【推荐1】I was surprised when I received a short message from my father wishing me a happy birthday.

I had ____ to hear from my mother, my grandmother and my other relatives ____ never from my father. Lying in bed, ____ of my father flooded back.

When I was a little boy, I regarded my father as a(n) ____ able to do anything. ____, things slowly began to ____. The more I learned, the more I doubted what he said. The gap between us grew and, at last, I didn't ____ like communicating with him.

My father, in my mind, had no ____ in talking with me. Dinner was the only time we were together. He had no time to watch TV with me. He would tell me to ask my mother ____ I needed something. He even refused to answer my ____ when I phoned from school. I ____ the changes. I thought that perhaps my father no longer ____ me any more.

Over time, however,I began to wonder whether my ____ was right. One day,my mother told me that each time I called,Father was ____ listening beside her. Suddenly, I hated myself for my ____ behavior toward him.

I planned thousands of times to ____ my father. In the end, however, I was always too embarrassed about what I had done.

But that Saturday, I was so ____ by his short message. I realized then that my father’s love for me had never disappeared. I decided to send a ____: “Thank you, my dear father."

Two days later, when I returned home, my mother told me that my father had been so ____ when he received my reply. She said he had ____ from morning till night. At that moment, I felt truly happy.

【推荐2】What makes a gift special? Is it the _________you see on the gift receipt? Or is it the look on the receiver's face that determines the _________value? What gift is worth the most?

One evening, I was___________what Christmas gift to give my father. My dad is a _________ person to buy for because he never wants anything. When I pulled out my phone to read a message, my eyes _______ on a photo of a flower underneath a poem by William Blake. The flower, a lone dandelion standing against the bright blue sky,___________ me. Dad had been reciting the_________ to me since I was a kid. That was the_________ reason why I took to writing. I _________that those words would be my gift to my father.

I sent the______________to my computer and: typed the poem on top of it. As I was ____________the details, another poem by Edgar Allan Poe came to____________. The poem was focused around ____________and Dad recited it as much as he did the other. So I typed that out as well and searched online for a ____________to the words of it. After searching I found the ____________ picture. The picture was painted with blues and greens and purples, ____________ together to create the theme and wonder of a dream. As I watched both poems ______________the printer, the white paper being colored with words that ______________my childhood, I felt that this was a gift that my father would__________appreciate.

Christmas soon arrived. The minute I saw the look on my dad's face as he______________those black letters carefully placed in a frame (框), I knew I had given the perfect gift.

【推荐3】When my sister Diane began playing the violin, she was seven. How did she sound? Terrible. But she didn’t ___. At twelve, she asked our parents if she could ___ a full-time music school. They said no. Actually, everyone agreed that my sister lacked talent.

I was better at my ___. My teacher had told my parents that I had great potential. So my parents found the best piano teacher in the area to ___ me. But the only time when he was available was Saturday at 3 pm. Back then, I was ___ by the British TV show The Avengers, which was ___ every Saturday at 3 pm. I let nothing take up my The Avengers hour. So I ___ this amazing opportunity. Today, I don’t even have a ___ in my house.

My sister became an engineer, but she ___ stopped making music. When she was in her 40s, she changed her career. She went back to college, got a ____ in music education, and became a music teacher. She starts kids off on their first instrument and gives them all the encouragement and support she never ____.

Recently, she and a pianist pal put on a recital (音乐演奏会). A big crowd of friends and family ____ for her. As she played, I looked around at the ____. Everyone was obviously enjoying the music. It occurred to me that I was the only person who remembered that 7-year-old kid making those perfectly ____ sounds and knew how far she had come, despite ____.

Talent is important. But enthusiasm is even more important.

【推荐1】Paen Long has had a dream ever since he saw a plane for the first time at the age of six. His dream was to _______ a plane. Last year, the 30-­year-­old man started building his plane _______. “I was afraid that people would _______ me, so sometimes I worked at night,” he said. It was a long time before he put his dream into practice. Paen Long tried to build his own plane, using the money he had _______ from running his own garage. He has spent three years _______ instructional videos in order to learn how to make a plane.

It took him a year to build his plane, using mostly recycled materials. The plane’s first _______ came at 3 p.m. on 8^th, March. Local villagers gathered excitedly to watch the plane fly._______, the plane only got 50 m in the air before crashing (撞击) to the ground. “When all people were looking at me, I felt very _______,” he said.

Although the first try failed, Paen Long remains _______. His next project is to build a seaplane. Paen Long thinks the plane will cost over $10,000. “I never feel ________ for spending all my money building a plane,” he said.

His wife, Hing Muoyheng,________ about her husband, especially as they have two young sons. However, she has no ________. “I don’t know how planes work and he doesn’t have any ________ to help him. He can only search for information himself,” she said. “I tried to ask him to ________ a few times because I was afraid, but he said he wouldn’t give up, so I have to support his ________.”

