1 . On Oct. 11, hundreds of runners competed in a cross-country race in Minnesota. Melanie Bailey should have _________ the course earlier than she did. Her _________ came because she was carrying a _________ across the finish line.

As reported by a local newspaper, Bailey was more than two-thirds of the way through her _________ when a runner in front of her began crying in pain. She _________ to help her fellow runner, Danielle Lenoue. Bailey took her arm to see if she could walk forward with _________. She couldn’t. Bailey then _________ to let Lenoue climb onto her back and carried her all the way to the finish line, then another 300 feet to where Lenoue could get _________ attention.

Once there, Lenoue was _________ and later taken to a hospital, where she learned that she had serious injuries in one of her knees. She would have struggled with extreme __________ to make it to that aid checkpoint without Bailey’s help.

As for Bailey, she is more __________ about why her act is considered a big __________. “She was just crying. I couldn’t __________ her,” Bailey told the reporter. “I feel like I was just doing the right thing.”

Although the two young women were strangers before the __________, they’ve since become friends. Neither won the race, but the __________ of human kindness won the day.

2 . In April last year, I saw a post on the PNP (Pilots N Paws) website from a family in Topeka. They had to move to Virginia but they were on a very tight _______. They could not afford to pay for _______ for their dog, Tiffy, and _______ wanted to take her with them.

It just _______ that I was planning another PNP flight with another pilot, Karen, who _______ to take Tiffy from Kansas City to Virginia. What I was to do was fly to Topeka to _______ Tiffy.

When I met Tiffy’s owners, they seemed very _______. George, the husband, was trying to be calm, but I could tell this was _______ for him, having to leave his dog to a _______ and trust that everything would __________.

After some goodbyes, I asked George and his wife to help me __________ Tiffy into the plane. I promised to take care of Tiffy and __________ them as soon as we got to Kansas City.

The flight was __________, and Tiffy was a great passenger. The next day, she __________ with Karen and made it back to George in Virginia within a few days. He was so __________ and sent me a nice e-mail with pictures. It felt great to know that I had helped bring this family together again.

4 . The sun was beginning to sink as I set off into the Harenna Forest. I was on my way to _________ a unique honey harvest. Here, in south-east Ethiopia, hand-carved beehives(蜂箱)are placed in the _________. Reaching them to get the honey is difficult—and often _________ .

I _________ beekeeper Ziyad over a wide stretch of grassland before entering a thick jungle. Ziyad began preparations. He _________ handfuls of damp tree leaves, wrapped them with string, and _________ the bunch to create a torch(火把). Then, with one end of a rope tied to his waist and the other end around the trunk of a tree, Ziyad began _________ . He stopped every few minutes to move the _________ higher up the tree trunk.

_________ , Ziyad got close to the hive which was around 20 metres above the ground. Sitting on a branch, he __________ towards it and blew smoke from his torch into a tiny hole in the hive. Suddenly, Ziyad let out a sharp cry. Within seconds, he’d __________ the trunk and was back on the ground.

It was too __________ to collect the honey. A cool summer had delayed __________ . Baby bees were still in the honeycombs(蜂巢). The adult bees were __________ and kept attacking as Ziyad escaped from the tree. He had to wait for the right __________ to go back up.

5 . To become the Olympic champion in the individual (个人) all-around event, Gabby Douglas had to leave everything she _________ best. She had to _______   her bedroom in Virginia. She had to say _________ to her two dogs and to the beach, where she loved to _________ waves on her board. But it was _________ to take the leap (飞跃), however _________ it would be. Even at 14, Douglas knew that. So she _________ about 1,200 miles away from home, to _________ with a coach from China. She lived with a family she had never _________ and everything was new to her.

As it turned out, Douglas did __________ what she needed to do to become Olympic champion when she __________two Russians. The Chinese coach __________ Douglas into one of the best gymnasts in the __________, helping her skyrocket from an __________ member of the national team to the top of the sport. By __________ the Olympic all-around title, she became the first black woman to do so. She __________ the competition from beginning to end. She said she had felt __________ all along that she would win.

Not so long ago, Martha Karolyl, the coordinator (联络人) of the women’s national team, did not think Douglas had what it __________ to be an Olympian. As time went by, she thought __________ that she could make the London Games — and win.

“I’m going to inspire so many people,” she said. “I’m ready to __________.” And shine she did.

6 . Many years ago, I bought a house in the Garfagnana, where we still go every summer. The first time we ______ there, we heard the chug chug-chug of a motorbike ______ its way down the hill toward us. It was ______ called Mario, coming to ______ us a box containing some tomatoes and a bottle of wine. It was a very nice ______ for him to make. But when we looked at the tomatoes, we were ______ because they were so misshapen: not at all like the nice, round, ______ things you get in a supermarket. And the wine was cloudy, in a funny old bottle with no label (标签) on it. These can’t be any ______, we thought. But we were ______ his kindness, so we ______ them.

