1 . Relaxing under a sun umbrella, I felt comfortable. My friend Chickie went for a swim.

The ocean was as smooth as glass. I thought,“I can float (漂浮) on my back as if I were in a swimming pool.” Then I ______ it. I closed my eyes and ______ the gentle rocking under me.

I floated peacefully until the water under me rolled and splashed (溅起) over my face. I opened my eyes and ______ around. How did I get so far from the ______? I hadn’t realized how ______ the sea was carrying me.

I ______ swimming as quick and hard as I could. I cried for help, but I was completely ______ in the water. Far off on the beach I could see people ______ their umbrellas. I thought, “It must be the time for lifeguards to leave work. I’m going to ______ here and nobody even sees me!”

Two young men suddenly came near me. One of them ______ my arm. The other held his arm. ______ they pulled me toward the beach.

“You were caught in a riptide (激流),” one man said.

“Thank you so much for ______ me,” I said.

Slowly I got up to walk back to my ______. Chickie had come back. I looked back at my ______ and found they had simply disappeared. Then I sat down with my friend to tell her about my ______.

2 . Confucius would be happy if he lived in the modern world. He would see his works and philosophies(哲学) still _______________ among teenagers even though they live in an_______________ of information.

In Changzhou No.2 Middle School, Jiangsu, all senior 3 students now_______________ a course in Lun Yu once a week. The school aims to improve students’ appreciation of the Confucian heritage(遗产)as well as_______________   Chinese civilization.

“Students’ attendance in this course will _______________   30 percent of their Chinese score on the final exam.This reward_______________ their interest in the course, which is _______________ but full of wisdom,” said Cao Yongzhong, a Chinese _______________ at the school.

_______________won’t be easy for students to enjoy The Analects(文选) of Confucius ________________ ancient Chinese as they________________   so many other subjects to learn and exams to ________________.

Cheng Yun,18, didn’t like the”additional burden”________________, but now it turns to be a course ________________ she looks forward to.

“I thought it would ________________ my time for homework, but it doesn’t.________________ sentences are short and concise(精练). I even use some of his wise   sayings in my compositions, ________________   makes my writing more attractive,” Cheng said. ________________ the fact that all students are required to learn some chapters of the book when in junior school, they may be ________________ young to understand the truths revealed(揭示)by Confucius.” Although I ________________ the language we use nowadays to Confucius, what the master said in the book does help me shape my personality.”said Zhang Junzhuo,18.

3 . People _________ ask me about my life because I’m an astronaut and they think astronauts’ lives are _________. They think that we walk on the moon _________! They don’t know that, since 1969, only 12 astronauts have landed on the moon. Every day, we train, study and _________ research right here on Earth. I haven’t even been in space yet and _________ my days are quite boring.

Every day I get up at 6:30 am and usually _________ for an hour. I prefer exercising in the mornings when it’s still cool and _______. I have classes all morning and training all afternoon. I love _________ weightlessness. This _________ us for life in space and it’s usually fun.

When I get home in the evenings, I often switch ________ the TV. Sometimes I don’t watch it, but it stops me from feeling __________. I like talk shows but I ________ watch them. I listen to them and get on with other things at the same time! I __________ to Oprah right now actually. At 7 o’clock this evening, they __________ the names of the astronauts going on the next space mission. I __________ I’m one of them.

4 . Some people touch our lives, perhaps making us think or smile, often without even realizing it. A few years ago, I worked at a church and since my_________was home schooling, he went with me to the church every day. Most mornings, we’d stop at a local convenience store, getting a chocolate drink for him and a_________for me.

There were other stores we could have frequented, _________we passed many stores along the way. But the clerk at the store we chose to visit refreshed our lives each day, and so we returned again and again. Perhaps the store clerk had_________worked in a fast food restaurant, where she learned to ask, “Would you like fries with that?” Perhaps she’d been_________in another store, where she learned, well, about multiple selling.

I think that she had found her own_________ way of enjoying life and her job. I’m not even sure that she was aware that her_________for life and her job put a smile upon the face of each customer. Customers did, indeed, return again and again for a bit of good cheer as only that special clerk could give.

