This is a U.S. environmental law that establishes the broad…
Questions
This is а U.S. envirоnmentаl lаw that establishes the brоad natiоnal framework for protecting our environment. Under this law, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was established. It also required Environmental Impact Assessments to federal agencies in case their major actions significantly affect environmental quality. What is this environmental law passed in 1969?
DIRECTIONS: Cоmplete the sentences using the wоrds in the bоx. chаnnels dispersed doomed ingenuity invаders mechаnisms regime reservoir subsequently subversive Most visitors to Agra in India head for the famous Taj Mahal. But not far away is an impressive deserted city, Fatehpur Sikri. The city was built during the (1) ____________________ of Emperor Akbar, when the Mughals ruled this part of India. The location was chosen when Akbar came to the area to meet a Sufi saint who predicted that Akbar would have a son. (2) ____________________, when the heir to the throne was born in 1571, Akbar decided to build his capital in that place. Mughal civilization was famous for the (3) ____________________of its architecture and the buildings of Fatehpur Sikri are outstanding examples of the style. The city itself covers a wide area with public buildings, mosques, and palaces (4) ____________________ throughout it. Around the city, Akbar built a long fort wall to protect it from (5) ____________________. However, the city was (6) ____________________ to failure. Water in the area was scarce, so the Emperor built an artificial lake to act as a (7) ___ ________________. But the (8) ____________________ for supplying the water channels were not adequate and the city suffered from water shortages. Akbar abandoned his city after only 10 years, and died 20 years later, at the age of 63. The end of his reign was disturbed by the (9) ________ ____________ actions of his son, who rejected his reforms and tried to dethrone his father. The empire rapidly crumbled. Today, visitors to the ghost city can see dry (10) ____________________ that were meant to bring water to large gardens and man-made lakes. The empty red sandstone buildings at this UNESCO World Heritage Site are a tribute to the architectural skill of the Mughals, but also a reminder that water is essential for a civilization to flourish. (8) ____________________ [BLANK-1]
DIRECTION: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. The Collаpse of Angkor After rising to sublime 1 heights, the sacred city may have engineered its own downfall .An Empire's Fall [A] Almost hidden amid the forests of northern Cambodia is the scene of one of the greatest vanishing acts of all time. This was once the heart of the Khmer kingdom. At its height, the Khmer Empire dominated much of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) in the west to Vietnam in the east. As many as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its magnificent capital. The most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world, Angkor stretched across an area the size of New York City. Its greatest temple, Angkor Wat, is the world's largest religious monument even today. [B] Yet when the first European missionaries arrived in Angkor in the late 16th century, they found a city that was already dying. Scholars have come up with a list of suspected causes for Angkor's decline, including foreign invaders, a religious change of heart, and a shift to maritime trade. But it's mostly guesswork: Roughly 1,300 inscriptions survive on temple doors and monuments, but the people of Angkor left not a single word explaining their kingdom's collapse. [C] Some scholars assume that Angkor died the way it lived: by the sword. The historical records of Ayutthaya, a neighboring state, claim that warriors from that kingdom "took" Angkor in 1431. If so, their motive is not difficult to guess. No doubt Angkor would have been a rich prize - inscriptions boast that its temple towers were covered with gold. After its rediscovery by Western travelers just over a century ago, historians deduced from Angkor's ruins that the city had been looted 2 by invaders from Ayutthaya. [D] Roland Fletcher, co-director of a research effort called the Greater Angkor Project, is not convinced. Some early scholars, he says, viewed Angkor according to the sieges 3 and conquests of European history. "The ruler of Ayutthaya, indeed, says he took Angkor, and he may have taken some formal regalia 4 back to Ayutthaya with him," says Fletcher. But after Angkor was captured, Ayutthaya's ruler placed his son on the throne. "He's not likely to have smashed the place up before giving it to his son." [E] A religious shift may also have contributed to the city's decline. Angkor's kings claimed to be the world emperors of Hindu mythology and erected temples to themselves. But in the 13th and 14th centuries, Theravada Buddhism gradually took over from Hinduism, and its principles of social equality may have threatened Angkor's elite. "It was very subversive, just like Christianity was subversive to the Roman Empire," says Fletcher. [F] A new religion that promoted ideas of social equality might have led to a worker rebellion. The city operated on a moneyless economy, relying on tribute 5 and taxation, and the kingdom's main currency was rice, the staple food of the laborers who built the temples and the thousands who ran them. For one temple complex, Ta Prohm, more than 66,000 farmers produced nearly 3,000 tons of rice a year, which was then used to feed the temple's priests, dancers, and workers. Scholars estimate that farm laborers comprised nearly half of Greater Angkor's population. [G] Or maybe the royal court simply turned its back on Angkor. Angkor's rulers often erected new temple complexes and let older ones decay. This may have doomed the city when sea trade began to develop between Southeast Asia and China. Maybe it was simple economic opportunism that had caused the Khmer center of power to shift: The move to a location closer to the Mekong River, near Cambodia's present-day capital, Phnom Penh, allowed it easier access to the sea. [H] Economic and religious changes may have contributed to Angkor's downfall, but its rulers faced another foe. Angkor was powerful largely thanks to an advanced system of canals and reservoirs, which enabled the city to keep scarce water in dry months and disperse excess water during the rainy season. But forces beyond Angkor's control would eventually bring an end to this carefully constructed system. [I] Few ancient sites in southern Asia could compare to Angkor in its ability to guarantee a steady water supply. The first scholar to appreciate the scale of Angkor's waterworks was French archeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier. In 1979, he argued that the great reservoirs served two purposes: to symbolize the Hindu cosmos 6 and to irrigate the rice fields. Unfortunately, Groslier could not pursue his ideas