What we discovered is that it’s ______ to judge what you eat only by its ______. Those tomatoes had ______ that reminded me of the ones my uncle used to grow when I was a child. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes ______ perfect but taste of water. Nobody’s going to have a ______ memory of those. It’s a surprise they haven’t managed to grow square ones so that they can ______ them easily. Mario’s wine may have been cloudy and come out of an old bottle, but it was ______.

It’s good to eat things at the correct time, when they’re ______, and as close as possible to where they were ______. What Mario had ______ us was the taste of the Garfagnana.

7 . Like many young people, Jessica wants to travel the globe. Unlike most of them, this 25-year-old is doing it _______ . She and her husband have spent the last two years traveling the world, stopping everywhere from Paris to Singapore. It might sound like one long, expensive _______ , but the couple has an unusual way to make their travel _______ .

They’re part of a new form of the _______ economy: an online group of house sitters. Throughout their no-cost stays in _______ homes, they feed pets and water plants in the homeowner’s _______ .

It’s not all sightseeing. The two travelers carefully _______ their trips, scheduling their days around the pets that are sometimes difficult to _______ . But house sitting also offers a level of _______ they can’t find in a hotel. “It’s like ________ at a friend’s house,” Jessica says.

The couple has a high ________ rate in getting accepted as house sitters and they always go beyond the homeowner’s ________ . For Jessica, that means ________ plenty of pictures of happy pets, keeping the house ________ and leaving a nice small gift before heading to the next house. “You want to make the homeowner feel that they made the right ________ ,” she says.

8 . My life as a tax-paying employed person began in middle school, when, for three whole days, I worked in a baking factory.

My best friend Betsy’s father was a manager at Hough Bakeries, which, at Easter time, _________ little bunny (兔子) cakes for all its _________throughout Cleveland. It happened that the plant downtown needed eight kids for _________ help during our spring break, for which I had no_________ beyond listening to my favorite records. I’d _________ minimum wage. I’d see how a factory_________. My parents thought all of this was a grand idea and called Betsy’s dad with their _________.

Our_________in the factory were simple: Place cakes on a moving belt. Attach icing (糖霜) ears. Apply icing eyes and nose._________ bunny from the belt. This was ____________ than it sounds.____________ a bit and the cakes pile up. As I told my parents at dinner that first night, it was all a little more high-pressure than I’d   ____________ .

Dad __________. The son of a grocer, he’d spent the summers of his childhood____________ food in Benardsville, New Jersey. This was the sort of work that made you____________ the dollars you earned and respect those who did the work, he told me.

9 . When I decided to buy a house in Europe ten years ago, I didn't think too long. I liked traveling in France, but when it came to picking my favorite spot to _______, Italy was the clear winner.

During my first visit to Italy, I _______ to ask for directions or order in a restaurant. But every time I tried to _______ a sentence of   Italian together, the locals smiled at me and _______ my language skills. That encouragement helped me to get through the language _______. After I made Italy my permanent home, I discovered how _______ Italians are. Neighbors will bring me freshly made cheese and will come to my door to _______ me to close the window in my car when rain is coming. It's these small _______ of kindness that make a new country feel like home.

As a foodie, the way to my heart is through my stomach, and nowhere fuels my _______ quite like Italy. Each town has its own traditional ________, and every family keeps a recipe passed from one generation to another. Families ________ for big meals on Sundays, birthdays, and whatever other excuses they can ________. These meals are always ________ by laughter and joy. Whatever ________ life in Italy might have, the problems are ________ once you sit down to a big meal with friends and family.

10 . While taking a 20-hour train ride along the edge of the Taklimakan Desert in northwestern China, I had the kind of humbling, educational, and above all else, wonderful ________ with a local that all travelers long for. A young Chinese man ________ me on the train. My ________ friend spoke virtually no English, so I happily took the ________ to practice my Chinese.

Over several hours, he would tell me about how he had ________ a two-year professional school to quickly find a job ________ highways in order to help support his family. Perhaps the most ________, however, was the fact that this man spent hours studying every day after hard physical labor. Without batting an eye, he would ________ a translated Emerson passage before asking about the literary influence of American ________ as a whole. ”And what do you all learn about Russian authors?” I ________ him asking at one point.

It would have been easy to ________ my assumptions about this highway builder who had never been more than a few hundred miles from home. But this highly informed, ________ , and admirable person prevented me doing so. In the course of a couple of hours, he ________ me just how much one can gain from ________ with an open mind, and a willingness to ________ with locals from all walks of life.