1 . In the early 1990s, Eric Domb, a highly successful lawyer, came up with the idea of building a bird park. His father-in-law _________ the idea in the beginning, but when the _________ started to take shape he backed out. Domb thus had to _________ money from former clients, his two brothers and father as well as a bank to build a zoological park known as Pairi Daiza.

After the park opened in 1994, his inexperience led to many _________, but he pushed on with his venture (冒险业). By 2000, the park was turning a profit, and Domb’s ambitions were _________. The park needed more than birds, he believed, and other creatures and cultural gardens would help turn it into something _________.

Since his childhood he has been fascinated by Chinese _________. In 2006, he built the first Chinese garden, Dream of Han Wu Di in his zoo. It was said to be the largest Chinese garden in Europe. Domb kept _________ new elements. It finally took more than six years to complete the project.

Domb felt _________ by the joint panda breeding program. Domb and his people spent the following months __________ building giant panda houses with no guarantee that Pairi Daizi would be fortunate enough to __________ giant pandas. The huge enclosure (围场) built includes a pool, cave and __________ plantation.

Now, Domb is eager to tell how he __________ a pair of giant pandas, Xing Hui and Hao Hao in February 2014. The sense of __________ is all the more profound (深刻) in that Pairi Daiza is one of the few private zoos outside China to __________ giant pandas.

3 . Climbing Taishan in China

It is known that Taishan is a tall mountain. It is _______ to ascend to the top. Walking the whole way can take from three to seven hours and visitors can _______ to take a cable car halfway.

For thousands of years, Taishan has been a source of _______ for poets and thinkers. The mountain is in the east, and in Chinese culture east is regarded as a(n) _______ direction because that is where the sun and moon rise. _______ , Taishan is the most venerated (受崇敬的) of China’s five sacred mountains.

Confucius (孔子) once got to the top of the mountain and declared from the _______ : “Climb Taishan and the whole world looks small.” His _______ express the philosophical idea that the higher you climb, the greater your _______ .

For me, the higher I climbed, the more steps I saw, until _______ I got to the steps leading up to the cable car station. Of course, Confucius wouldn’t have ________ a cable car, but I wasn’t Confucius. I spent two hours climbing steps. That was enough of a ________ experience for me.

In the morning, we got up at 4 a. m. to position ourselves for the ________ . From Jade Emperor Peak, sitting among hundreds of others, we were fortunate enough to see a clear sunrise.

After breakfast, we ________ for about five hours down the mountain and through Peach Blossom Valley, beautiful waterfalls and pools of water.

The green plants up the ________ made for a picturesque climb, and the second-day valley hike was to me the highlight. It was peaceful, allowing me to ________ the greater vision from the top.

4 . “I am leaving home.” When Timmy, my 10-year-old son eagerly announced that he couldn’t wait to _______, the feeling of guilt peaked as I tried to figure out the _______.

“So, I can get a dog,’’ he stressed.

But I stayed _______—we didn’t need a dog to complete our life— and he gave up. Until the day I _______ Timmy, with his brother, discussing his moving plan. Suddenly, the situation _______: gain a dog or _______ a child, I felt my determination _______. “We can look into it,” I replied doubtfully, but the kind of dog we wanted cost a(n) _______ $ 1,000! Yes, love had a price. I _______ for thought, again.

I shared my present ________ with my friend whose love for dogs was quite sensible. He ________ me to his pet keeper friend who got a pregnant (怀孕的) dog and the baby dogs were due soon. A few days later, we took a surprise trip to the countryside when the little dogs were ________. I would admit that all my previous ________ reappeared after watching a group of blind things, but it was too late. Among screams of ________, we chose one of the little dogs as ours.

We attempt to ________ our kids in a healthy way—I didn’t realize the added dimension (方面) of love and ________ that a dog would teach my kids. On a hot day, Timmy cut short his outing to ________ if Odie, the dog, had enough water. When Odie was sick, my elder son made fresh soup and ________ fed it to him.

My children no longer talk about leaving home ________ there is the troublesome issue of who will take the dog. They quietly learn how to give and receive love. If having a dog means linking my children even closer together, it will be a mother’s prayer ________.

5 . Ten cats and six dogs in W-Underdogs are safe thanks to the quick thinking of Keith Walker, a homeless man in Atlanta. Seeing a home burning, he called the fire department, and then _______ to save the dogs and cats.

Founded about six years ago, W-Underdogs is a community group _______ dogs and cats. Volunteers in the group _______ dog food to people who can’t always afford to buy it, _______ pets without owners, and provide _______ at times. Walker, 53, has been homeless for 40 years. He helps the group with odd (零散的) jobs, but since news of his brave _______ has surfaced, the group has received large quantities of _______ about how they can help. Go Fund Me _______ have been set up to financially (资金上) support Walker and W-Underdogs, which lost so much in the fire.

“Fortunately, they’re all safe now and lots of volunteers are walking them and loving them,” says dog trainer Victoria. “It’s a small but _______ job. We do the work in communities that is very ________. But people have been so unbelievably generous with their time and ________ blankets and helping us with W-Underdogs.”

Dozens of people left ________ online, but one summed everything up so well:

“I read about Keith’s heroism and it was possibly the best story for me. We all have problems, troubles and difficulties fitting in. But the pure ________ of this man is undeniable (不可否认的). ________ and people need someone like him to simply exist because his love matters. Thank you for ________ the light in the world.”