further. Cambodia's civil war, 7 the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, 8 and the subsequent arrival of Vietnamese forces in 1979 turned Angkor into a no-go zone for two decades. [J] In the 1990s, Christophe Pottier followed up on Groslier's ideas and discovered that the south part of Angkor was a vast landscape of housing, water tanks, shrines, roads, and canals. Then, in 2000, Roland Fletcher and his colleague Damian Evans - as part of a collaborative study with Pottier - viewed some NASA radar images of Angkor. The researchers marveled at the sophistication of Angkor's infrastructure. "We realized that the entire landscape of Greater Angkor is artificial," Fletcher says. Teams of laborers constructed hundreds of kilometers of canals and dikes 9 that diverted water from the rivers to the reservoirs. Overflow channels bled off excess water that accumulated during the summer monsoon months, and after the monsoon, irrigation channels dispensed the stored water. "It was an incredibly clever system," says Fletcher. [K] Fletcher was therefore baffled when his team made a surprising discovery. An extraordinary piece of Angkorian workmanship - a vast structure in the waterworks - had been destroyed, apparently by Angkor's own engineers. "The most logical explanation is that the dam failed," Fletcher says. The river may have begun to erode the dam, or perhaps it was washed away by a flood. The Khmer broke apart the remaining stonework and modified the blocks for other purposes. [L] Any weakening of the waterworks would have left the city vulnerable to a natural phenomenon that none of Angkor's engineers could have predicted. Starting in the 1300s, it appears that Southeast Asia experienced a period of extreme climate change, which also affected other parts of the world. In Europe, which endured centuries of harsh winters and cool summers, it was known as the Little Ice Age. [M] To an already weakened kingdom, extreme weather would have been the final blow. "We don't know why the water system was operating below capacity," says Daniel Penny, co-director of the Greater Angkor Project. "But what it means is that Angkor ... was more exposed to the threat of drought than at any other time in its history." If inhabitants of parts of Angkor were starving while other parts of the city were hoarding a finite quantity of rice, the most likely result was social instability. "When populations in tropical countries exceed the carrying capacity of the land, real trouble begins," says Yale University anthropologist Michael Coe, "and this inevitably leads to cultural collapse." A hungry army weakened by internal problems would have exposed the city to attack. Indeed, Ayutthaya's invasion happened near the end of a long period of drought. [N] Add to the climate chaos the political and religious changes already affecting the kingdom, and Angkor's prospects were bleak, says Fletcher. "The world around Angkor was changing; society was moving on. It would have been a surprise if Angkor persisted." [O] The Khmer Empire was not the first civilization brought down by climate catastrophe. Centuries earlier, loss of environmental stability likewise brought down another powerful kingdom halfway around the world. Many scholars now believe that the fall of the Maya followed a series of droughts in the ninth century. "Essentially, the same thing happened to Angkor," says Coe. [P] In the end, the tale of Angkor is a sobering lesson in the limits of human ingenuity. "Angkor's hydraulic 10 system was an amazing machine, a wonderful mechanism for regulating the world," Fletcher says. Its engineers managed to keep the civilization's achievement running for six centuries - until a greater force overwhelmed them. 1 If you say something is sublime, you mean it has a wonderful quality. 2 If a store or house is looted, people have stolen things from it, for example, during a war or riot. 3 A siege is a military or police operation in which soldiers or police surround a place in order to force the people there to come out. 4 Regalia is the ceremonial jewelry, objects, or clothes that symbolize royalty or high office. 5 A tribute is something you give, say, do, or make to show your admiration and respect for someone. 6 The cosmos is the universe. 7 A civil war is a war fought between different groups of people who live in the same country. 8 The Khmer Rouge was a radical communist movement that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 after winning power through a guerrilla war. 9 A dike is a wall built to prevent flooding. 10 Something that is hydraulic involves the movement or the control of water. Which opinion is closest to Fletcher's in paragraph D?
DIRECTION: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. The Collаpse of Angkor After rising to sublime 1 heights, the sacred city may have engineered its own downfall .An Empire's Fall [A] Almost hidden amid the forests of northern Cambodia is the scene of one of the greatest vanishing acts of all time. This was once the heart of the Khmer kingdom. At its height, the Khmer Empire dominated much of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) in the west to Vietnam in the east. As many as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its magnificent capital. The most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world, Angkor stretched across an area the size of New York City. Its greatest temple, Angkor Wat, is the world's largest religious monument even today. [B] Yet when the first European missionaries arrived in Angkor in the late 16th century, they found a city that was already dying. Scholars have come up with a list of suspected causes for Angkor's decline, including foreign invaders, a religious change of heart, and a shift to maritime trade. But it's mostly guesswork: Roughly 1,300 inscriptions survive on temple doors and monuments, but the people of Angkor left not a single word explaining their kingdom's collapse. [C] Some scholars assume that Angkor died the way it lived: by the sword. The historical records of Ayutthaya, a neighboring state, claim that warriors from that kingdom "took" Angkor in 1431. If so, their motive is not difficult to guess. No doubt Angkor would have been a rich prize - inscriptions boast that its temple towers were covered with gold. After its rediscovery by Western travelers just over a century ago, historians deduced from Angkor's ruins that the city had been looted 2 by invaders from Ayutthaya. [D] Roland Fletcher, co-director of a research effort called the Greater Angkor Project, is not convinced. Some early scholars, he says, viewed Angkor according to the sieges 3 and conquests of European history. "The ruler of Ayutthaya, indeed, says he took Angkor, and he may have taken some formal regalia 4 back to Ayutthaya with him," says Fletcher. But after Angkor was captured, Ayutthaya's ruler placed his son on the throne. "He's not likely to have smashed the place up before giving it to his