1 . Mattew Shifrin has been building with Legos (乐高积木) since he was 5 with the help of his friends. When he turned 13, he got a _______ birthday present from his friend, Lilya Finkel. It was an 843-piece Middle Eastern Lego palace. And with it were _______ that Finkel made specially for it. Finkel _______ a unique name for every one of the more than 800 pieces in the palace set. Then she spent countless hours _______ building instructions in Braille (盲文) that spelled out how to fix them all together.

His mind was blown. As a _______ person, Shifrin had never before been able to complete a Lego set _______. Shifrin knew immediately that he had to help other blind children find the same_______. Shifrin says, “For blind people, Lego sets act as small 3D replacements for real-life buildings instead of two-dimensional photographs. Lego bricks _______ me to see things that are impossible to explore by touch.” For years after that incredible Lego _______, he together with Finkel created similar instructions for about 45 other Lego sets, all ________ on a website they created, “Lego for the Blind.”

Shifrin began ________ the Lego company several years ago to discuss his work, but it was in 2017, when Finkel died of cancer, that he finally connected with the right person. His years-long efforts ________ when the Lego company released its first audio and Braille building instructions. The project is a high-tech version of what Shifrin and Finkel did for their ________. It couldn’t have been completed without Shifrin’s ________ — or without his determination.

He just wished Finkel had been here to see it. “I think she’d be very glad that we came this

2 . Hansen and his 10-year-old son Chase search the streets of Salt Lake City every weekend for the homeless to take to lunch. They started Project Empathy(共情)four years ago to ________a meal, listen to their stories and figured out how they could ________ help.

“Just start with a smile, a hello. It really just starts with that. If you do it, you can make a connection. A small gesture can have a ________ impact on others less fortunate,” Hansen ________ in an interview.

Some of these shared meals have turned into stronger ________ .Ward, a homeless, was ________ in a flat. He credited the Hansens with helping him ________the difficult process of moving off the streets. “It is great to have friends who make us feel ________ and I’m impressed with the pair,” Ward said.

Father and son’s ________have developed into a passion project that ________ faith and community, which emphasizes the ________ community members can have in uplifting the homeless. They know they can’t settle the homeless ________ alone. They’re hoping empathy will ________.

“My hope for the future is to ________ more connection across our country. We could and we will succeed ________ we have other people join in and help the homeless,” Chase said.

3 . That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one o’clock in the morning after a tiring practice at the _________. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my _________. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about _________ both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began _________, both to keep warm and to keep away from any possible _________. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking _________ people under blankets.

About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half _________ to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. _________, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my _________ falling to the sidewalk.

Suddenly I wasn’t cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to __________I’d heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found.

Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside, “Alisa Camacho?” I thought I was __________. How could this man know my name? The door opened, and out __________a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eyes. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked, __________ up a small square shape.

It was nearly 3 A.M. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn’t get much sleep that night, but I had gotten my wallet back. I also had gotten back some __________ of city life. I realized that the city couldn’t be a bad place as long as people were __________ to help each other.

7 . She came in the dead of night, in the cold. She was more than half ______ , starved down to bones. Her hair was completely eaten away by mange(兽疥癣). She had been run off from more than one yard when she finally crept into an empty doghouse in the trees beyond mother’s yard. ______ she was out of the wind.

My mother and brother found her in the daylight of the next day. They could not even ______ she was a dog.“ And it broke my heart,” my mother said.

The ______ dog encountered two people who ______ to give up on anything. They ______ batteries that have not had a spark of anything in them for a long time. My mother even keeps pens that stopped writing in 1974. My brother Mark looked at her tragic face and ______ her “ Pretty Girl ”. It was as if he could see beyond the ______ .

Mark and my mother fed her, and bathed her in burned motor oil, the way my people have been curing the mange for generations. A month later, a beautiful white German shepherd stood in the garden. She was ______ to last, at most, a few weeks or months, yet she lived three more years-- decades, in dog years -following my brother to the garden to ______ rainbow and listen for thunders.

“I ______ for her,” my mother said. “Some people say you needn’t ask for God’s blessing for your dog, but…” And then after the gift of years, her health began to ______ and Pretty Girl died.

The garden is now planted, full of flowers. Some things in the garden are planted according to ______ , like the shape of the moon or the conditions of soil and weather. However, there are things we cannot ______ things beyond science, like how a man could name a dying dog and have her ______ from misfortune, making her live longer than expected.

