Throughout all the events in my life, one in particular sticks out more than the others. As I reflect on this significant event, a smile spreads across my face. As I think of Shanda, I feel loved and grateful. 

It was my twelfth year of dancing. I thought it would end up like any other year: stuck in emptiness, forgotten and without the belief of any teacher or friend that I really had the potential to achieve greatness. 

However，I met Shanda，a young，talented choreographer（编舞者）. She influenced me to work to the best of my ability, pushed me to keep going when I wanted to give up, encouraged me and showed me the real importance of dancing. Throughout our hard work, not only did my ability to dance grow, but my friendship with Shanda grew as well. 

With the end of the year came our show time. As I walked to a backstage filled with other dancers, 1 hoped for a good performance that would prove my improvement. I waited anxiously for my turn. Finally, after what seemed like days, the loudspeaker announced my name. Butterflies filled my stomach as I took trembling steps onto the big lighted stage. But, with the determination to succeed and eagerness to live up to Shanda's expectations for me, I began to dance. All my troubles and nerves went away as I danced my whole heart out.

As I walked up to the judge to receive my first place shining，gold trophy（奖杯），I realized that dance is not about becoming the best. It was about loving dance for dance itself, a getaway from all my problems in the world. Shanda showed me that you could let everything go and just dance what you feel at that moment. After all the doubts that people had in me, I believed in myself and did not care what others thought. Thanks to Shanda, dance became more than a love of mine, but a passion. 

Western monarch butterflies(WMBs, 西部帝王蝶) fly thousands of miles every year, flying north in spring and summer, and south in fall. Now, scientists want people in the western US to give them a hand by sending in any pictures of monarchs they take this spring.

WMBs, like most butterflies, help plants create seeds, which can then create more plants by spreading a dust called pollen between plants. In turn, monarchs depend on plants. They gather sweet nectar (花蜜) from flowers for food. They rest and spend their winters in trees. And they depend completely on a plant called milkweed to lay their eggs.

Their number has been dropping sharply since the 1980s, when 3 million to 10 million butterflies migrated (迁徙) annually from the northwestern United States to spend the winter at hundreds of sites along the California coast. In 2020, less than 2, 000 monarchs were counted in the entire state. But in 2021, that number jumped to 247, 237. Scientists still don't fully understand this phenomenon. But they're studying it, saying it'll take years of tracking them to work it out.

Scientists have learned a lot about where Western monarchs spend the winters. But they know much less about where they go when they leave their winter homes. That's why scientists from several universities are organizing a project called "Western Monarch Mystery Challenge" to seek for practical assistance from "citizen scientists" in the American west.

They're asking anyone who sees a monarch butterfly outside of their winter homes this spring to take a picture and send it to them. By collecting the pictures, along with the date and place where the pictures were taken, scientists hope to learn more about what happens to the butterflies and where they are after they leave their winter homes and protect them better in the future.

Last year's increase in monarch number is great news. But the number of monarchs is still way below the millions of butterflies that migrated in the 1980s.

When Oumou Dieye first started competing against men in the sport of golf, she was not confident and felt a little afraid. The men did not want to golf with her nor did they take her seriously. But then, she won her first game. After that, she had all the confidence she needed to keep playing and defeating male golfers.

Dieye is the only professional female golfer in Senegal. She was introduced to golf by her brother-in-law and immediately fell in love. Not long after she began competing, Dieye was given a chance to train in Morocco. With the financial support from her French golf partners, she spent three months training with the Moroccan Golf Federation. She said she enjoyed the experience so much that she returned to Morocco and stayed for seven years. While there, she also taught children at a golfing school.

Today her home is filled with many golfing awards. She has won so many that she has lost track of the number. What she has done is notable because Senegal is a conservative, Muslim nation.

There is much pressure from society for women not to be involved in professional sports. The country practices a more liberal form of Islam（伊斯兰教）. However, the culture still has traditional ideas of what women should do. A woman who chooses sports over duties at home risks being rejected by her family. At first, her family was not supportive. But after seeing her love of the sport, they changed their minds.

In 2018, when Dieye returned from Morocco, she was not happy about the state of golf in her home country. She wanted to create a golf school similar to the one in Morocco. In 2020, the Senegalese Golf Federation agreed to help Dieye establish a golf school in preparation for the 2026 Summer Youth Olympics in Dakar. It will be Dieye's job to train Senegal's first national golf team. This will involve preparing female golfers-including her own daughter.