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.