1 . One day, I was standing on the boat when a very large female leopard seal swam by. I put on my diving gear and got my camera. I was ___________. My mouth was dry. At first, I couldn’t even move. But I knew it was time to___________this mysterious creature.

I jumped into the freezing water. Immediately, the seal swam toward me. Then she put my entire camera—and much of my ___________— into her mouth. Although the seal was putting me at risk, I tried not to ___________ any fear. After a few seconds, she let go of my head. She ___________  me a few more times and swam away. Then she ___________ with a live penguin. She even tried to show me how to___________it. She tried to push the penguin into my camera — she thought the camera was my___________! The seal thought I was just another large animal, and she was trying to___________me, I realized.

By now, she didn’t seem very____________. She stayed by me for four days. One time, she noticed another leopard seal ____________ behind me. She made a deep, threatening sound and ____________ the other seal away.

Those four days were the most incredible experience I ever had as a wildlife ____________. I got some amazing pictures. I also learned that animals do not always behave the way we____________. My relationship with this powerful and ____________ animal will stay with me forever.

2 . This story happened when I was in Saint Lucia for a holiday.

My sister, Diana, who kept _______ with me for the holiday, went blind in one eye about 9 years ago. Diana sometimes is _______ about the way her eye looks. The pupil (瞳孔) is no longer black; it’s sort of “flaming” in photos. Diana recently _______ a special contact lens (隐形眼镜片) that makes her _______ look normal, but she doesn’t wear it often because it becomes quite painful after about an hour.

One night, a photographer _______ by the hotel to take pictures of the guests as they entered the dinner area was snapping us. Diana _______ said if she had known there were pictures taken to save this special _______, she would have worn her contact lens so her eye wouldn’t be so _______ in the picture.

The next day, while I was sitting with Diana talking, the same photographer handed her a photo, and quietly said, “I _______ the color of your eyes in the picture.” As he walked away, my sister happily said to me, “Look! He fixed my eye!” Hearing this, the photographer ________, walked back and said, “Just to be clear: I didn’t ________ your eye. There isn’t anything wrong with your eye. I ________ had the color of your eyes go well with each other.”

Her eyes filled up with tears. It was very ________ for her heart to hear these beautiful words. It helped her change the ________ she feels about herself, and the picture, or rather, the ________ of human kindness has stuck in her memory ever since.

3 . When I studied in my high school, I did an experiment about how the temperature affected the growth of a plant. That experiment made me ________ that science teaches us the domino effect (多米诺效应) in the environment. It teaches people our ________ so we know where we are from. That day I ________ decided to be a scientist and that will be my greatest ambition in life. Ever since that day I have studied harder ________ in all my science-related subjects. After school I do much research on how I can become a ________ scientist in the future.

One of my ________ in becoming a scientist is Barbara McClintock. She has been awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. At 25 she already had her PhD in botany and after that she started her ________ as the leader in the development of maize cytogenetics (玉米细胞遗传学) and she was ________ to that research for the rest of her life.

If I am lucky and given the ________ to achieve my ambition as a scientist, I want to be like Doctor McClintock. She ________ something that helped the other scientists ________ the thing about genetics that did not just help her generation but also the future generation.

I know I will be able to achieve my ________ as long as I put my heart and perseverance into it. If I am lucky enough to achieve my goal, I will share my ________ with all the kids who also love science and want to become scientists. My future will be as ________ as the stars in the night sky. My future is still far but I will make the most of all in the ________ to achieve my greatest ambition of becoming a scientist.

4 . One Friday evening in December, two weeks before Christmas, I lost my job without any warning. I was ________ for the weekend, when my daughter Kristil and I ________ to get our Christmas tree. Then I listened to my voicemail: “We’re sorry but your work assignment has ended as of today.” My heart ________.

I wasn’t just a single parent; I was the only parent. My paycheck was ________.

The next day as we searched for our tree, I struggled to be cheerful as I ________ each price tag (标签). Over the next week, I ________ applied for jobs as my bank account grew smaller. On a weekend afternoon, I dropped Kristil in a ________ gated community for a birthday party. I watched as she went in, surrounded by all the nice things we couldn’t afford. I drove home ________.

Back at home, I glanced out the window. It had been snowing on and off all morning. I _________ a small elderly woman with short white hair struggling to open her car door _________ the wind. As she got out, I realized it was my old professor, Sister Esther Heffernan, whom I hadn’t seen for about six months.

“What are you doing out in this weather?” I asked as we hugged. “Well, I tried to call last week but couldn’t ________. Then I called your job and they said you weren’t working there anymore, so I thought I would come by.”

Just being in Sister Esther’s ________ gave me hope that things would be all right. As she got up to leave, she handed me a Christmas card and kissed me on the cheek. I walked her to her car and ________ as she drove away.

When I opened her card, I gasped (喘气) in ________. Hundred-dollar bills fell onto the table. Tears of ________ welled up in my eyes as I counted. I silently thanked her in my heart.

5 . Every Saturday morning Phoenix Young would take piano lessons with a family friend when he was a child. “At that time we would_______around and take all morning just to have a lesson,” Phoenix_______. “And I loved it.”

But when Phoenix was 12, his teacher proposed that he need better_______.So his mother took him to a music school in the Bronx, and signed him up for classes with a teacher named Bade Simon, experienced bit known for being _______. And she quickly lived up to that _______.Phoenix found the stressful life was_______like his lighthearted Saturday mornings with his former teacher, so it wasn’t long before he_______that he would quit.

One day, however, Bade_______him and said something surprising: “I have_______in you. Keep going. Then the reluctant (不情愿的) student did something surprising ________: he said, “Okay.”

“It was as if all I wanted was just a________from her that she cared about me,” Phoenix said.

That moment________their relationship. Within a few weeks, they were having________during lessons. And within a few months, she was teaching him things about music that he’d never known before. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.

“I went into________and became a piano teacher, a career I have been doing for 50 years,” Phoenix said. “And I ________it all to that precious moment with my unsung hero, Bade Simon.”

7 . We love letters. Just as John Donne, a poet, _________ it, “Letters, to me and my friends mean _________ greetings; they get souls together. Thanks to letters, friends who are _________ speak.” He wrote these words nearly 400 years ago. Today, in the age of instant text message, social media, and email, they still ring truer than ever, because writing or receiving a letter has become such a _________ event.

A UK-wide survey undertaken by Sunday Times suggests that one in four of us has not _________ a letter for at least 10 years. That’s ten years without the sweet pleasure of pacing the floor waiting for the _________; ten years without recognizing the handwriting on the envelope and eagerly _________ the letter to read its content.

We may not get them any more, but we still love handwritten letters. In the same survey, one third of _________ people interviewed say that they remember the content of sentimental (充满情感的) letters. Shouldn’t we make _________ to give our friends and families what they will treasure forever? Ann Bickley went online in 2017 and offered to handwrite a letter to anyone who __________ her. Her website received 50,000 __________ in its first three months. Five years later, she is still the main force behind one-million-lovely-letter.com and has personally written 4,000 letters offering hope and __________ to strangers.

The thought behind a letter __________ as much as its contents. “I never tell anyone that __________ is going to be OK,” Ann Bickley says, “I am letting someone know that there is someone in the world who __________ them.” Who wouldn’t love to receive a letter like that? Let’s get writing!