With my_________in hand, every time I went to the counter, the clerk never asked me if I wanted a cake with my coffee.   _________， she asked, “Would you like some batteries with that coffee?” Of my son with his chocolate drink, she enquired, “Would you like a__________with that drink?”

Yes, life is what you make of it. This clerk’s method of dealing with what some__________is a boring job made the hours in her day more enjoyable. And in doing that, she also__________the lives of others and made them laugh.

Sometimes, if my day at the church had been particularly__________, or if my son’s__________rather difficult, we’d stop at that store before heading home. We’d__________as we left the store, the clerk’s words resounding behind us. “Would you like some shampoo with that soda?”

5 . James Charles is the manager of Kiplin Automotive Group. For about two months, he has been _______ people to use the company’s parking lot as a safe place to sleep at night.

Charles was first _______ to pursue (从事)his labor of love after he found there was a woman _______ in a car. Knowing the woman was _______, Charles tried to get her into a shelter. However, he was _______ to find that every shelter in the city was full. _______ he paid for her to stay in a hotel for a few nights, he knew there were other people experiencing the same situation. “That was really the _______ I got at that time and I realized I needed to do something for those people without delay (耽搁),” he said.

Then Charles _______ made a post online asking community members to _______ the word about his plan, so that people in need could know his good ________. “For those going through ________ times, we would like to ________ a safe place for you. We can’t put everyone in a hotel, but ________ we can get you a parking lot, a safe place for the night,” wrote Charles.

Since more and more people have ________ his social media post, more and more people joined Charles in reaching a hand. “Any ________, no matter how small, will go towards helping the homeless,” Charles said, “One hand washes the other; two hands wash the face.”

6 . Alpinist (登山家) Marion has cleaned up 8. 5 tons of waste on Mount Qomolangma in just 3 years with her team.

_________? We certainly think so. But that’s nothing compared to Marion’s future _________.

Marion has a tough and _________ goal: finish cleaning up Qomolangma and then _________ on to the entire Himalayan mountain range.

“Climbing Qomolangma should offer one of the best interactions between _________ and the natural world. But _________, I realized that the mountain had been _________in the past 30 years when I reached the top in 2013. Nearly 10 tonnes of waste had been _________ at the top alone! I was totally shocked when I _________ the rubbish problem on the mountain,” she told the Yves Rocher Foundation.

For Marion,__________ is an important part of her life that helps her feel alive. Therefore, she wants to do her __________ in helping others get the best possible experience. Her __________ to nature started when she was a child. She would __________ in the woods and learn the names of the plants and animals. As a __________, she’s been working as a mountain guide in India and Tibet for over 17 years. After founding the Clean Qomolangma project, she __________ to ask the local authorities to __________ her project. She was given 50 yaks (牦牛) to help get the waste down. We can only hope that Marion will keep on and that others will __________ her.

The __________ affecting the Himalayas has an effect on the drinking water used by around 2 billion people living there, so the __________ to clean up the mountains isn’t just about protecting nature. It’s also about our __________ of life.

7 . My childhood is closely associated with the Yellow River. My father ______ to take me with him on his trips to Longyangxia Reservoir. At Longyangxia, I was ______ by the beauty of nature and as a child, I wanted to stay there and ______ up with the Yellow River. Li Bai, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, praised the ______ water of the Yellow River. He saw it as coming down from heaven and ______ the people living on the banks of the river. However, in 1997, for about 330 days, not a single ______ of water from the Yellow River went into the sea. ______ are not the only punishments given by nature. A friend of my father, a university professor, is doing ______ on the Yellow River. According to him, since there is no longer enough water to ______ the mud, the river may soon change its course ______ we allow this situation to continue. This is the ______ of unbalanced growth. If we’d taken care of the vegetation in the upper and middle ______ of the river, we would still be able to ______ it as Li Bai described it.

