1 . It was July 15, 2021, and my friends had helped me celebrate my 31st birthday.

Earlier in the day I had prepared for the _________ event of a flood. We are about a third of a mile from the banks of the Ahr River. It had been raining heavily that week, and the government had issued a flood _________, though not for where I was. _________, I’d placed sandbags on the floor outside my garden door just in case _________ got through. Before my friends left, they _________ me for doing that, but I thought, why take a chance?

As I drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by the _________ of rushing water, as if I were lying beside a waterfall instead of in my bedroom. When I moved my legs off the bed, I was _________ by the touch of cold water lapping against my knees and rising fast. Trembling and in darkness, I _________ my cellphone and turned on the flashlight. I saw water was shooting through the gaps of the garden door.

I admit it, I began to _________. The Ahr, usually such a __________, slow-moving river, had violently burst its banks. And now I had to get out—fast!

Any effects of the celebratory drinks I’d had earlier were now gone. I heard the garden door starting to crack under the __________ of the flood. In bare feet, I started to move to my only __________: the door that leads to the hallway. All around me things were breaking, and the cupboards were being __________.

I tried to pull the door open, but the force of the water wouldn’t __________ me. Finally, I __________ to make a gap of about a foot, just wide enough to squeeze through and make it into the __________.

If I had __________ just a few minutes later, I would have drowned. Many of the houses around us were destroyed, including, __________, a home for the disabled. Not everyone got out.

I came close to drowning that day. But rather than keep thinking about that, I prefer to __________ what my mother told me afterward: “Christian, don’t remember the day when you lost everything. Remember the day you __________.”

2 . Caroline Fanning is an owner of a small business with a very beautiful mission. As a doll _______ since childhood, Caroline has created A Doll Like Me.

The purpose of this project is to create dolls that would have the same _______ as their owners with disabilities or _______ conditions. It was the dolls’ not having enough _______ that pushed Caroline to begin creating dolls like no other to make the children feel _______. And so, Caroline felt it _______ to start creating representative toys for children.

Caroline thought it was important to _______ dolls to the kids because everyone should have a doll that looks like them. Not only beautiful, the dolls created by A Doll Like Me make a _______ in the lives of hundreds of children.

Fanning has learned to _______ everything from birthmarks to body differences. Each doll is ________ , yet they still have one thing in common—all dolls wear a smile.

Caroline’s ultimate goal is to turn her small business into an official ________ organization where every child in need could get their one-of-the-kind doll free of charge. And many people kindly ________ her project, so she has already reached $38. 000 out of $50. 000 goal on GoFundme. Now many of the dolls are funded by ________ !

In addition to that, Caroline is already ________ with a children’s hospital to make it easier to identify kids whose well-being could be ________ by a stuffed toy which looks just like them!

3 . A young woman was sitting next to her mother on the train; she was about 20 years old. Both of them looked tired but _________. The young woman was looking_________from the train’s window. Suddenly, she shouted, “Mom, look! The trees are behind us!” Her voice was so_________ that everybody on the train heard.

Mom smiled. But a young couple_________ nearby looked at the young woman’s behavior (行为) with pity. “Poor young woman. There must be something wrong with her_________ ,” they thought. About a quarter later, the young woman_________again, “Mom, look! The clouds are running with us!” Mom_________again. And she seemed very happy with the young woman’s words. _________ , the couple couldn’t help asking the old woman,   “Sorry if We offend (冒犯) you. But why don’t you _________your daughter to a good doctor?” The old woman smiled and said, “We have just come from a ____________.” “Then you should go to a(n)____________one. Because it seems that your daughter’s situation hasn’t____________,” said one of them. They felt so sorry for the old woman.“No, ____________ , I’m very happy with the treatment (治疗),” said the mother, “My daughter was blind from birth. Today, she is seeing the world for the____________ time.”

Every person has a story. Don’t judge people before you really know them, ____________you’ll be surprised at the truth.

