1 . During my first three years of college, I put on about 30 pounds of weight. Between classwork and a part-time job, I had zero time for _______. Besides, I ate a lot of fast food. Not surprisingly, I got a fat stomach.

After leaving college, I _______ to take exercise. Invited by a friend, I began working out with exercise machines three times a week. I was the kind of person who did not try something _______. I ate the same foods; I did the same things. Clearly, I _______ my routines (习惯). My friend, however, became _______. One day, he said, “We’re not getting enough exercise. We should play tennis instead.”

Me? Play tennis? No way. I was strongly against his _______. 1 was not good at sports. Besides, I was _______ the exercise machines. However, weeks later, I found myself standing on a tennis court (球场). As I held my racket (球拍), I felt _______. I gave my friend some looks that could kill. I ran after every ball he served to me, completely _______ about 90% of them, and hitting the rest into the other court. The first few months were quite __________. But one day, as the ball enough came flying toward me, my racket and the ball finally met in the place where it is most effective to hit a ball. I watched __________ as my return landed where I had aimed (瞄准) it, I had finally. __________ how to play tennis properly!

Tennis would finally become my __________. I played it for several years, only __________ because of a knee injury. I learned a lesson during my journey toward learning to play tennis: I can do whatever I set my mind to. I just __________ to put in the work, and the results will follow.

2 . Where do you go when you want to learn something? School? A friend? A tutor? These are all _______places of learning. But it may well be that the learning you really want _______ somewhere else instead. I had the chance of seeing this first hand on a _______.

My daughter plays on a recreational (业余) soccer team. They did well this season and so _______ a tournament, which normally was only for more skilled club teams. This led to some _______ experiences on Saturday as they played against teams _______ trained. Through the first two games, her team did not get one serious shot on goal. As a parent, I _______ seeing my daughter playing her best, _______ still defeated.

It seemed that something clicked with the girls between Saturday and Sunday. When they _______ for their Sunday game, they were ________ different. They had begun to apply all kinds of play and teamwork they had seen the day before to their ________.They played much better and ________ scored a goal.

It ________ me that playing against the other team was a great ________ moment for all the girls on the team. I think it is a general principle. ________ is the best teacher. The lessons they learned may not be different from what they would have gotten in school, but are certainly more personal and meaningful, because they had to work them out on their own.

3 . We live on a small floating (漂浮的) village. Although we loved to watch football, no one had ever _______ it — space is hard to find. So when other villagers heard we planned to _______ our own football team, they thought it was _______. “What are you kids doing? Look where you live.” They were _______. We’d have to create our own space first, on water.

After   a lot of _______, such as collecting old wood and tying old fishing rafts (木筏) together, we had our own ground finally. But the ground was so small that the ball went into the _______ often. And so did we. Besides, we had to play on a shaky and _______ wooden ground. So our ball control got really good.

One day, we heard of a football tournament(锦标赛) on the mainland. Not sure if we were _______ enough to enter, we decided to play anyway. It was a big _______ that the   fellow villagers gave us their full support and even bought us new shoes.

It soon became ________ that we were much better than we thought. Our ________ had developed nicely on the wooden ground before. And the goals here were bigger. We ________ it to the final.

The final started ________. The heavy rain filled our shoes with water, making us ________.     After a bad first half, to turn around the ________, we decided to take off the ________ shoes. Playing in bare feet was more comfortable for us and we could ________ faster. Although we lose the match at the last minute, we ________ to get this far. And the villagers were really ________ of us.

Now our team has won many championships. We believe, with hope and courage, dreams can ________ be made, despite a lack of money and resources.