son." [E] A religious shift may also have contributed to the city's decline. Angkor's kings claimed to be the world emperors of Hindu mythology and erected temples to themselves. But in the 13th and 14th centuries, Theravada Buddhism gradually took over from Hinduism, and its principles of social equality may have threatened Angkor's elite. "It was very subversive, just like Christianity was subversive to the Roman Empire," says Fletcher. [F] A new religion that promoted ideas of social equality might have led to a worker rebellion. The city operated on a moneyless economy, relying on tribute 5 and taxation, and the kingdom's main currency was rice, the staple food of the laborers who built the temples and the thousands who ran them. For one temple complex, Ta Prohm, more than 66,000 farmers produced nearly 3,000 tons of rice a year, which was then used to feed the temple's priests, dancers, and workers. Scholars estimate that farm laborers comprised nearly half of Greater Angkor's population. [G] Or maybe the royal court simply turned its back on Angkor. Angkor's rulers often erected new temple complexes and let older ones decay. This may have doomed the city when sea trade began to develop between Southeast Asia and China. Maybe it was simple economic opportunism that had caused the Khmer center of power to shift: The move to a location closer to the Mekong River, near Cambodia's present-day capital, Phnom Penh, allowed it easier access to the sea. [H] Economic and religious changes may have contributed to Angkor's downfall, but its rulers faced another foe. Angkor was powerful largely thanks to an advanced system of canals and reservoirs, which enabled the city to keep scarce water in dry months and disperse excess water during the rainy season. But forces beyond Angkor's control would eventually bring an end to this carefully constructed system. [I] Few ancient sites in southern Asia could compare to Angkor in its ability to guarantee a steady water supply. The first scholar to appreciate the scale of Angkor's waterworks was French archeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier. In 1979, he argued that the great reservoirs served two purposes: to symbolize the Hindu cosmos 6 and to irrigate the rice fields. Unfortunately, Groslier could not pursue his ideas further. Cambodia's civil war, 7 the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, 8 and the subsequent arrival of Vietnamese forces in 1979 turned Angkor into a no-go zone for two decades. [J] In the 1990s, Christophe Pottier followed up on Groslier's ideas and discovered that the south part of Angkor was a vast landscape of housing, water tanks, shrines, roads, and canals. Then, in 2000, Roland Fletcher and his colleague Damian Evans - as part of a collaborative study with Pottier - viewed some NASA radar images of Angkor. The researchers marveled at the sophistication of Angkor's infrastructure. "We realized that the entire landscape of Greater Angkor is artificial," Fletcher says. Teams of laborers constructed hundreds of kilometers of canals and dikes 9 that diverted water from the rivers to the reservoirs. Overflow channels bled off excess water that accumulated during the summer monsoon months, and after the monsoon, irrigation channels dispensed the stored water. "It was an incredibly clever system," says Fletcher. [K] Fletcher was therefore baffled when his team made a surprising discovery. An extraordinary piece of Angkorian workmanship - a vast structure in the waterworks - had been destroyed, apparently by Angkor's own engineers. "The most logical explanation is that the dam failed," Fletcher says. The river may have begun to erode the dam, or perhaps it was washed away by a flood. The Khmer broke apart the remaining stonework and modified the blocks for other purposes. [L] Any weakening of the waterworks would have left the city vulnerable to a natural phenomenon that none of Angkor's engineers could have predicted. Starting in the 1300s, it appears that Southeast Asia experienced a period of extreme climate change, which also affected other parts of the world. In Europe, which endured centuries of harsh winters and cool summers, it was known as the Little Ice Age. [M] To an already weakened kingdom, extreme weather would have been the final blow. "We don't know why the water system was operating below capacity," says Daniel Penny, co-director of the Greater Angkor Project. "But what it means is that Angkor ... was more exposed to the threat of drought than at any other time in its history." If inhabitants of parts of Angkor were starving while other parts of the city were hoarding a finite quantity of rice, the most likely result was social instability. "When populations in tropical countries exceed the carrying capacity of the land, real trouble begins," says Yale University anthropologist Michael Coe, "and this inevitably leads to cultural collapse." A hungry army weakened by internal problems would have exposed the city to attack. Indeed, Ayutthaya's invasion happened near the end of a long period of drought. [N] Add to the climate chaos the political and religious changes already affecting the kingdom, and Angkor's prospects were bleak, says Fletcher. "The world around Angkor was changing; society was moving on. It would have been a surprise if Angkor persisted." [O] The Khmer Empire was not the first civilization brought down by climate catastrophe. Centuries earlier, loss of environmental stability likewise brought down another powerful kingdom halfway around the world. Many scholars now believe that the fall of the Maya followed a series of droughts in the ninth century. "Essentially, the same thing happened to Angkor," says Coe. [P] In the end, the tale of Angkor is a sobering lesson in the limits of human ingenuity. "Angkor's hydraulic 10 system was an amazing machine, a wonderful mechanism for regulating the world," Fletcher says. Its engineers managed to keep the civilization's achievement running for six centuries - until a greater force overwhelmed them. 1 If you say something is sublime, you mean it has a wonderful quality. 2 If a store or house is looted, people have stolen things from it, for example, during a war or riot. 3 A siege is a military or police operation in which soldiers or police surround a place in order to force the people there to come out. 4 Regalia is the ceremonial jewelry, objects, or clothes that symbolize royalty or high office. 5 A tribute is something you give, say, do, or make to show your admiration and respect for someone. 6 The cosmos is the universe. 7 A civil war is a war fought between different groups of people who live in the same country. 8 The Khmer Rouge was a radical communist movement that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 after winning power through a guerrilla war. 9 A dike is a wall built to prevent flooding. 10 Something that is hydraulic involves the movement or the control of water. Which of the following happened first?