4 . Clinton was a great example of the student every teacher loves to have in class. An immigrant from the Philippines at the age of twelve with _______ English skills, he had traveled far to be the only student at school who _______ scholarships from three different school-based groups. All his teachers felt proud when he announced to be a teacher in the future because we knew he would _______ students’ lives

_______ , Clinton never made it to college. Just two days after he graduated from high school, Clinton was diagnosed with stage four colon(结肠) cancer. The doctors held _______ hope that cancer treatments would do more than postpone the eventual_______ . We were heartbroken. Clinton would never _______ college.He would never teach. He would never marry. He would never have children.

We_______ a hand of help and comfort to Clinton and his family. Many an hour was spent by Clinton's side in the hospital; a T-shirt was sold to help raise_______ for Clinton's medical care, and on the front of that T shirt was the following: “Love is a verb ”. For all of us who knew and loved Clinton, we came to ________ that statement and we believed it would make all the ________ in the world.

Clinton passed away on October 16th. We were all deeply ________ by his death. But we also ________ to the fact that the true duty of our school is beyond the factual knowledge and skills we teach to students. It is helping ________ to grow and mature into ________ people.

5 . Jon was supposed to fly to Seattle fast week for a Beyonce’s concert. But he couldn’t ________ the flight because his new wheelchair was too ________.

Jon said that while he was at Eugene Airport last Thursday, everything went on as ________ at first An Alaska Airlines employee   ________ his ID and tagged his wheelchair, and even remembered him because he had flown to Seattle two weeks earlier.

However, this time around, an airline employee told him his chair was four inches higher, then moved him out of his chair and attempted to fold it, but in ________, while another employee looked online for information about the chair. He was ________ given a complaint form and told only an Airbus plane would be able to ________his new wheelchair

But they did not find any ________ Airbus flights that would get him there in time for the show. So he ________ to TikTok “I have about 22000________ and I usually get about a couple hundred ________ on my videos, so I thought, ‘OK, a couple hundred people will see it’. I never in a billion lifetimes would have thought that this whole thing would have ________ like it did.”

After he posted the ________ on TikTok, hundreds of the social platform’s users began tagging Beyonce. A representative for the singer ________ him, providing him with another wheelchair, and soon he was on his way to see his idol ________ in Texas.

6 . In a heartwarming turn of events, a teenager’s decision to take an unexpected route home resulted in a heroic act of kindness.

Elijah Champion had visited Market Basket on Nederland Avenue to pick up a job application. On his _______ back, he crossed Nederland Avenue at 25th Street _______ his usual 27th Street route. It was because of this change _______ the high school freshman ran across an elderly man who was having trouble walking due to arthritis (关节炎) and fell, _______ him unable to move about a mile and a half from his home. “When I found him, he was _______ on the side of the road with his bottom half in the grass and his top half on the road itself,” Champion told KFDM. “When people passed by, they were sure to go around him, so it was pretty _______ they had seen him.”

_______, Champion went door-to-door _______ for assistance. After knocking on approximately 15 doors, he finally found a/an _______ neighbor, and the beg for help was captured (捕捉) on camera.

“I felt relieved and ________ at the same time because I knew that if I tried hard enough, I would find someone who would help,” ________ Champion, “It was ________ just to see how many people wouldn’t help another human being.”

Champion’s act of kindness gained attention on Facebook, where his kind action received high ________ from Nederland locals. Although he didn’t expect the widespread ________, Champion hopes his story inspires others to show similar kindness. “I think if everyone ________ each other, this world would be a lot happier,” reflected Champion.

7 . When my son was eight years old, he loved to play practical jokes on me. Every time I walked into a room, a shower of stuffed animal toys(毛绒玩具) _______ on my head. He put fake flies in the ice-cube trays(制冰盒), and ants in my purse. You never knew when or where he would strike. I admired his _______, but I have to admit there were days when his jokes got _______.

One weekend, when we got home after a long day at the beach, I put the blanket in the wash. I’d throw it in the dryer the next morning. When I pulled the _______ out of the washer the next morning, a(an) _______, brown tarantula(蜘蛛) fell at my _______. I figured my son had _______ again. I picked it up and was _______ at how lifelike it looked. It was as big as the palm of my hand. Whoever made this toy spider really went all-out for detail.

It even had hair on it like a real tarantula. I took it inside and found my son watching television. I _______ it in his face and said, “Very funny, Adam.”