7 . I woke up by my dog barking in the early morning. I went outside to find a ____ at the yard gate wanting to enter. It was the first time that I had _____a koala in my neighborhood. What a welcome _____!

I was wondering why he was here, as the koala_____ came down from the trees and didn't like walking, either._____ , there was no eucalyptus(桉树) around. Was he hungry or lost? Or maybe the bush fire across Kangaroo Island ____ him here?

He just sat there, obviously ____ , and sort of looked at me with a look, like helping me out of my ____. At a _____ look, I discovered a long cut at his back with blood, ____ of attacks or cuts of something sharp in some other way.

I _____ into my room and came out with some iodophor(碘伏). It was not a ____ problem as I was a nurse. This ____ soul seemed to quite_____ my kindness when I ____ the cut with the liquid. It _____ me that he came to seek my_____!

_____ the treatment was finished, I watched the koala finally______in the wild, hoping he was able to survive the hard time and _____his life as he should.

8 . Imagine an area 34 times the size of Manhattan. Now imagine it covered ankle-deep in plastic waste. That’s a total of about 19 billion pounds of ______. And according to the estimates available, that’s how much plastic waste ______ in our oceans every year.

“We’re being ______ by our waste,” said Jenna Jambeck, an/a ______ engineer who led the 2015 study that announced this shocking number. According to Jambeck’s research, this ______ will double by 2025 unless something is done, ______ and at a global scale, to stop the tide of garbage.

Plastic has in many ways been helpful to us, used in all walks of ______ from medical equipment to parts of airplanes. ______ some of the very traits (特性) that have made plastics so popular have also made them a ______ problem in our landfills   and oceans. Today, plastics are the No. 1 type of trash found in the sea. Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group that organizes a yearly ______ cleanup event in more than 150 countries worldwide, said plastic pieces ______ around 85 percent of all the garbage collected from beaches, waterways and oceans — and that’s just the stuff we can ______.

Ocean Conservancy says plastics are believed to ______ at least 600 different wildlife ______. One in three leatherback turtles, which often ______ plastic bags for jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their bellies (肚子). In 2017, a ______ whale beached on Norway’s coast had 30 plastic bags in its ______. Ninety percent of seabirds are now eating ______ on a regular basis. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.

And it’s not ______ wildlife that’s threatened by the plastics in our seas. A growing body of evidence suggests humans are consuming plastics through the seafood we eat.

With this in mind，experts say that all of us have a ______ role to play in relieving the issue — in ways both big and small.

9 . At the mid-May in 2018, the 69 year-old amputee(被截肢者) Xia Boyu finally stood proud on two artificial legs on the peak of Mount Qomolangma, a symbol showcasing to the world the power of _________.

More than 40 years ago, Xia _________ both of his feet to frostbite after lending his sleeping bag to a team member during the trip to climb Mount Qomolangma.

Even though artificial legs were not _________in China at the time, Xia strongly _________ that he would one day fulfill his _________ dream and so, before that day came, the best thing to do was to _________ himself by training constantly. Three years later he finally got his new legs, which enabled him to _________ his sports career.

However, fate once again took a _________ turn when he was in his 40s. In 1993, illness _________ on the stumps(残肢) on his legs, which required __________ third of his lower legs be amputated.Three years after that, he was diagnosed with lymph cancer.

Over the years, Xia never gave up his dream of climbing Mount Qomolangma. __________ to his final successful climb in 2018, he had tried four other times to climb to the summit, but each time Lady Luck gave him the __________ .

The last time he __________ his dream was in 2016. The then 67-year-old was only 94 meters from the summit, but a snow storm __________ his way. Taking his team members’ __________ into consideration, Xia made the__________ decision to go back.

On May14, Xia felt __________ and a strong sense of fulfillment welled up in him, standing on the peak of the highest mountain in the world.

“The key is to focus on your dreams, instead of the __________ you encounter along the way. I didn’t regret anything that I had done and accepted everything that life had __________ me, but I never stopped fighting against __________   ,” Xia said, stressing that fulfilling one’s dream has nothing to do with age, disability or the thoughts or expectations of others, but a firm belief in yourself.

10 . Most people agree that a pet adds joy to a person's life. Scientists are now finding that having a pet may keep its owner________ . And good health may add years to a person's life.

Scientists have been _______ the tie(联系) between pets and health for years. In 1990, a study was done with people aged 65 and older. It ________that pet owners went to the doctor less than people _______ pets. Do pets make people ________? Are people able to handle their everyday lives better? Alan Beck, who is a researcher, says that ________the answer to the questions is yes, then having pets may be a good idea.

Can pets also help people live longer? Rebecca Johnson did a study to _______the truth. Johnson teaches nurses how to care for _______people. Her study shows that having pets may cause people to ________ more slowly.

The human body makes many chemicals. Some of the chemicals make people feel ________. Others make people feel bad. In Johnson's ________, levels of the "good" chemicals ______ when people were around pets while levels of the "bad" chemicals went down. The good _______seemed to slow the aging of cells. If this is ______, maybe people should spend more time with their _____. Then people might feel better and _______longer.

You might be allergic(过敏的) to pets. Or you may not want to _______a pet. Never fear. A robotic, or computer pet may be just the thing for you.

Scientists are testing computer pets, like the robotic dog AIBO. They want to see if ______pets can help people the way _______dogs do.

Will a robotic pet ______the real pet sitting with you on the sofa? Something tells us that it will probably become a reality.