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. Spirits in the Sаnd Recent findings shed light on the lives - and mysterious disappearance - of the ancient Nasca. [A] Since their mysterious desert drawings became widely known in the late 1920s, the people known as the Nasca have puzzled archeologists, anthropologists, 1 and anyone else who is fascinated by ancient cultures. Their elaborate lines and figures, called geoglyphs, are found distributed, seemingly at random, across the desert outside Nasca and the nearby town of Palpa. Waves of scientists - and amateurs - have come up with various interpretations for the designs. At one time or another, they have been explained as Inca roads, irrigation plans, even, controversially, landing strips for alien spacecraft. [B] Since 1997, an ongoing Peruvian-German research collaboration called the Nasca-Palpa Project has been putting these theories to the test. The leaders of the project are Johny Isla and Markus Reindel of the German Archaeological Institute. As well as studying where and how the Nasca lived, the researchers have investigated why they disappeared and the meaning of the strange, abstract designs they left behind. If Isla and his colleagues are right, the story of Nasca begins, and ends, with water. Living on the Edge[C] The coastal region of southern Peru and northern Chile is one of the driest places on Earth. In the small, protected basin where the Nasca culture arose, ten rivers descend from the Andes. Most of these rivers are dry at least part of the year. Surrounded by a thousand shades of brown, these ten ribbons of green offered a fertile spot for the emergence of an early civilization. "It was the perfect place for human settlement, because it had water," says geographer Bernhard Eitel, a member of the Nasca-Palpa Project. "But it was a very high-risk environment." [D] According to Eitel and his colleague Bertil Machtle, the micro-climate in the Nasca region has undergone considerable variation over the past 5,000 years. When a high-pressure system over central South America called the Bolivian High moves to the north, more rain falls on the western slopes of the Andes. When the high shifts southward, precipitation decreases. This causes the rivers in the Nasca valleys to run dry. [E] Despite the risky conditions, the Nasca lived in the area for eight centuries following their appearance in about 300 B.C. As the rainfall cycle continued, people moved east or west along the river valleys. In the arid southern valleys, early Nasca engineers devised practical ways of coping with the scarcity of water. An ingenious system of horizontal wells tapped into the inclined water table as it descended from the Andean foothills. These irrigation systems, or puquios, allowed the Nasca to bring subterranean 2 water to the surface. [F] The Nasca people were in fact remarkably "green," perhaps because of the environmental challenges they faced. The creation of the puquios displayed a sophisticated sense of water conservation, since the underground aqueducts 3 minimized evaporation. The farmers planted seeds by making a single hole in the ground rather than plowing, thereby preserving the substructure of the soil. The Nasca also recycled their garbage as building material. "It's a society that managed its resources very well," says Isla. "This is what Nasca is all about." Praying for Water[G] For centuries, Andean people have worshipped the gods of mountains that feed the Nasca drainage system. According to National Geographic explorer Johan Reinhard, the Nasca have traditionally associated these mountains - mythologically, if not geologically - with water. Evidence for Reinhard's thesis came in 1986, when he found the ruins of a ceremonial stone circle at the summit of Illakata, one of the region's tallest mountains. Reinhard believes the Nasca lines were most likely related to worship of mountain gods, because of their connection to water. [H] Further evidence connecting Nasca rituals to water worship was revealed by the Nasca-Palpa Project researchers in 2000. On a plateau 4 near the village of Yunama, Markus Reindel made an important discovery. As he was excavating a mound, he uncovered several broken pots and other relics that clearly represented ritual offerings. Then he came upon pieces of a large seashell. It was of a genus 5 called Spondylus. [I] "The Spondylus shell is one of the few items of Andean archeology that has been well studied," Reindel says. "It's a very important religious symbol for water and fertility ... It was brought from far away and is found in specific contexts, such as funerary objects and on these platforms. It was connected in certain activities to praying for water. And it's clear in this area, water was the key issue." [J] In 2004, archeologist Christina Conlee made a much grimmer discovery. Conlee was working at a site near a dry river valley in the southern Nasca region. While excavating a Nasca tomb, she unearthed a skeleton. However, the first part to emerge from the dirt was not the skull, but the neck bones. "We could see the vertebrae 6 sitting on top," Conlee says. "The person was seated, with arms crossed and legs crossed, and no head." Cut marks on the neck bones indicate the head had probably been severed by a sharp knife. A ceramic pot known as a head jar rested against the elbow of the skeleton. An illustration on the jar showed a decapitated 7 "trophy head." Out of the head grew a strange tree trunk with eyes. [K] Everything about the burial - the head jar, the placement and position of the body - suggests the body was disposed of in a careful manner. Conlee suspects the skeleton represents a ritual sacrifice. "Although we find trophy heads spread throughout the Nasca period," she said, "there are some indications that they became more common in the middle and late period, and also at times of great environmental stress, perhaps drought. If this was a sacrifice, it was made to appease 8 the gods, perhaps because of a drought or crop failure." Beginning of the End [L] Despite their offerings, the Nasca's prayers would ultimately go unanswered. Water - or more precisely, its absence - was increasingly critical in the Nasca's final years, between about A.D. 500 and A.D. 600. [M] In the Palpa area, scientists have traced the movement of the eastern margin of the desert about 19 kilometers (12 miles) up the valleys between 200 B.C. and A.D. 600. At one point, the desert reached an altitude of over 1,900 meters (6,500 feet). Similarly, the population centers around Palpa moved farther up the valleys, as if they were trying to outrun the arid conditions. "At the end of the sixth century A.D.," Eitel and Machtle conclude in a recent paper, "the aridity culminated 9 and the Nasca society collapsed." [N] Nevertheless, environmental stresses were not the only vital factor. "It wasn't just climate conditions that caused the collapse of Nasca culture," emphasizes Johny Isla. "A state of crisis was provoked 10 because water was more prevalent in some valleys than in others, and the leaders of different valleys may have been in conflict." By about A.D. 650, the more militaristic Wari (Huari) Empire had emerged from the central highlands and displaced the Nasca as the predominant culture in the southern desert region. [O] Almost 1,500 years later, the legacy of the Nasca lives on. You can see it in the artifacts 11 of their ancient rituals, in the remains of their irrigation systems, and - most famously - in the lines of their mysterious desert designs. The lines surely provided a ritualistic reminder to the Nasca people that their fate was intrinsically tied to their environment. In particular, the lines represent a bond with the Nasca's most precious resource, water. You can still read their reverence for nature, in times of plenty and in times of desperate want, in every line and curve they scratched onto the desert floor. And when your feet inhabit their sacred space, even for a brief and humbling moment, you can feel it. 1 An anthropologist is someone who studies people, society, and culture. 2 If something is said to be subterranean, it is under the ground. 3 An aqueduct is a structure, often a bridge, that carries water. 4 A plateau is a large area of high and fairly flat land. 5 A genus is a class of similar things, especially a group of animals or plants that includes several closely related species. 6 Vertebrae are the small circular bones that form the spine of a human being or animal. 7 If someone is decapitated, their head is cut off. 8 If you try to appease someone, you try to stop them from being angry at you by giving them what they want. 9 If you say that an activity or process culminates in or with a particular event, you mean that the event happens at the end of it. 10 If you provoke someone, you deliberately annoy them and try to make them behave aggressively. If something provokes a reaction, it causes the reaction. 11 An artifact is an ornament, tool, or other object that is made by a human being, especially one that is historically or culturally interesting. Which of these statements would the author probably agree with?
