1 . Recently I was very busy and I needed a timeout. So I decided to drive to the supermarket and pick up dinner instead of doing my usual ______.

In the supermarket, I took fat and juicy chicken and some warm cornbread. As the cashier began processing my items, I______my bag for my credit card. However, I realized my wallet was not there. In______, I told the cashier I had left my money at home and apologized sincerely, offering to______my items to where I______them. Just at that moment the supermarket owner appeared, saying “Please, take everything home and______the dinner. It’s on the house tonight!” I tried to______the lovely offer but he______a dark chocolate bar near the counter and said, “Here! Take this, too!” His act of______lifted everybody present. I thanked him______for making my day.

When I approached home, as I______into my driveway, I saw my next-door neighbor had just mowed my lawn (草坪). He was putting on the finishing touches, clearing the cut grass. Feeling______, I jumped out of my car and asked him how much he wanted for his ______, to which he replied,“Nothing at all. The lawn needed doing.” He______me off summarily as he returned to his home. A second scoop of good______had landed in my lap, which again reminded me kindness is everywhere in the world.

2 . Misty Copeland spends most days twisting, spinning and _______. She practices and _______ the graceful movements of her art. When she isn’t performing she is practicing. When she isn’t practicing, she is stretching. She takes classes almost every day. She takes care of her body so she doesn’t _______ it when she goes to work in a ballet theatre.

“I treat my body with the respect that any musician would to their _______.” says Misty. “I love my body,” she adds.

Was she _______ confident? Actually, she was a _______ girl and avoided the spotlight. But Misty loved music and movement. When she was thirteen, Misty’s teacher suggested she _______ a free ballet class at the Boys&Girls Club. For two weeks, Misty sat on the gym bench watching the class, afraid to _______. Finally, she gave it a _______. At first, she felt ________in the class. She didn’t know anything about ballet, and she was ________ than most of the students. Over time, ________, she began to enjoy the lessons. She discovered that her body — especially her long legs and flexible muscles — was just ________ for ballet. After the class season ended, Misty received a scholarship to a nearby dance studio. Most ballerinas (女舞者) start their training much younger than thirteen. But Misty’s natural abilities and hard work made her improve quickly.

Over the next five years, ballet was Misty’s ________. She practiced, performed, competed and attended ballet programs. “Performing was my favourite part because I felt ________ and open onstage,” she says. “For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged.”

3 . Recently, I accidentally found a set of Hanfu l only wore once from the bottom of the cupboard. I remember buying them simply to match the ancient-style hair accessories (配饰) a friend gave me. It occurred to me that 1 had been trapped in the “birdcage effect”.

“Birdcage effect” means that when you get an item one day, you will prepare more things to match it. Weeks ago, I was in the company of friends engaged in shopping. One said that she wanted to buy a good writing pen to match the delicate notebook that her sister gave her, so that she would fall in love with taking notes on reading, and thus love reading, not just reading. I joked that she must have fallen for the “birdcage effect”. But the friend said with a smile: “Why not use the ‘birdcage effect’ instead?”

For the first time, I heard that the “birdcage effect” can be used in reverse (逆向). However, this can’t help but remind me of middle school, and I seem to have used the “birdcage effect”. Passing by a bookstore one day, I purchased a magazine and saw the call for contributions published in the magazine, so I started writing with eager hands, and then I fell in love with writing.

After shopping with my friends that time, I began to proceed to use the “birdcage effect”. I bought a small fresh tablecloth to decorate my desk, and a beautiful notebook to record my inspiration. When everything was ready, I started writing again.

But how can we get rid of the “birdcage effect” in many things, and even use the “birdcage effect” in the opposite way? Various “birdcages” unavoidably appear in life, but we can distinguish them. If it is not in line with the actual situation, it is a “negative birdcage”, then we must learn to stop losses in time and maintain a heart of abandonment and separation. If it is a “positive birdcage” that motivates us to develop upward, we can clarify our goals, shop or decorate appropriately, and motivate ourselves to move towards our goals. At this time, you will find that the “birdcage effect” is actually not so terrible!

4 . As a boy, John Kerr wanted to be a park ranger (护林员). ________, he spent four decades at a public broadcasting’s station in Boston. He ________ at the age of 65 without any particular post-career goal in mind.

After several lazy weeks, he drove to visit his family by Yellowstone. On the way he ________ stopped at the Yellowstone Park Foundation, which raised funds for the national park. As it happened, the foundation was ________ people to educate park guests on wolves. Kerr ________ for an internship (实习).

To say that Kerr stood out in the intern crowd is a massive ________. Most interns were college and even high school students. But, in a sense, he had been ________ for this since his youth. His outdoor adventures with his grandfather had given him a love of ________, and he once volunteered at the local fire department on ________ calls.

From his internship, he ________ a ranger sooner, educating park visitors, making for safe ________ between guests and animals, and responding to medical emergencies. He ________ his job of what he describes as one in the most beautiful places, and moments when he treats a visitor to an ________ look at one of the park’s wolves or bears through his telescope, an ________ that can move visitors to tears.

“These are ________ and all-too-rare moments,” recalls Kerr. “I never forget them.”

6 . Helga Stentzel’s Clothesline Animals combine charming images as fine art prints in various sizes.

As an artist whose style she calls　“household surrealism　(超现实主义)”，she works in various media and has a large collection of works. Instead of throwing an old pair of pants or T-shirt away,　Helga Stentzel puts her tired garments out to the farm. By hanging them on a simple clothesline she sets up and folding them artfully that look like animals,　she takes wonderful pictures. Some are shot in real locations while others are digitally placed in environments in charming form with appealing colors.

Siberian-born Stentzel has cooperated with many respectable and well-known brands, one of which is Hogar Verde,　a bio-friendly laundry products brand in Ecuador. For them she has created the adorable clothing illusions　(错觉)　for a print ad campaign，which also drew attention to the endangered animals shown within, like dinosaurs, polar bears and so on.

Stentzel’s practice started from her childhood in Siberia, where she spent hours surveying her grandmother’s carpet, woods and random objects for recognizable forms, including a pile of buckets looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

In what seems a very simple gesture,　Stentzel’s works employ household items and turn them into surrealist images that uncover different reading layers. From food to clothes, the artist is inspired by everyday objects and gives them a second life through her creative and really poetic personal angle.

“I stare at things longer than socially acceptable! It can be anything—a chair, a noodle hanging off the fork,　a lamp post in the middle of the road. Observation is a form of thinking for me. I really enjoy studying colors, shapes and textures—with no expectation, simply admiring their unique beauty. Very often there’s nothing more to it,　but sometimes BOOM!—a creative idea hits my brain, and it makes a link between sliced bread and wrinkled skin of a French bulldog. It’s very unpredictable,”Stentzel said.

10 . I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria.I was a(n) _________reader, and what I read were British and American children’s books.I began to write when I was seven.I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my _________ were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples, and they talked a lot about the _________，how lovely it was that the sun had _________.

What this demonstrates is how _________we can be influenced by what we read, particularly as children. Because all I had read were foreign books, I had become _________ that books had to have _________ in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.

Things _________ when I discovered African books. There weren’t many of them available, and they weren’t quite as easy to _________ as the foreign books.

But __________ writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I went through a mental __________in my view of literature.I __________ that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate,could also __________ in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. What the __________ of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a __________ story of what books are.