3 . My new Japanese friends stared at me from the other side of the small, square table. There ________ in the centre of the table, a bowl full of pasta, with black squid (乌贼) ink sauce. When I ________ that Italian food was my favorite, they just took me to the best Italian restaurant in the city. So there I sat, ________ clear on my face, as my three friends stared at me with big smiles on their faces. I had tasted and enjoyed a variety of spaghetti sauces. ________, I had certainly never eaten or imagined eating pasta covered in black ink sauce.

I took the fork and spoon and put a ________ serving onto my plate. The first feeling I experienced as the spaghetti noodle touched my tongue was not ________, but interest. It was weird, strange, but interesting. My friends smiled at me from ________ the table. With their teeth and lips as ________ as night, they looked like dead bodies. I tried to explain this to them and in the ________ I learned a new Japanese word. For the next twenty minutes we got ________ in calling the waitress over to our table and making her laugh as we ordered more drinks, smiling broadly the whole time.

________, like people, come in all shapes, sizes, and colours. It is said, “The true voyage of discovery lies not in ________ new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Our days are filled with mini-adventures that are ________ so quickly without a thought, I would have ________ this adventure completely if I had actually known what I was ordering when I ordered it, but I was ________ for the mistake.

5 . When I was young, my understanding of life was simple. This made it easier for me to deal with the world around me. As I grew up, things seemed more ________, which made life more challenging. Now, middle-aged, I find my ________ of the world is returning to the simple.

When I try to teach my daughter important ________ about life, I will ________ complicated things into small pieces. One of those basics is ________, for yourself, and for others. I teach my daughter to ________. To fail makes us feel bad, certainly, but not to have tried contributes to feeling ________, because you can’t respect yourself for it. And as the saying ________, if you don’t respect yourself, no one else will.

When I was seven or eight, I played at my cousin’s house with his toys. His family was better off, and he had many more toys. There was one in particular that I’d always desired, and I ________ it into my pocket. But a moment later, I ________, even at that age, that I would never enjoy playing with the toy. I would always know I had ________, and my evaluation of myself would ________. When his mother dropped me off later that day, I shamefacedly ________ out the toy and gave it back. She knew, I’m sure, what had happened, but she thanked me and never spoke of it again.

I hope to help my daughter ________ similar mistakes. She first has to gain self-respect before she can start respecting others. I believe in respect, because without it we’re all ________. I’m far from perfect in this regard. But I try my best, and I respect others for trying their best in this changing world.

6 . Like many new graduates, I left university full of hope for the future and wanted to make a_________in the world somehow, but I had no idea how to do that. That’s_________I learned about the Lighthouse Project.

I started my_________as a Lighthouse Project volunteer by reading as much as I could about the experiences of previous_________. I knew it would be_________, and that I would be away from my family and friends for a very long time. _________, I did not take my decision to apply for the Lighthouse Project_________. Neither did my family.

I sent in all the paperwork needed for the application. After countless interviews and presentations, I managed to_________among the candidates and survive the test alone. Several months later, I finally received a call asking me to report for the duty. I would be going to a small village near Abuja, Nigeria.

After completing my_________, I was sent to the village that was small and__________in need of proper accommodation. Though the local villagers were poor, they offered their homes, hearts, and food as if I were their own family. I was asked to__________a small team of local people in building a new schoolhouse. For the next year or so, I__________in that same schoolhouse. But I sometimes thought I learned more from my __________than they did from me.

Sometime during that period, I realized that all those things that had seemed so strange or__________to me no longer did, though I did not get anywhere with the local language, and returned to the United States a different man. The Lighthouse Project had changed my__________forever.

8 . I find it interesting sometimes that even the most ordinary _________can have an impact on our awareness.

My wife, my daughter and I moved into our home nine years ago and we _________a lot of time and energy in the yard to get it looking like it does today.

We live on a corner, higher than street level. There is a rock wall _________our yard. But at the edge of the yard some rocks were thrown up onto the ground as if someone was in a hurry to _________. We called this area our “rock garden”. Whenever we planted flowers or plants, Denise or I would stick them out to bring some _________ to the area.

Last summer I reached the end of the garden and found a tiny little _________ that I could not instantly identify. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise claimed that she didn’t either. We decided to let it continue growing until we could _________what it was. Weeks passed and as I made my back to the _________plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. It was weak, with a tall skinny stalk and only one head on it. I decided to _________it and weed around it. As I moved away the rocks from the area, I noticed something __________. The sunflower had not started where I saw the stalk begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the __________.

That’s when I realized that __________a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we should have the __________of doing the same thing, too. We need to believe in ourselves knowing we are able to __________ our dreams. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the abilities to get out of the difficulty because it trusted the Universal Truth and believed that it would succeed.

Stand tall like the sunflower and be proud of who and what you are and the environment will begin to __________you. You will find a way to go under or around.

10 . As a librarian, Jennifer William’s mother used to read to her children every day. Therefore, it was her mother who got her ________ to books. “Not until we went to kindergarten,” Williams told vadogwood.com, a local news site. “Until we went to college.”

When Williams, now 54, became a school teacher in Danville, Virginia, she wanted her students to fall in love with ________ just as she had. But early on, she realized that some kids had ________ access to books.

“It’s very ________ to teachers which kids are read to versus (相对于) kids who are not”, she said. “It’s obvious at the end of the first day of school.” To Williams, the solution was simple: Give kids books. In 2017, as part of an event called Engage Danville, she ________ 900 used children’s books over three days. Most people would be satisfied with that. Most.

“I was like, ‘________ could do that;’” she said. “I wanted to do something that’s going to ________ my faith, my dream, my everything.”So she set a new ________ for herself: Give away one million books. It sounds like an ________ number, but as Williams ________ on Facebook: “Don’t ________ in the bleachers (露天看台) if you aren’t willing to work hard out on the field!”

So she got to work, first by persuading (说服) friends to ________ books or money to buy books. Before long, as news of Williams’ project ________, strangers started leaving bundles of books on her front door.

In the four years she’s been doing all this, the Book Lady, as Williams has come to be known, has given away more than 78,000 books—only 922,000 more to reach her goal! And she’s not slowing down. It’s too important for kids with few ________.

“Reading can take you anywhere,” she told CNN. “You can feel ________ in time and space. If you can read, you can learn almost anything.”