【推荐1】I learned about life from an ant farm. When I was seven years old, my family ____ an ant farm at home. First, we put clean sand in a thin glass box, and then we brought some ants from the backyard and placed them into the ____ home.

Shortly after the new ____ were dropped into the glass structure, they got to work making tunnels. I was amazed that each one knew ____what to do. After hours of staring, I realized that the ants had assigned jobs. With my mom ' s help, I kept a diary of what happened each day and ____ the ants. My favorite was the biggest , Cinderella. I drew a picture of her in my diary, which I still have .

One day a tragedy ____ the ant farm.While I was observing the ants , I had put my face so close to the structure that I accidentally ____ it over. Unfortunately, my carelessness caused all the tunnels to ____. Although the ants ____ their earthquake, one by one they began to die. I was ____ as I watched them give up their tunnel-building to carry the bodies to a corner of the farm. My mother reported that the ants were actually dying of "frustration"--- the feeling annoyed and disappointed as they couldn’t control the situation . They simply could not ____ the reality that their tunnels had been destroyed. Cinderella was the last to die ---she did so while carrying a dead ant on her back .

Although much time has passed, I still think of that ant farm. Mom had hoped it would teach me about the natural world, ____ it taught me much more.____ the years, I came to realize the ants were a study in the benefits of ____. Working together, they were able to create a(an) ____ world for themselves. I also learned that they should be____ for their hard work. Day in and day out, each labored at their task. The ant farm showed that teamwork and perseverance are indeed two key ____ for success. But there was an even larger lesson that I did not ____until recently: Disaster is a natural part of life, and must be ____. Unlike the ants, humans cannot give up when they face ____. Unlike the ants, we have to realize that if a tunnel caves in , we just have to build another.

【推荐2】It was a winter night and I was in a foreign country. _________ I knew everything here well, I might still need other people to help me with emergencies. I took a midnight _________ from the capital to the city where I lived. I was trying not to fall asleep as I would be home towards 2 am, but _________ enough I fell asleep and _________ my eyes only when the train _________ the station where I was due to get off. The controllers told me to town at the next _________ and wait for the train to my city at 4 am. I got off at the station but it looked like it would be _________ to wait there alone for the next train.

One of the controllers _________ there got off with me, saying he felt it was not safe to leave me there _________. He invited me to get into his car because it was __________ outside. I was a bit doubtful, but I decided to __________ him. He offered me a short __________ around the town and at about 4 am he __________ me back to the station.

Up to now, I've always remembered him with deep __________. What I could do was just passing on the __________ in my life.

【推荐3】My husband is a ballet dancer, performing out of our state for the first time. The distance is long, but phone calls and video talks help make us feel a little bit _______. I’ve been worrying about money and can’t _______ the trip or the tickets to his show.

He called me last night well after I had gone to bed, so when the call_______me up I answered with a sinking feeling. He’d finished a _______, and a rude dancer had hurt his feelings, but this wasn’t what the call was about. He had been awake thinking about me and missing me. He was going to get his _______ for the week, and was offering every penny to me _______ I could come to his show.

As a young _______,he doesn’t earn much. The money that he makes goes to the necessities (必需品) with very little if any _______.To offer me his money is a big deal, which_______a hard week for him.

Little did he know that I, too, was trying to get myself to his ________.I have been finding part-time jobs and selling things here and there to save up, thinking that even if I have to stand in the ________ instead of sitting there, I am going to be there for him. We are both ________ to provide what little we have for each other, and I think that’s worth everything.

I think sometimes we pay so much attention to only __________that we forget about what’s important. It was easy to say “Oh, if I don’t have the money, I can’t go.” until I________that it was about more than that. It’s about________the ones you love and being there for them, in whatever way you can be.

【推荐2】Clara Daly was seated on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles. Suddenly, a flight attendant asked an ______ question: “Does anyone know American ______ Language?”

Clara, 15 at the time, pressed the call ______. The flight attendant came by and ______ the situation. “We have a passenger who’s blind and deaf. He seemed to want something, but we couldn’t understand what he ______.”

Clara had been studying ASL for the past year to help with her dyslexia (读写困难) and knew she’d be able to finger spell into the man’s ______. So, she walked toward the front of the plane, and ______ down beside Tim Cook, then ______ taking his hand, she signed, “Are you OK?” Tim asked for some water. When it arrived, Clara ______ to her seat. But she came by again later because he wanted to know the time. On her third visit, she stopped and stayed for a while.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is cool,’” Clara says. “I hope I don’t ______ anything wrong.”

“Actually, he didn’t need anything. He was ______ and just wanted to talk.” Clara says.

Clara talked about her family and her plans for the future. Tim told Clara how he had gradually become ______ and shared stories of his days as a traveling salesman. “Although he couldn’t see her, she looked attentively at his face with ______,” a passenger reported.

“Clara was amazing,” a flight attendant told Alaska Airlines in an interview. “You could tell Tim was very excited to have someone he could ______, and she was such an ______.”

Tim’s reaction: “Best trip I’ve ever had.”