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. The Sky Runner [A] Growing up in а village in eastern Nepal's Bhojpur Mountains, Mira Rai had dreams that went far beyond the conventional expectations for Nepali women. The eldest daughter of five children, she was expected to fetch water, tend crops and livestock, and help out at home. By age 12, she no longer regularly attended school, and instead hauled heavy bags of rice up and down steep trails - often barefoot - to trade at the market. It was hard work - but great training for a future trail runner. [B] "As a girl," Rai recalls, "I would constantly be told to know my place, suppress my voice, and act in a certain manner. For me, breaking free from these traditions itself was a big dream." [C] Several years ago, Rai's dream became reality. She was running outside Kathmandu when two male trail runners invited her to enter her first trail race, the Kathmandu West Valley Rim 50K. She had never run 50 kilometers before, had no special gear or training for such a distance, and was also the only woman in the competition. But against all odds, she beat everyone - even the men. From there, a community of supporters came together to give her a chance to compete in international trail running competitions. [D] Today, the running world recognizes Rai as a high-elevation trail racing phenomenon. Now she is on a mission to help both women and men of Nepal through sports. Rai believes her work to empower others has just begun. "We have realized that Nepal has tremendous potential to develop competitive athletes," she says. [E] Wasfia Nazreen, a mountain climber from Bangladesh, knows first-hand the impact Rai has had on the young women of Nepal. "For someone who has left school so early and missed the learning we take for granted, Mira has been able to turn back time and set a rare example by being the change herself," she says. [F] "It's hard to find good role models 1 for young women in our region, especially one coming from the same rural village background as most of the young generation," Nazreen says. Mira is blazing a trail, not just in terms of being able to speak nationally on gender equality, but also by getting young people into running through the new Kathmandu Trail Race Series. "The grit 2 and joy she embodies throughout all her hardships and victories is an inspiration to all of us!" [G] Rai, however, remains humble. "I have been able to do the things I did because so many people believed in me and took chances, and I want to give back so others can have a chance just the way I did," she says. "We have a saying in Nepal, ' Khana pugyos, dina pugos,' which means, 'Let there be enough to eat, let there be enough to give.'" [H] Interviewer: Which is more difficult: running a hard, steep trail race or breaking gender stereotypes? Mira Rai: Running is no issue, but breaking gender stereotypes is. For the society we live in, it's difficult for women and men alike because doing anything out of convention means a lot of struggle - especially for women. As women, we are expected to help out with chores at home from childhood and then get married and raise a family, so it becomes a struggle, not merely a challenge. You get called a rebel, and for an adventure sport that involves risks, nobody encourages you. "You'll end up breaking your bones!" they'd say. Though the mindset 3 seems to be changing, it's still at a snail's pace and has a long way to go before women are seen as equivalent to men. [I] What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a stronger runner like you? MR: It was a matter of chance and luck that I became a runner. Back in the village we had to walk hours on end - up and down grueling terrain, often barefoot, with a heavy weight on our backs - and this definitely contributed. I started running, I got professional training that taught me techniques, and gradually I became more determined, motivated, and persistent to chase my dreams. However, I've also learned that proper diet, enough rest, confidence, yoga, and mental well-being - as well as having good support from my mentor Richard Bull and my coach Dhruba Bikram Malla - are just as important as being in shape. [J] You stopped going to school regularly when you were 12. Do you wish you'd had more school? MR: I feel that if I'd finished more school, I would have been able to communicate with more confidence and have a better insight into world affairs. In many cases when I first started racing abroad, I couldn't even be a part of conversations because of my poor English skills. I used to just sit there and listen, but I didn't feel uncomfortable being there as everybody was very supportive. However, with media and sponsors, it would've definitely been more helpful had I obtained more education back home. Even today when I try to read newspapers, I fail to understand quite a few words, so I am taking English classes these days, and it's certainly helping. [K] Running has helped you see the world. What is it like to return to your village now that you have been to Hong Kong, Italy, and other places? MR: I return once a year during the Dashain, the largest festival of the year, and the people there are living the same sort of lives as I saw when I was a kid. We used to have kerosene lanterns, but now there are bulbs that run on solar power. The village had no access by road back in the day; now there are dirt tracks that connect to big towns. But the mud houses are the same. There's phone connection, but it doesn't work well. When I go back, I meet a lot of youngsters that ask me how they can live differently. They definitely seem motivated, but sadly their folks do not agree with such ambition. While the physical infrastructure in my village has improved, the mindset has not. I remain hopeful that the future generation will break the mold. [L] What work are you doing now with communities in Nepal? MR: While recovering from knee surgery, I have been providing guidance to men and women alike in running and encouraging them to pursue a career as professional athletes. Every so often, I visit schools and children's homes to share my knowledge about running, particularly training, diet, and more importantly, an active lifestyle. [M] We have realized that Nepal has tremendous potential to develop competitive athletes, so we're organizing a series of trail races in Kathmandu. These are short races aimed for both beginners and experienced runners. I also organized a small race back in my hometown of Sano Dumma last October, to introduce the sport to the young crowd and get them interested in running. In the coming days, I plan to organize races that aim to identify and promote promising runners. [N] Is there a personal challenge that you still want to achieve? MR: I have always dreamed of running in the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc in France. It's a challenging race for elite runners from all over the world - 166 kilometers! I would love to see where I stand in this race. 1 A role model is someone who is a good example for young people to follow. 2 If you show grit, you have courage. 3 Your mindset is your way of thinking. How many siblings does Mira Rai have?
