3 . I used to travel to make myself relaxed. Two years ago, I was rather busy with my business and under a lot of ________, so I went to Las Vegas for a holiday. I just wanted to get away and ________ for a while.

When I was on holiday, a(n) ________ suddenly came to me. I had long wished to pay a visit to the Greek island of Santorini. Therefore, the idea of a two-week European ________ alone was born.

I’d driven alone across the US before, but traveling to other ________ whose languages aren’t the same as mine ________me. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to________with anyone.

But I soon ________that if I wanted to follow my dreams, I had to ________ out of my comfort area. If I let________take control of me, I’d get nowhere.

As I was in search of more places visit on my trip, I found Mykonos, Greece, which I ________just as much as I liked Sanorini. When I arrived in Europe, it was like I was in a dream.

What I appreciated best was the bus ride to Venice. As I rode the bus and enjoyed every new thing I saw,I was completely ________from the pressure of my work. How ________ it was to see people riding their bikes to the ________they would like to go to!

Some people might say, “It’s not a big ________; it’s just Venice. Thousands of people go there every day.”But it was more than that to me. It was about having a dream and when it was time for it to come true, don’t let it go.

4 . James Baldwin, an author, once said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” Looking back, I have found this was  _________. As a child, I was not the best listener, but I did learn valuable lessons by  _________ my elders.

While in elementary school, I was caught into  _________. A classmate had a quarrel with me because of some  _________ and he even threatened to beat me. I didn’t know how to  _________ him and I was even unwilling to go to school. Then my father  _________ my trouble and decided to go to school with me. I wasn’t sure what he was planning to do, but I felt safe around him. When at school, he talked  _________ to me and the boy I had issues with. He explained that we needed to solve our differences and learn to  _________ our friendship. He told us a  _________ in which he resolved (化解) the differences by an earnest (真诚的) talk and made friends with another man. Then he ____________ and we had to solve the problem ourselves. There we stood, face to face without a word. I broke the ____________ first and a heated discussion followed. Gradually, both of us realized we had a lot in common apart from the differences. At last, as my father ____________, we extended our hands and ____________ our differences. It was at that moment that a lifetime friendship was formed.

What my father said did not impress me much but he set a good example of ____________ this kind of problem. This is a reminder that it is more effective for elders to teach children by their ____________.

5 . My sense of direction is pretty horrific and there was one time I was in a very remote part of Austria and wanted to go to meet up with some of my friends at a lake. I grabbed a bike, and set off, map in hand. All was going well until I realized I was in a really, really remote part of the town, and pretty soon I realized I was also on a hill. My poor sense of direction and my childish relationship with maps accidentally led me up a mountain.

I was 2.5 hours into my voyage, there was no sign of any life around me, there was definitely no lake in sight at all and especially the noises around me got stranger. I looked at my map wondering how it could deceive me and where our relationship took a wrong turn. Then, I turned around and BOOM, I got a flat tire. It was getting darker, I was shitting bricks by the second, and any moment now, something was going to jump out and ate me alive.

I eventually stop caring that my bike will collapse on me and start riding it down a very rocky trail at a pretty fast pace just hoping to get out of there as fast as possible.

Several minutes later, I finally see a highway, so I get back on a known trail and just a few kilometres up, I see the sign where I missed my turn for the lake. After my 2-hour detour, I had no desire to be near anything wet as I was already soaked from exhaustion, so I tried to get reception to call and see if anyone could pick me up. Eventually, I was able to track down some elderly Austrian men who could see my dilemma and handed me their phone, and a large pint of Austrian beer to save the day.

6 . The village of Okere Mom-Kok was destroyed during the Ugandan Civil War in the 1980s. Now, pupils at the early childhood centre are noisily having a break, and a market is coming to life, as is local beer making, in what has become known as Okere City.

Okere City began in 2019. It has a school, a clinic, and a community hall that also serves as a nightclub. Electricity and clean water are available to everyone.

Ojok Okello started the project of Okere City with an investment (投资) from his own pocket to change the destroyed village of 4, 000 people. The development expert had worked for several charities but grew sad seeing projects fail because communities weren’t involved in decisions about their own future. When he returned to Okere Mom-Kok to visit relatives, he decided to create a project that was truly led by the people who lived there.

Okere now produces income. Every project, from the school to the local bar, can fund itself, and something that has been possible because the project is being built not as a charity, but as a social enterprise (事业), Okello says.

This year, after local people said they needed a way to make money, Okello began to experiment with processing shea nuts (加工乳木果), which locals collect and turn into butter for cooking. Soon, Okere Shea Butter arrived on the market.

Okello says the thought came to him when watching the movie Black Panther, as he sat under a shea tree one afternoon. “I realised that we have this important natural resource and we were not using it,” Okello says. “I thought, in the movie Wakanda and Black Panther had vibranium and this shea tree could be our vibranium. So I invest everything within my means into it.” 

Once a week, an investment club meets in the community hall. Member’s dues (会费) are carefully recorded before being offered as loans (贷款) to members who need them. When borrowers repay the loan, the cycle continues.

