Winter in Quebec, Canada is very different from that in England. When I first arrived, I was     1     (slight) worried about the winter. I couldn’t imagine     2     it would be like to have 3 metres of snow, and what on earth I was going to do when the weather was so bad. However, here, life goes on as usual. Trains and buses continue, and people socialise and even better.     3     number of new sports take over.

For me, skiing means downhill skiing, in ski resorts (度假胜地), with ski lifts taking you up the mountain. Before     4     (arrive), I did not know there were in fact different     5     (type) of skiing. Imagine a sunny but cold day, and you have taken a chairlift to the top of a mountain     6     (cover) with snow. An hour seems like a few minutes, as you carve your way down a run to the bottom, and then do it all again. It is my new favourite sport.

Ice skating on a frozen (结冰的) lake is another     7     (excite) sport for me. Once I could hardly stand on a pair of ice skates, but now I am able to make laps (圈) of the 3 km route on the lake,     8     is frozen during January and February.

Indeed having 3 metres of snow was a bit frightening. School     9     (cancel) once because of a big snowstorm, but I was     10     busy enjoying all these cool sports that winter finished too soon!

The COVID-19 pandemic has made people’s life tough. Petra Bignami,     1     mom of three in Brookline, started a project to encourage her three kids and neighbors.

It is called Project Hope. Petra wanted to focus on     2     to stay hopeful to enable people to have more     3     (confident) in the future. The family placed pens and paper hearts outside their home to encourage people to write a message on the paper hearts. Now each day they get     4     (high) encouraging messages from neighbors and people walking by. The messages     5     (leave) by people include: “Keep calm and rise above”, and “Be kind to others — we don’t know what diffculties they have”. These messages help everyone who finds     6     hard to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic know there are much     7     (sunny) days ahead.

“This makes us feel like we are part     8     a bigger group. It can help us get through the darkness of the pandemic,” Petra explained. The project     9     (create) in September last year, and so far, there have been over 1,000 paper hearts     10     people wrote messages. The number keeps growing at present.

The national college entrance examination, or gaokao, will be held on June 7 and 8 this year, the usual time for one of    1    (important) exams for Chinese students, the Ministry of Education said on Friday.

The gaokao was postponed for    2    month to July 7 and 8 last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 10.7 million students signed up    3    (participate) in last year's gaokao, up    4    400,000 from 2019, according to the ministry.

Local education authorities and schools should strictly follow epidemic prevention and control measures and make    5    (detail) plans for the exam to ensure the    6    (safe) of test takers and monitors, the ministry said in a notice.

Each test center should be equipped with isolation test rooms and enough epidemic control and prevention materials,    7    test takers and monitors should undergo daily health monitoring and temperature checks, the notice said.

Chinese people often compare the highly    8    (compete) gaokao to “crossing a narrow bridge”, because for many students,    9    (especial) rural students, enrollment at a good university would increase the prospects of landing a good job and thus    10    (shape) their future.