DIRECTIONS: Cоmplete the sentences using the wоrds in the bоx. аrtificiаl аscend contemplate delicate devoid of plummet scheme stamina successive tackle Going for the operation would be the most logical choice, but he refuses to even ____________________ it. [BLANK-1]
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. How Jimmy Chin Filmed Alex Honnold's Deаth-Defying Free Solo Honnold planned to climb Yosemite's El Capitan without a rope. Chin would film it. But first they had to figure out how to talk about it. [A] When you are Jimmy Chin, you make a long list of rules for filming your friend Alex Honnold's historic attempt to climb Yosemite's El Capitan without using any ropes. First you will hire a team of world-class climber-cinematographers to rappel beside him as he ascends the nearly 3,000-foot granite face. No one is allowed to whisper, sneeze, drop a lens cap, dislodge a pebble - any of which might create the distraction that sends him plummeting to his death. Most important, no one is allowed to talk to Honnold about the epic climb, at least not directly. This is to avoid putting any pressure on him but also to keep from upsetting his precisely calibrated mind-set, a mixture of acute concentration, bulletproof confidence, and deep Zen calm. Instead of using the term "free soloing," which means climbing without ropes or safety gear, you use his preferred euphemism - "scrambling." [B] You follow these rules knowing that any notion of rules is contradictory to the very idea of free soloing, because in this ruthlessly unforgiving sport there really aren't any rules, at least no written ones. That's much of the point. Climbing without ropes is decidedly against all the rules, especially the rules of mountain safety, not to mention human logic. [C] Some veteran climbers say there is no if a free soloist falls - only when. You can think of many who have fallen to their deaths, some you knew personally. And suddenly there it is: the vividly horrifying image of your friend flailing into the void. [D] But wait. That's exactly what you're not supposed to picture when your buddy is trying to do what some experts say is the most daring ascent ever attempted - what Honnold's friend and fellow elite climber Tommy Caldwell called "the moon landing of free soloing." [E] Such thoughts looped in Chin's mind for more than a year as he and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, his wife and filmmaking partner, documented Honnold's efforts to make climbing history. (Spoiler alert: He makes it.) The film, aptly titled Free Solo, was released in theaters. [F] "To film a climber with both the physical and mental ability Alex has, combined with the desire to take on something so ambitious and scary," Chin says, "it's the project of a lifetime, no doubt." [G] Chin, 45, and Honnold, 33, first climbed together in 2009 as part of an expedition to Borneo to explore Low's Gully, one of the world's deepest slot canyons. Honnold had recently burst onto the climbing scene with a series of headline-grabbing free solos, including Yosemite's Half Dome. Chin remembers being struck by Honnold's boyish face and large brown eyes, which would inevitably earn him the nickname Bambi. [H] But Honnold's youthful appearance belies his most exceptional gift - an uncanny ability to control his fear and focus on perfectly executing the task at hand (never mind that the task is reaching for a fingertip of rock while clinging to a cliff 1,000 feet up). It's a gift that Chin shares in some measure. Three years before meeting Honnold, he climbed Mount Everest and skied down its icy, nearly vertical face. [I] After Borneo, the men started climbing together regularly, with Chin filming some of Honnold's free solos. "We built up a lot of trust," says Chin. "He trusted me to safely film him, and I trusted him to climb only what he felt good about and not to feel compelled to do rad stuff for the camera." [J] Meanwhile Honnold had been privately contemplating what it would take to free solo El Cap. "After Half Dome it seemed like the next obvious thing," Honnold says. "At the end of each season, I'd think I'd be ready to do it the next year, but then I'd look up at it and think, 'Whoa, that's still too scary.'" [K] Finally, in late 2015, Honnold told Chin and Vasarhelyi he was ready, and they agreed to work together in secret on a film about the climb. "It was very important that the film would be about Alex's process," Chin says. "Whether it ended with him summiting El Cap or deciding not to go for it didn't matter. It was always about how do you even think about doing something so mind-bending." [L] Honnold chose a route called Freerider, one that often takes skilled climbers using ropes multiple days to ascend. He set about perfecting a hand-by-hand, foot-by-foot choreography up the famous cliff. Meanwhile Chin hired a crew of hard-core Yosemite climbers and began planning the extensive logistics. [M] Each practice session required many hours of preparation. Chin and the crew would speed climb an easy route up the east side of El Cap ahead of Honnold, lugging hundreds of pounds of cameras, ropes, and gear. Then they'd rappel down Freerider and use a type of hand winch to keep pace with him as he climbed. "We all got in the best shape of our lives," Chin says. But at the end of each marathon day, the mental loop of what-ifs would play: "Not a day went by that I didn't think about the worst." [N] Around 5 p.m. on June 2, 2017, feeling that he was at his peak, Honnold asked Chin if the team could be ready to shoot the next day. "I think I'll go scrambling," he said. Chin nodded, acting like it was no big deal: "My mind was racing with all the things we needed to put in place before it got dark, but I didn't want to upset his mind-set, so I hung out with him for a while." Finally Chin told Honnold he'd see him in the morning and walked slowly until he was out of his friend's line of sight. [O] Then Chin ran like hell. He jumped on the crew's walkie-talkie channel and, using Honnold's code name, alerted the team to what was about to happen. "Bambi is going for it! Repeat: Bambi is going for it!" The following sentence would be best placed at the end of which paragraph? If a free soloist falls, there is no denying the immutable, unyielding rule of gravity.