“This style of banking plays a big role because it’s uniquely African,” Okello says. “It’s been about community, patience, and long-term investment.”

7 . What if we had the power to control time, instead of moving from the past to the present to the future? What if we could jump, loop and travel through time in a machine?     1    

This ability would allow us to witness historic wonders, change decisions and see people from the past.     2    

The mysterious puzzle of time has kept people debating its nature for hundreds of years. Science fiction writers have turned it into imaginative stories. Some scientists have even attempted to explain it using math. This myth tries to make the dream of time travel come true.

    3     He called it “spacetime”. Einstein said that there are three dimensions in space: height, width and depth. A scientist named Hermann Minkowski added time as a fourth dimension.

Einstein introduced two ideas that have led to theories about the possibility of time travel. The first is relativity. The idea of relativity is that the force of gravity causes space to bend, which causes time to twist.     4    The idea is that a traveler moving super-fast through flat spacetime will enter the future. Einstein considered time “relative” because it is measured based on where we are on Earth or in space.

Stephen Hawking is a famous scientist. He believes that a time machine will never be built. If it were possible, he thinks we would already know. If a time machine could be built, how come no one from the future has invaded us?

The first science fiction story with this theme is The Clock That Went Backward by Edward P. Mitchell, which was published in 1881.     5    , in which some tools such as phones, watches, photographs and old books take travelers backward and forward.

Will time travel ever happen? Who knows? Most important is to keep your eyes open and have a sense of wonder.

8 . What will the future be like? Good or bad? A lot of science-fiction writing imagines a dark and _____ world. Planet of the Apes shows a _____ future for humankind.

There's a word to _____ the kind of future world which often appears in science fiction: dystopia, a(n) _____ unpleasant or bad place. The _____ is utopia. But does tomorrow's world have to be so disappointing?

No. A new project wants to use the power of science fiction to _____ a better future. The _____ of Project Hieroglyph is to bring together writers, scientists, engineers and artists to create optimistic stories about a _____ society in the next 50 years.

It's _____ to create a dystopia than write a feel-good story. There's more conflict in a world full of problems, and stories are interesting when there are a lot of problems to solve. No _____, no story! But the project produced a book with some   _____ plots. One of them is about environmentalists who fight to _____ building the first hotel in the _____ areas.

But will these stories actually change anything or _____ keep us entertained? A good science-fiction story can be   _____. It is _____ to see that stories can inspire hundreds, thousands, millions of people to _____ something that they want to do. The influence of science fiction has already been well _____ in modern research. Why are people working on   _____ clothes? Well, it's Harry Potter, right?

Time will tell how far we can go. Let's dream big and think   _____ the box.

9 . Darius and Johntel both love basketball and are captains of their high school basketball teams. But on one Saturday night, they were forever linked in the _________ of all who were present at a game between Darius’s small town team and Johntel’s big city team.

Just _________ before the game, Johntel’s mother died from cancer. Her sudden _________ made Johntel very sad. So Johntel’s coach wanted to cancel the game. But Johntel _________ that the game should be played. So with heavy hearts, his teammates prepared to play — and hopefully win — without him. _________, Johntel appeared in the gym mid-way through the first half.

Seeing him, Johntel’s coach called a time out, and players and fans _________ the sad young man to offer love and support. Johntel wanted to _________ but putting him in the game at that point would _________ a technical foul (犯规) and two free throws for the opposing team.

The opposing team understood the _________ and told the referees to let Johntel play and to forget the technical foul. The referees ____________ that a rule is a rule, and the free throws would have to be taken before the game could ____________.

As the team captain, Darius ____________ to take the shots. The free throw line is 15 feet from the basket. However, Darius’s first shot travelled about 4 feet. His second shot ____________ travelled 2.

Immediately, Johntel and his teammates ____________ what Darius was doing. They stood and applauded the gesture of sportsmanship as Darius walked back to his bench.

Johntel’s team won the game in the end. But as the two ____________ met after the game for pizza and sodas, nobody on either side was too concerned with wins or losses.

There was a dynasty     1     (call) Zhou in the Chinese history. One day, the king of Zhou asked his     2    (official) for advice on dealing with the prisoners of war. An official said, “If you love someone, you     3     (suppose) to love even the crows (乌鸦) on the roof of his house, and vice versa (反之亦然). The prisoners of war are enemies     4     (fight) against us. In my opinion, we’d better kill them all.”

But the king didn’t agree with him. “I think we should treat the prisoners of war     5     (different) by separating those who are guilty from those who are not. The guilty ones will be sentenced     6     death in order to avoid future disasters.”

Then another one said, “Your majesty, I think all the prisoners should be set free and sent back home to work in the fields and support     7     (they) by their own labor. Moreover, you should enforce strictly the rules of reward and     8     (punish). The people will believe in you     9     you govern our country by morals and laws.”

The king thought the official’s proposal was quite reasonable so he accepted and followed it. As     10      result, the domestic (国内的) situation soon settled down and gradually the country became stronger.