1 . I’ve had many opportunities to experience living in a foreign culture. But my first experience came in an _______ place—my own country. When I was 20, I got an internship (实习职位) in New York City. It was my first time to _______ outside of my home state of Texas.

With my move north came culture _______ . I grew up in a big city in Texas. But it was no comparison to the tightly _______ New York with their 8 million citizens. I was used to life at a _______ pace; New York moved fast. The saying is true—this city never _______ . I had to adjust.

My first reaction was fear. Fear I would _______ at my new internship in the 54-store y office building. Fear of getting lost on the subway. Fear that the locals wouldn’t have _______ for my frequent moments of confusion. My fear ranged from reasonable to silly. But I _______ my fears and kept trying.

I learned quickly never to ________ a New Yorker always speaks English. New York is home to people of all walks of life, from all corners of the world. At weekends, I would spend hours ________ along Canal Street in Chinatown—the closest I’d ever been to an Asian country.

By the end of my internship, I was a little older, a little wiser and ________ of big city life. I hated the skyscrapers, tourists and the high price I had to pay for a cheeseburger and fries. But I had ________, too. I was quicker, smarter and more independent. I knew I would ________ that feeling of having the world right at my doorstep. It was good ________ for the life of travel I’d soon begin.

2 . Every day, a few minutes before 4 p.m., Jake, my cute dog, used to stare at me, pushing me to get his dinner. Now Jake is _______, and the disappearance of the comforting pace he brought to my days is like a _______ of my loss. Though friends _______me by telling me I saved him, I know clearly when I met him at an adoption event, he had already been saved, just not settled.

The real story is that Jake saved me. Before Jake, I was separated from the world. I _______ into myself. Then I started _______ this lovely creature around. Jake never _______. He smelled everything. If I tried to move him along, he’d _______ his feet in protest. Once I let go of the idea that our walks were about getting somewhere, my internal ticking _______. I started to notice the rhythm of the neighborhood. I’d _______hellos with passers-by. I started making small talks with my neighbor, who I’d lived across the hall from for seven years with ________ a word. Eventually, we developed a real friendship.

I was told Jake was 2 when I ________ him. In truth, said the vet, he was between 4 and 6. Whatever had happened in his life left him ________ and had ________ his trust in humans. I met him too late to save him; the damage was done. Trusting me was a matter of ________. But he came to trust me and his trust developed into something else — that this ________ little dog learned to be loved, same as me.

4 . Calm seas, clear skies, gentle wind and not another boat in sight. Andrew and Jack were ________ lazily. Just then, from nowhere, a boat headed straight at them.

How could miles of open ocean send it crashing into us? As Andrew managed to ________ the boat, he stared into it ________. The fishing line out, music was being played loudly, but there wasn’t a ________ in sight. The captain must have gone ________, leaving his boat zooming ahead!

“That’s too dangerous!” Andrew said, giving several whistles as a ________. No reply. Suddenly, a horrifying new thought ________ him: the captain had suffered a heart attack.

Father and son switched places. Andrew drove their boat ________ the other while Jack jumped onto it. He brought the boat to a stop. Then he went down but found it ________.

Shocked, father and son said together, “It’s ________!”

After searching the ghost boat, they found its history log where the captain had marked ________ along his route. So, they immediately headed for the last point. There, they finally found the missing captain. He was alive in the water, ________.

Two hours ________, the captain slipped off the board. He tried to ________ the boat, but in vain. He watched his boat zoom off, taking his life jacket with it.

That evening, Andrew’s wife asked him how his day had gone. “It was a slow day catching fish,” he told her. “But we did catch a ________.”

6 . A winter storm dropped huge amounts of snow overnight on January 16 in western Pennsylvania. Coach Brian Delallo, who worked on a local high school football team, decided to ________ his players’ weightlifting practice. He texted his players saying, “Due to the expected severe ________, Monday’s weightlifting workout has been cancelled. ________ an elderly or disabled neighbor and shovel (为……除雪) their driveway. Don’t accept any ________—that’s our Monday workout.”

