1 . It was a dream born in fire. When Andrea Peterson was 5, she and her mother were trapped on the balcony of a burning building. “Throw the kid down!” said one of the firemen below, and little Andrea jumped into lifesaving arms and a lifelong goal. She wanted to fight fires like her rescuers did.

But in the early 1960’s, little girls weren’t even allowed to fantasize about such great dreams. She told that to the men who had saved her, and they laughed. “You’ll be a good mommy,” the firemen told her. “You’ll be a good teacher, maybe you’ll be a nurse, but you can never be a fireman.”

And then, as it tends to do, life didn’t give her a chance to realize the dream. When Peterson was studying for a degree in aviation technology (航空技术) — the only female in her class, she met her husband, Dennis, a Vietnam vet who later developed cancer. Peterson spent 31 years caring for the man she loved and, in 2007, Dennis left the world.

At 61, She earned her emergency medical technician license (执照) and responded to fire calls with the ambulance (救护车). It turned to be a life-and-death situation, and Peterson felt that long-ago childhood calling. She found that her years of caring for Dennis had prepared her for dealing with different hurts and ills.

A year later, she told her boss she wanted to be a firefighter. The fact that everyone else in her training team was between 18 and 21 didn’t discourage her. She passed the writing test and she cleared the physical difficulties and finally, that little girl’s dream became a reality.

Peterson knows that the window on her physical abilities won’t stay open forever. But when interviewed, she said, “I worry a little when I get too old ... However, I did get my dream.”

2 . Two big characters stand firmly on the cover of the book Xiangxin, with a phrase—”Even in failure, never ______“. That is how Cai Lei, former vice-president of a business giant, faces ALS,a terminal illness. The book tells vividly the story of his unique _______ with it.

In 2019, the muscle on his left arm had been in pain and he visited Fan Dongsheng, a leading ALS expert. The doctor______his two hands about 20 centimeters from each other,saying,”This was your______life expectancy.“Then his left hand quickly moved to wardsthe right one, almost______it, and he added,”Now this is how long it will be.“The world suddenly turned _______for Cai.

Cai decided to take matters into his own______. In 2019, he started his own medical technology company, and built his own research team. A(n) ______of his team is removing the data______between hospitals, which made it difficult for experts to efficiently monitor and ______patients’ situations. His team also built a big data platform that could collect the_______ of such patients and process it for research purposes. ______ by his example, nearly

”I won’t give up. I don’t consider work from the angle of difficulties or possibilities. I just ______whether it’s worth doing,“he says.”Now I have completely accepted death without any ______because I have tried my best.“

4 . The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old coal stove. A little boy, Glenn Cunningham, came to school early each day to start the fire and warm the room before his teacher and his classmates got there.

One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse burning. They dragged (拖) the little boy out of the building. He was almost dead. Then he was quickly taken to a nearby country hospital. The doctor told the boy’s mother that since the lower part of his body was seriously burnt, he couldn’t use his legs anymore. However, the brave boy made up his mind that he would walk. Unluckily his thin legs just hung there, all but lifeless.

Finally he returned home from the hospital. Every day his mother would press his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control, nothing. Yet his determination that he would walk was as strong as ever.

When he wasn’t in bed, he would sit in a wheelchair. One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair and pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him.

He worked his way to the white fence (栅栏) around the yard. With great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, he began dragging himself along the fence, and he believed that he would walk. He started to do this every day. There was nothing he wanted more than to develop life in those legs.

In the end, through his determination he stood up. Gradually he began to walk to school, then to run to school, to run for the joy of running. Later in college he made the running team.

Still later, this determined young man in Madison Square Garden, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran the world’s fastest mile in 1934!

5 . For the next few weeks, the team keeps moving higher up the mountain, setting up camp at greater altitudes. They _________ reach Camp 8—the highest camp for the team. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, two strongest climbers of the team, are _________ to try to reach the top of Qomolangma first.

Hillary and Norgay feel _________, yet calm, as they begin their _________ to the top. It is minus 27 °C, and they _________ eight layers of clothing and three pairs of gloves. Their backpacks _________ 18 kilograms each. The two men move slowly, _________ hacking steps into the ice with their tools. Parts of the climbs are really _________ —ridges(山脊)that are only as wide as a diving board. One wrong step could mean _________ .

Still, up they go, higher and higher, until they come to a __________ wall—40 feet high. It seems __________ for them to climb up it. But there is strong faith inside them: They haven't come this far only to __________! Suddenly Hillary sees a thin crack(裂缝)in the rock. He __________ a foot into it and begins to move up, taking hold of any handhold he can find. Norgay follows. I It takes almost half an hour to __________ up using the crack. They can hardly catch their __________.

The two men keep going up. They move from rock to __________ , and soon they can climb no more because there is no more mountain left. They have reached the __________ ! Their tiredness quickly __________ happiness as they look out at the __________ view all around them. They prove that __________ can move mountains.

6 . Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. That ambition nearly ended one night in 2010. Hill, then a 17-year-old high school senior in Pacific Grove, California, was in a car accident that put her in the hospital for 51 days and left her paralyzed from the waist down. For most people, that would have ruined any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the beginning. Far from being a barrier, her wheelchair emboldened her. "I wanted to prove to my community—and to myself—that I was still 'normal, ' " she told Teen Vogue.

"Half of my body was taken away from me, and I have to move it with my hands, " Hill told Today, "It definitely took a lot of learning and patience. " After graduation, Hill wanted to expand her dance network to include women like her. She met people online who had suffered various spinal cord injuries but shared her determination, and she invited them to dance with her. Hoping to reach more people in a larger city, Hill moved to Los Angeles in 2014 and formed a team of dancers with disabilities she calls the Rollettes. "I want to break down the stereotype of wheelchair users and show that dance is dance, whether you' re walking or you 're rolling", she said.

Hill has attained what many of us never will: her childhood dream. She's a dancer. But the Rollettes have helped her find something else just as fulfilling. Every year she holds a dance camp for wheelchair users of all ages and abilities. In 2019, 173 participants from ten countries attended.

For many, it was the first time they 'd felt they belonged. Steph Aiello told Teen Vogue that working with Hill challenged her to be more independent. "My injury doesn’t stop so I can live my life, so why am I going to stop living my life because of my injury? " she said. Edna Serrano says that being part of the Rollettes team has given her the courage to get behind the wheel of a car, "I didn't know I could do so many things that these girls have taught me. "