【推荐2】We’ve all been there before. You’re driving down the road when suddenly a pothole(凹坑) seems to appear out of nowhere and sends the _________ bumping. Most people think potholes are _________, but artist Jim Bachor sees them as canvases (画布) for his artworks.

Bachor uses the _________ art form of mosaic(马赛克) to create eye-catching and colorful images of famous people or simple every day _________ like food. He even makes less-appealing visuals of insects.

Bachor was a graphic designer for 20 years before he began his _________ in mosaic. He regards an incidental trip to Europe as his motivation for changing his career. While _________ in Italy, Bachor fell in love with Pompeii, the preserved ancient Roman city. A tour guide pointed out a mosaic, mainly made of glass and marble, and told Bachor, “Glass and marble don’t _________. So, this looks essentially the same as the artist intended.” Bachor says, “That kind of staying power just _________ me so much.”

A year later Bachor returned to attend a mosaic class in Ravenna, Italy, to learn the proper way to _________ the ancient technique. Years after that, he mastered the technique. He __________ that mosaic could be just as significant today as the art form over 1,000 years ago. “I just saw that there was a(n) __________ to bring it into the new age as a contemporary subject,” he says.

So, Bachor decided to make a series of __________ for those potholes. He has __________ mosaic art around Chicago, Detroit and New York City.

While he may not get __________ from drivers or passengers, Bachor’s art is __________ a pleasant surprise to discover.

【推荐3】A couple of weeks ago, when some friends and I took a trip to Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, I immediately _______ it. Since we are all living in North Germany which is not very _______,it only took us a few hours on the train _______ we were at the heart of this _______ city. The minute we stepped off the _______, we were surrounded by _______ architecture and weaving canals.

We stayed at a youth hostel( 旅社),which was a typical tall Dutch house with lots of stairs. I _______ staying in youth hostel; it is such a great _______ to meet people from all over the world and _______ your different experiences and ________ We stayed in a room with an Argentinian, who we befriended right away, and we spent a lot of ________ together.

During our stay, we made sure to make the most of what Amsterdam has to ________ We took a boat trip through the ________, which gave us some great ________ of the fantastic architecture and canals. We also made sure to go to the Van Gogh Museum, which is one of the city's most famous tourist attractions, and consists of a ________ collection of his work, along with details of his ________ and the work of other artists that knew him. One of my favourite parts of the trip, though it was rather ________, was our visit to the Anne F rank Museum. She was a Jewish girl who hid with her family for 2 years before the Nazis ________ them and sent them to the death camps. It was a very ________ experience, and certainly worth seeing.

Overall, I think Amsterdam is one of my favourite cities that I have ever been to, and I would love to ________someday!

【推荐2】In 1988, I began to work as a flight attendant.______ my wings was my childhood dream that I had set for myself after my first plane ride at the age of five. Like so many others before me, I fell in love with the romance of airplanes and ______ others.

I have flown hundreds of flights since graduation, but one ______ among them. We were flying from Los Angeles to Washington, D. C., when I found a young mother ______ with her baby. Everything was a ______, and the mother told me that she had no more diapers (尿布) or other ______ on the aircraft. Through her tears, she ______ me that they had missed their flight the ______ night in Los Angeles. Since she hadn’t ______ to miss the flight, she was ______ to use up most of her ______ and whatever money she had to ______ herself and her baby. As she stood in front of me, crying, I could see the hopelessness on her face. I ______ rang the flight attendant call button and asked for ______ from the other flight attendants. They brought cloth towels from first ______ to assist in cleaning up both mom and the baby. I gave her a sweater and a pair of pants.

As she thanked me for all I had done she said ______, “You’re not the flight attendant, but you’re a sky angel.” Touching my flight attendant wings, she ______, “And those are your angel wing.”

Though I am no longer a flight attendant, my “angel wings” are ______ on display in my office. And each time I see them, I am ______ of that young woman, her son and the ______ that she gave me on that special day.

【推荐3】When the doctor performed a check in Anita’s seventh month of pregnancy, he saw that her un-born child had a cleft (唇裂). “He _______ me to get rid of him,” Anita said, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I told him I _______ this child. I love him and will _______ him forever.”

When Anita showed her new baby to her neighbors, they were _______ “Your son looks like a monster (怪物)” they told me and to “get rid of him”. In many places around the world there is widespread and severe social shame associated with cleft conditions and families are often forced to _______ newborns from their family members and communities.

Hearing her son being laughed at was not the worst of it. “When I tried to _______ him, the milk came out of his nose. I was _______ that he could die. Aljay _______ and loved school, but the _______ he experienced at school was hard to bear. They ________ him, and called him a monster.”

When the family heard that Operation Smile was coming to Cagayan de Oro, they began ________ money to afford transport to get to the city. At the medical mission Anita ________ received the news she was waiting for: Aljay was healthy enough to receive surgery. After just over 45 minutes, his lip was ________ and his life was ________. Today Aljay is a ________ boy who loves going to school and playing with other children happily.