In fact, people have begun to ______ the problem. I have seen farmers _______ trees on mountain slopes in Shanxi province. I have seen them ______ up the hillsides carrying heavy buckets of water collected several kilometers away down in the valley to ______ around the trees. These farmers are ______ helping our Yellow River, just as the river has helped them. These unsung heroes gave me the confidence that with hard work of us all, we and nature will grow together, and ______ in the future, we will be able to drink the ______ water from the Yellow River-our mother river.

8 . Do you find yourself pulling away from others, especially if you’ve experienced a deep disappointment? Maybe the most ______ thing most of us can do is to be with people when we don’t feel like being around anybody.

A man who lost his wife to cancer found himself wanting to be ______ . He dropped out of his community and ______ all of the activities he and his wife were used to for year. He ______ socializing at work and returned ______ home to an empty house after work. He turned down ______ from friends and co-workers.

His friends became ______ . One came by to visit and invite him over for supper the next evening. The two old friends sat in comfortable chairs by a ______ . The visitor extended the dinner invitation and ______ him to come, “You may need to ______ others to share your pain.”

The man responded that he felt better ______ staying with other people. “And ______ ,” he said, “it’s just too difficult to get out anymore.”

They sat in ______ for a while, watching the wood burn in the fireplace. Then the visitor did a(n) ______ thing. He took tongs (火钳) by the fireplace, reached into the fire, pulled out a ______ coal and laid down by itself on the earth. “That’s you,” he said.

The man sat in silence, ______ the red-hot ember. Neither man looked ______ as the once hot coal gradually transformed into a black lump. After some moments, the man said, “I get the ______ , my friend. I’ll be over tomorrow evening.”

We cannot ______ in any healthy way by ourselves. The leaf needs the branch. The branch needs the trunk. The trunk needs the roots. And the roots need the rest of the tree. We are ______ . And in that connection life and vitality (活力) are found.

9 . The first astronauts

Since the earliest times, people have looked up at the stars, the moon and the planets. Today people use modern machines ________at the sky. This is very different from the situation________years ago when people could only use their eyes. Perhaps they dreamed of________the universe.

When did humans first go into space? The story began not so very long ago,________the first astronauts were not people﹣they were animals.

Scientists wanted to make travelling to space as ________ as possible for humans. So they decided to experiment with animals and test________ in spaceflights. Insects, mice, frogs, dogs and monkeys were some of the animals________first went into space. Many of them ________, but they helped to make space travel safer for humans. For their great service, we________forget these animals.

Albert Ⅱ was the first monkey to go into space in 1949. Sadly he died ________ his spaceship landed back on Earth.

________ the result was different for Ham the Monkey. His story ended happily when he return to earth________very good health.

Scientists wanted to know the answer to the important question: could ________ animal like Ham do the same things in space as he could do on Earth? The answer came when Ham________ into space in 1961. Yes, he did everything well and lived for ________ 16 years.

10 . In the early 1990s, Eric Domb, a highly successful lawyer, came up with the idea of building a bird park. His father-in-law ________ the idea in the beginning, but when the ________ started to make shape he backed out. Domb thus had to ________ money from former clients, his two brothers and father as well as a bank to build a zoological park known as Pairi Daiza.

After the park opened in 1994, his inexperience led to many ________, but he pushed on with his venture (冒险). By 2000, the park was turning a profit, and Domb’s ambitions were ________. The park needed more than birds, he believed, and other creatures and cultural gardens would help turn it into something ________.

Since his childhood he has been fascinated by Chinese ________. In 2006, he built the first Chinese garden, Dream of Han Wu Di in his zoo. It was said to be the largest Chinese garden in Europe. Domb kept ________ new elements. It finally took more than six years to complete the project.

Domb felt ________ by the joint panda breeding program. Domb and his people spent the following months ________ building giant panda houses with no guarantee that Pairi Daiza would be fortunate enough to ________ giant pandas. The huge enclosure built includes a pool, cave and ________ plantation.

Now, Domb is eager to tell how he ________ a pair of giant pandas, Xing Hui and Hao Hao in February 2014. The sense of ________ is all the more profound in that Pairi Daiza is one of the few private zoos outside China to ________ giant pandas.