His face turned pale ________. He backed up and said, "Mom, I didn’t do that. It’s real. "At first, I didn’t ________ him, but then I saw the ________ on his face. I screamed, he screamed, and the tarantula went flying across the room. We both ran out of the house. When we got the ________ to go back inside, it was still lying where it had landed, dead. We both started ________ so hard that we were in tears. That day cured him of his practical jokes; he knew he could never ________ that one.

8 . Helen was sitting in the garden one evening when she heard a loud crash. As she walked to the front of the house, she could see a small crowd ________ on the road outside. A 19-year-old boy was ________ in a pool of blood near a crashed motorbike. His leg was bleeding ________.

Helen had ________ a British Red Cross first aid course. She used her training to make a quick judgement of the situation. And then she ________ back inside her home to get lots of thick towels to stop the bleeding.

Helen raced back to the scene, ________ in hand. Someone had called an ________, but the other people were afraid to come forward and ________ her. She used the towel as best as she could to apply pressure to the wounded ________ until help arrived.

Helen successfully managed to ________ the bleeding while waiting for help to arrive. Before long the ambulance crew were at the scene.

________, doctors weren’t able to save the boy’s leg. But they did save his life — and Helen’s ________ played an important role. Without the simple but ________ first aid skills Helen used, the result of this crash could have been far ________.

“I take comfort in the fact that knowing first aid helped me to ________ a stranger’s life,” said Helen proudly.

9 . Bella, a 14-year-old cat from Huntingdon, UK, has claimed the Guinness Record for the world’s loudest purr (猫叫声) by a domestic cat, with a noisy purr______at 54.59 decibels (分贝).

The Spink family has had Bella for almost 15 years, and they’ve always______that she might have the world’s loudest purr. Friends and family would always ______her loud purring, and Nicole Spink’s late husband would ______that she was louder than the TV.

One day, they decided to put Bella’s purring to the test―they ______a smartphone app to measure the cat’s purr and were blown away by the______. She was louder than the Guinness World record for the loudest purr by a domestic cat, so they applied for an official record______.

Measuring sound with a smartphone app and having it measured by a sound engineer can bring about totally______ results, but in this case, the Spinks were lucky to have their measurements______. After feasting on a bowl of her favorite food, Bella got to enjoy some much-needed petting by her owner and she produced some ______loud purring.

The standardized class-1 sound meter recorded Bella’s ______pur at 54.59 decibels. That was more than enough to beat the 50-decibel requirement to______the Guinness Record.

It’s important to note that while Bella has ______the record for the loudest purr by a living domestic cat, she doesn’t have the loudest purr in history. That ______belongs to the late Smokey and Merlin, two cats who purred at the ______noise level of 67.8 dB, a full 13.21 louder than Bella.

10 . My photographs are the items I would definitely take or guard in case of an emergency. But what else? This was the question I asked myself as a ________ came toward us.

Unlike some friends and________, we decided to stay in our home. We didn’t have to choose what we would save by ________ it into the car, but we still had to decide what required protection by storing it in our walk-in closet. Surprisingly, few items made the cut - an obvious ________ that we had surrounded ourselves with beautiful yet unessential items. We needed ________ for the truly important things: ourselves.

Because when you hear the roar of the winds, or when something ________ hard against your windows, you don’t think of photos.You don’t worry about your big screen TV, or those paintings you’ve covered with towels to protect them, or that ________ car that you still haven’t finished paying for.

As ________ goes on outside, this is what you think: My children, are they OK? Are their impact-resistant(耐冲击的) windows working ________? Are their roofs keeping out the damage? My grandchildren, are they crying out in fear? Are they ________ as their own grandparents are? My relatives — yes, even those I try to avoid — have they ________ the worst of it? My friends, will they be forced to move somewhere else permanently? You don’t think about what you own but about what you love; what money can’t buy back.

Months and years after the hurricane, I often told people that there are two parts to ________ this kind of catastrophe: the horror of the hurricane itself and then the rebuilding that follows. The ________ together of a life, however, will take months, perhaps years.

But we will do it, ________ and as a community. Of that I have no doubt. In fact, I’ll make one more prediction. Piece by piece, item by item, we will once again collect the material possessions that decorate a home. I hate to admit this, but lessons learned ________ fear aren’t always long-lasting.