for unexpected questions, you should also make room for students’ exploration of their questions. If you give your students enough time to discuss questions, their curiosity is certainly to expand.

Curiosity is a fuel. It drives us to try to figure things out and, finally, to learn. So make sure you give your students time for reflection after every class. Ask them to create a quick piece of art to reflect what they’ve learned. Not only does this kind of reflection aid in learning, it can also teach students to make curiosity a constantly present part of their lives.

Wild animals are human’s friends, an important part of the natural ecosystem, and valuable natural resources endowed(赋予)by nature.

Indian elephants, a subspecies of Asian elephants, have been considered endangered since 1986. There are only an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 Indian elephants left in the wild, and the global population is believed to be decreasing.

Habitat loss is widely considered a direct threat to Indian elephants. Recent economic growth and subsequent increased development in Asia are the main causes of this habitat loss. From expanding human settlements and mining to converting land to plantations and infrastructure(基础建设), many activities can block migratory elephant routes and drive them into smaller sub-populations. When animals are forced into smaller pockets of populations, they risk losing genetic diversity and have a higher chance of dying from disease and natural disasters.

In India, elephants have faced a 70% population decline over the last 60 years. When accounting for climate change projections, scientists predict that the elephant population in the country could lose over 40% of its habitat by 2070.

As elephants lose their habitats to human settlements and development, interactions between humans and elephants also rise. Elephant populations, especially those living outside of protected areas, wander into agricultural lands in search of food and cause crop or property loss. Even worse, these impacts may cause farmers and residents to retaliate against the elephants if they believe their assets are in danger. Poison or other deadly methods have been used.

Although countries like India, Vietnam, and Myanmar have completely banned the capture of wild elephants for any purpose, illegal hunting still happens in those and other nations where Indian elephants live.

Countries around the world are taking action to protect Indian elephants. In parts of Myanmar, teams of rangers work to protect and co-manage wild elephant populations with the Wildlife Conservation Society. They use the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool(SMART), a geographic information systems-based software to systematically collect, manage, analyze, and report data collected from forests. With SMART, park managers can deploy rangers strategically in hotpots for illegal hunting or other illegal activities, manage efforts, and organize resources.