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. How Jimmy Chin Filmed Alex Honnold's Deаth-Defying Free Solo Honnold planned to climb Yosemite's El Capitan without a rope. Chin would film it. But first they had to figure out how to talk about it. [A] When you are Jimmy Chin, you make a long list of rules for filming your friend Alex Honnold's historic attempt to climb Yosemite's El Capitan without using any ropes. First you will hire a team of world-class climber-cinematographers to rappel beside him as he ascends the nearly 3,000-foot granite face. No one is allowed to whisper, sneeze, drop a lens cap, dislodge a pebble - any of which might create the distraction that sends him plummeting to his death. Most important, no one is allowed to talk to Honnold about the epic climb, at least not directly. This is to avoid putting any pressure on him but also to keep from upsetting his precisely calibrated mind-set, a mixture of acute concentration, bulletproof confidence, and deep Zen calm. Instead of using the term "free soloing," which means climbing without ropes or safety gear, you use his preferred euphemism - "scrambling." [B] You follow these rules knowing that any notion of rules is contradictory to the very idea of free soloing, because in this ruthlessly unforgiving sport there really aren't any rules, at least no written ones. That's much of the point. Climbing without ropes is decidedly against all the rules, especially the rules of mountain safety, not to mention human logic. [C] Some veteran climbers say there is no if a free soloist falls - only when. You can think of many who have fallen to their deaths, some you knew personally. And suddenly there it is: the vividly horrifying image of your friend flailing into the void. [D] But wait. That's exactly what you're not supposed to picture when your buddy is trying to do what some experts say is the most daring ascent ever attempted - what Honnold's friend and fellow elite climber Tommy Caldwell called "the moon landing of free soloing." [E] Such thoughts looped in Chin's mind for more than a year as he and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, his wife and filmmaking partner, documented Honnold's efforts to make climbing history. (Spoiler alert: He makes it.) The film, aptly titled Free Solo, was released in theaters. [F] "To film a climber with both the physical and mental ability Alex has, combined with the desire to take on something so ambitious and scary," Chin says, "it's the project of a lifetime, no doubt." [G] Chin, 45, and Honnold, 33, first climbed together in 2009 as part of an expedition to Borneo to explore Low's Gully, one of the world's deepest slot canyons. Honnold had recently burst onto the climbing scene with a series of headline-grabbing free solos, including Yosemite's Half Dome. Chin remembers being struck by Honnold's boyish face and large brown eyes, which would inevitably earn him the nickname Bambi. [H] But Honnold's youthful appearance belies his most exceptional gift - an uncanny ability to control his fear and focus on perfectly executing the task at hand (never mind that the task is reaching for a fingertip of rock while clinging to a cliff 1,000 feet up). It's a gift that Chin shares in some measure. Three years before meeting Honnold, he climbed Mount Everest and skied down its icy, nearly vertical face. [I] After Borneo, the men started climbing together regularly, with Chin filming some of Honnold's free solos. "We built up a lot of trust," says Chin. "He trusted me to safely film him, and I trusted him to climb only what he felt good about and not to feel compelled to do rad stuff for the camera." [J] Meanwhile Honnold had been privately contemplating what it would take to free solo El Cap. "After Half Dome it seemed like the next obvious thing," Honnold says. "At the end of each season, I'd think I'd be ready to do it the next year, but then I'd look up at it and think, 'Whoa, that's still too scary.'" [K] Finally, in late 2015, Honnold told Chin and Vasarhelyi he was ready, and they agreed to work together in secret on a film about the climb. "It was very important that the film would be about Alex's process," Chin says. "Whether it ended with him summiting El Cap or deciding not to go for it didn't matter. It was always about how do you even think about doing something so mind-bending." [L] Honnold chose a route called Freerider, one that often takes skilled climbers using ropes multiple days to ascend. He set about perfecting a hand-by-hand, foot-by-foot choreography up the famous cliff. Meanwhile Chin hired a crew of hard-core Yosemite climbers and began planning the extensive logistics. [M] Each practice session required many hours of preparation. Chin and the crew would speed climb an easy route up the east side of El Cap ahead of Honnold, lugging hundreds of pounds of cameras, ropes, and gear. Then they'd rappel down Freerider and use a type of hand winch to keep pace with him as he climbed. "We all got in the best shape of our lives," Chin says. But at the end of each marathon day, the mental loop of what-ifs would play: "Not a day went by that I didn't think about the worst." [N] Around 5 p.m. on June 2, 2017, feeling that he was at his peak, Honnold asked Chin if the team could be ready to shoot the next day. "I think I'll go scrambling," he said. Chin nodded, acting like it was no big deal: "My mind was racing with all the things we needed to put in place before it got dark, but I didn't want to upset his mind-set, so I hung out with him for a while." Finally Chin told Honnold he'd see him in the morning and walked slowly until he was out of his friend's line of sight. [O] Then Chin ran like hell. He jumped on the crew's walkie-talkie channel and, using Honnold's code name, alerted the team to what was about to happen. "Bambi is going for it! Repeat: Bambi is going for it!" In paragraph A, what does the expression bulletproof confidence mean?