The players received the message and went out to work on the more than six inches of snow. They said that they removed ________ from dozens of homes. Some players texted their coach afterwards to tell him how ________ it was. “We all feel________ about it,” said team captain Gavin Moul. “It’s not only helping them, but it’s helping us to become a better team.”

Many of the people whom the team members ________ couldn’t believe that the players wouldn’t accept any payment. Sometimes people even refused their help ________ they wouldn’t take money for it.

_______, it was not the first time for the team to have shoveling workout. It was started by a coach more than two decades ago. It was one of the many ________ the team kept.

“It’s about ________.” the coach said. “It is an inspiring way for us to interact with our community and show that it ________. Shoveling snow is just one of those opportunities to show appreciation to the community that supports us. The team got a workout and gave ________ to the community by doing these acts of kindness at the same time. It was a ________ for all.

8 . Our neighbors had a loud party last night. We weren’t _______ but this was one of those celebrations that I didn’t mind. They are a bunch of young, single guys and I would have felt out of place.

What _______ me was the way they behaved. Ono of the young men came over _______ in the day to “warn” us of the upcoming event and said it would be over at about 11 p. m. That was the first step. Even more _______ was what they did next. “Here’s my _______”, offered our neighbor _______ “Text me if it’s too noisy.” That was a level of _______ I had never experienced in all my years of being a neighbor!

And it really worked in their favor. My husband and I were so friendly that even when the event went past the _______ end time, even when the music reached high decibels(分贝), and even when we couldn’t get through to the phone number, we felt no _______. We knew they would stop and ________ to it eventually.

It takes such little effort to make people feel that they ________ and get people on your side. Everyone needs to ________ every now and then, especially in these uniquely tough times. But people who do it without disturbing others are few and far between. I hadn’t fully ________ my neighbors until this week. But now I see them in a new light and with greater ________ . They didn’t just bring the noise to the neighborhood; they showed us a good manner of ________ in life.

9 . In 1970, Alan Ayers was participating in a skydiving team competition in Gainesville, Florida. He would be ________ out of a Cessna 172, a small four seat passenger plane. In preparation, the passenger door and front passenger seat were ________, but the passenger side seatbelt remained.

Ayers’ teammates skydived first, ________ him and the pilot as the only two people remaining in the plane. It was Ayers’ ________. But as he stepped out into the air, his foot got ________ in the passenger side seatbelt.

“I was completely out of the plane on my back, ________ at the belly (腹部) of the Cessna, with only my boot ________ to the pilot ... I tried to pull myself up to reach the buckle (锁扣), but I just couldn’t,” Ayers remembered.

Thousands of feet in the air, hanging from the plane, Ayers was out of ________.

“And what happened next was ________,” Ayers said. “The 23-year-old pilot unbuckled her seatbelt, crouched (蹲) down in the door of the airplane, with both hands off the operating handle, and ________ my ankle.”

Ayers dropped away from the plane, opened his parachute, and landed ________.

More than 50 years later, she often came into his ________. “To this day, I can see her two ________ hands reaching out of the door to unbuckle the belt,” Ayers said. “I owe my ________ to this person and will always think of her as one of the ________ people imaginable.”

10 . Lewis B. Smedes once said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” For years Tom Anderson’s life was withered (枯萎) by the memory of his ________ in an adventure that ________ the death of one of his classmates. He and his wife ________ after six years of marriage. Then the news about Tom Anderson changed. His wife Betty came back; he ________ a fine position.

One day he told me what had changed his life, “I used to think nothing could ________ what I had done. The thought of my ________ would stop me in the middle of a smile. It put a ________ between my wife and me. Then I had an ________ visit from the person I dreaded (恐惧) most to see — the mother of the college classmate who died. ‘ ________ you forgive, you cannot love,’ she said. ‘And without love, life has no meaning. She paused, and then said ________ , ‘You are the only person who hasn’t forgiven Tom Anderson.’ I found there in her eyes ________ to be the person I might have been if her boy had lived. For the first time in my life, I felt ________ to be loved.”

It is only through forgiveness of our mistakes that we gain the ________ to learn from experience. But forgiving our shortcomings doesn’t mean ________ that they exist. On the contrary, it means facing them ________ .