1 . I grew up in northern Arizona, where it has the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. Until I was invited to _______ Guizhou province by the China Storyteller Partnerships Tour, I realized how _______ Guizhou can be in poetic (有诗意的) detail. There is _______ better than seeing things with one’s own eyes. I will attempt to do so here.

My father used to ask my brothers and me on yearly fishing trips around Arizona. We would _______ to catch the largest fish, and those who succeeded would be rewarded. I remembered sitting in a small boat in the middle of the lake, mostly _______ my bored tongue, while my father tried to _______ me the whispers of the wind, or a fish dancing on the surface of the lake. He vividly described to me everything that he _______ in nature. On my trip to Guizhou I had the _______ to go kayaking (划皮艇) on Wanfeng lake. At one point I rested, _______ floating at the center of the lake, listening to the spaces between silence and ________ the surrounding karst (喀斯特) mountains. I thought about my childhood, and ________ I had listened more closely to my father’s ________ feelings.

I’ve ________ Arizona for 10 long years, creating my own destiny in China. I’ve managed to build myself a family, a career, and join in ________ activities. I feel ________ I have everything I need. For a moment, in Guizhou, I felt home.

2 . Like many young people, Jessica wants to travel the globe. Unlike most of them, this 25-year-old is doing it _________. She and her husband have spent the last two years traveling the world, stopping everywhere from Paris to Singapore. It might sound like one long, expensive _________, but the couple has an unusual way to make their travel _________.

They’re part of a new form of the _________ economy: house sitters. Throughout their no-cost stays in _________ homes, they feed pets and water plants in the homeowner’s _________.

The travel is not all about sightseeing. The two travelers carefully _________ their trips, scheduling their days around the pets that are sometimes difficult to _________. But house sitting also offers a sense of _________ they can’t find in a hotel. “It’s like __________ at a friend’s house,” Jessica says.

The couple has a high __________ rate in getting accepted as house sitters as they always go beyond the homeowner’s __________. For Jessica, that means __________ plenty of pictures of happy pets, keeping the house clean and leaving a nice small gift before __________ the next house. “You want to make the homeowner feel that they made the right __________,” she says.

3 . Tom’s father is a lawyer. In his spare time, he likes to go out in the country and take some pictures of animals.

For a long time, Tom had wanted to go with his father on one of his _________. But his father didn’t take Tom along with him _________ he was fifteen.

Tom and his father drove to the farm which _________ to his uncle in the afternoon. They _________ the night there, so that they could start out early the next morning. Uncle Smith and his son John, who was sixteen, were going to go out with them.

It was still dark when Tom heard the alarm clock the next morning. He wondered why it was running so early. He couldn’t remember _________ he was. He turned over _________ and looked at the clock. It was 5 o'clock. Then he _________ that he was on the _________ and that he was going out to take pictures with his father. He jumped out of bed and got _________ quickly.

He ran downstairs. The others were already in the __________. Uncle Smith was cooking bacon and eggs. There was a pot of coffee on the stove. It __________ good.

They ate breakfast quickly. They didn’t talk __________, because they didn’t want to __________ up the other people in the house. They filled a thermos bottle __________ hot coffee and took some sandwiches __________ Aunt Jane, Uncle Smith’s wife, had made for them. They gathered their camera equipment and started out.