8 . Last Saturday evening, Mike, who has autism (自闭症), attended a concert with his grandfather, Stephen Mattin at Boston Symphony Hall. As the orchestra (交响乐队) _________ playing, they expected to hear polite applause after a brief _________.

The music was over and there was no sound, but it suddenly was _________ by the “Wow!” heard around the hall. A child’s _________ expressed simple, refreshing amazement at the performance. The elder Mattin felt _________ and turned to people around them, _________ that Mike actually did not _________ to make noise and that he has autism and often expresses himself _________ from other people.

The moment _________ the orchestra so that they released the audio recording of the “Wow!” moment, hoping to __________ the child. Not long after the audio clip (片段) hit the Internet, it became extremely __________, getting thousands of shares across several platforms. Later, David Snead, the president and CEO of the orchestra, gave out his email address, wishing to get a (n) __________ from the parents of the child and __________ them to meet the musician Harry Christophers. It took less than a week for the kid to come forward. His family and the orchestra planned to __________ a date for him to meet the musician.

Mattin expressed his __________ that the society has become more tolerant and understanding of the differences between people.

9 . TikTok, a social media app dedicated to short-form videos, has emerged as a major firer of food trends—from mushroom coffee and pancake cereal to cloud bread and feta pasta. But another trend, the #whatieatinaday trend, is dominating TikTok, which is ________ 9 billion views.

Even though #whatieatinaday posts may be ________ to serve as healthy inspiration for others, there’s a growing feeling that these video diaries of daily eats will likely do more harm than good—especially among young girls or people with a history of disordered eating.

The ________ message these posts send is that if you eat like them, then you can eventually look like them. Yet what someone else eats in a day doesn’t mean it’s right for you, since these “________” videos are not a completely accurate representation of what someone typically eats.

Often the overly stylized meals do not________ a nutritionally adequate diet. The posts are ________the illusion (幻想) of an ideal day of eating, along with an ideal body size.

Younger audiences, especially girls and young women, internalize the message that they must eat like these creators to achieve and maintain not only health, but also social ________. The biggest harm with this trend is that it normalizes disordered or ________ eating behaviors. This could prevent someone struggling with an eating disorder from ________ support or treatment.

Even if the #whatieatinaday posts are displaying a balanced day of eating, the ________ message of “eat like me, and you will look like me” is harmful because people will not necessarily achieve the same body size as the ________ even if they copied their day of eating bite for bite.

________, what might be a healthy, adequate day of satisfying meals for one person may be inadequate and unsatisfying to another. Even worse, someone looking at these posts may conclude that they need to be eating half as much to ________.

People making these videos are overwhelmingly thin, young, able-bodied and white. There is a complete lack of body ________. And this encourages harmful comparisons to unrealistic body standards that are ________ to the vast majority of people. Therefore, those of us from marginalized communities are once again unable to see positive representations of our varying bodies, foods and cultural representation in these harmful posts.”

10 . In Washington DC, there is an entrepreneurial (创业的) teen, who owns and _________ his own bakery business. Young Michael Platt is the owner of Michael’s Desserts.

Born with a (n) _________ love for sweets, he became _________ in baking when he was nine. Since he was diagnosed with severe epilepsy (癫痫) at 10, Michael has been homeschooled by his mother. With his activities _________ by his medical condition, Michael threw himself into _________ However, this is not just a (n) _________ bakery business. It operates on a one for one donation model for every cupcake sold he _________ one to the homeless.

“I knew that I wanted to start a (n) _________, but I knew I didn’t just want to make_________ -I also wanted to ____________ people in need at the same time, “he says. His business ____________ creates new baked goods, which include ____________ cookies and cupcakes, and cupcakes are his biggest seller.

Stephanie Gerstenblith, one of his ____________, comes to buy cupcakes every day. She says that Michael’s cupcakes are not only delicious, but also have ____________her to “provide everyone with sweetness”.

____________ running his bakery, Michael hosts bake sales for the non-profit No Kid Hungry. Jessica Bomberg, a leader of fund-raising for the campaign. says. “Young heroes like Michael prove that everyone can make a difference in society.

It is Michael’s faith that everyone should take the responsibility to take care of others. “When I see people lack foods, I want to give them something.” he says. “It’s my way of telling them that they haven’t been forgotten.”