DIRECTIONS: Cоmplete the sentences using the wоrds in the bоx. аrtificiаl аscend contemplate delicate devoid of plummet scheme stamina successive tackle It usually takes a few days to ____________________ the mountain and reach the summit. [BLANK-1]
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. How Jimmy Chin Filmed Alex Honnold's Deаth-Defying Free Solo Honnold planned to climb Yosemite's El Capitan without a rope. Chin would film it. But first they had to figure out how to talk about it. [A] When you are Jimmy Chin, you make a long list of rules for filming your friend Alex Honnold's historic attempt to climb Yosemite's El Capitan without using any ropes. First you will hire a team of world-class climber-cinematographers to rappel beside him as he ascends the nearly 3,000-foot granite face. No one is allowed to whisper, sneeze, drop a lens cap, dislodge a pebble - any of which might create the distraction that sends him plummeting to his death. Most important, no one is allowed to talk to Honnold about the epic climb, at least not directly. This is to avoid putting any pressure on him but also to keep from upsetting his precisely calibrated mind-set, a mixture of acute concentration, bulletproof confidence, and deep Zen calm. Instead of using the term "free soloing," which means climbing without ropes or safety gear, you use his preferred euphemism - "scrambling." [B] You follow these rules knowing that any notion of rules is contradictory to the very idea of free soloing, because in this ruthlessly unforgiving sport there really aren't any rules, at least no written ones. That's much of the point. Climbing without ropes is decidedly against all the rules, especially the rules of mountain safety, not to mention human logic. [C] Some veteran climbers say there is no if a free soloist falls - only when. You can think of many who have fallen to their deaths, some you knew personally. And suddenly there it is: the vividly horrifying image of your friend flailing into the void. [D] But wait. That's exactly what you're not supposed to picture when your buddy is trying to do what some experts say is the most daring ascent ever attempted - what Honnold's friend and fellow elite climber Tommy Caldwell called "the moon landing of free soloing." [E] Such thoughts looped in Chin's mind for more than a year as he and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, his wife and filmmaking partner, documented Honnold's efforts to make climbing history. (Spoiler alert: He makes it.) The film, aptly titled Free Solo, was released in theaters. [F] "To film a climber with both the physical and mental ability Alex has, combined with the desire to take on something so ambitious and scary," Chin says, "it's the project of a lifetime, no doubt." [G] Chin, 45, and Honnold, 33, first climbed together in 2009 as part of an expedition to Borneo to explore Low's Gully, one of the world's deepest slot canyons. Honnold had recently burst onto the climbing scene with a series of headline-grabbing free solos, including Yosemite's Half Dome. Chin remembers being struck by Honnold's boyish face and large brown eyes, which would inevitably earn him the nickname Bambi. [H] But Honnold's youthful appearance belies his most exceptional gift - an uncanny ability to control his fear and focus on perfectly executing the task at hand (never mind that the task is reaching for a fingertip of rock while clinging to a cliff 1,000 feet up). It's a gift that Chin shares in some measure. Three years before meeting Honnold, he climbed Mount Everest and skied down its icy, nearly vertical face. [I] After Borneo, the men started climbing together regularly, with Chin filming some of Honnold's free solos. "We built up a lot of trust," says Chin. "He trusted me to safely film him, and I trusted him to climb only what he felt good about and not to feel compelled to do rad stuff for the camera." [J] Meanwhile Honnold had been privately contemplating what it would take to free solo El Cap. "After Half Dome it seemed like the next obvious thing," Honnold says. "At the end of each season, I'd think I'd be ready to do it the next year, but then I'd look up at it and think, 'Whoa, that's still too scary.'" [K] Finally, in late 2015, Honnold told Chin and Vasarhelyi he was ready, and they agreed to work together in secret on a film about the climb. "It was very important that the film would be about Alex's process," Chin says. "Whether it ended with him summiting El Cap or deciding not to go for it didn't matter. It was always about how do you even think about doing something so mind-bending." [L] Honnold chose a route called Freerider, one that often takes skilled climbers using ropes multiple days to ascend. He set about perfecting a hand-by-hand, foot-by-foot choreography up the famous cliff. Meanwhile Chin hired a crew of hard-core Yosemite climbers and began planning the extensive logistics. [M] Each practice session required many hours of preparation. Chin and the crew would speed climb an easy route up the east side of El Cap ahead of Honnold, lugging hundreds of pounds of cameras, ropes, and gear. Then they'd rappel down Freerider and use a type of hand winch to keep pace with him as he climbed. "We all got in the best shape of our lives," Chin says. But at the end of each marathon day, the mental loop of what-ifs would play: "Not a day went by that I didn't think about the worst." [N] Around 5 p.m. on June 2, 2017, feeling that he was at his peak, Honnold asked Chin if the team could be ready to shoot the next day. "I think I'll go scrambling," he said. Chin nodded, acting like it was no big deal: "My mind was racing with all the things we needed to put in place before it got dark, but I didn't want to upset his mind-set, so I hung out with him for a while." Finally Chin told Honnold he'd see him in the morning and walked slowly until he was out of his friend's line of sight. [O] Then Chin ran like hell. He jumped on the crew's walkie-talkie channel and, using Honnold's code name, alerted the team to what was about to happen. "Bambi is going for it! Repeat: Bambi is going for it!" In paragraph K, what does the expression mind-bending mean?