1 . There I stood with tears in my eyes, I looked at a face which was so _________ that I might mistake it for own. I stared at her in _________. It felt like a dream. I hugged her; she was real.

Adopted at a very young age, I _________ surrounded by people loved as family._________, the faces weren't like mine. They were people that loved me. As I got older, the curiosity to learn more about myself took hold and didn't _________. Who was I? Where did I come from?

At the age of 21, I was given the chance to _________ it out thanks to my adoptive parents' _________. They accompanied me to the adoption agency. Then the staff _________ the process of finding my birth mother. But the process was _________ and I didn't expect there would be many complex procedures. And the agency also had caution to move the procedures to ensure both parties' privacy especially ____________ my birth mother didn't choose to meet me.

Months later the agency told me that my birth mother was found and that she ____________ to meet me. We were excited. My parents said my birth mother made great sacrifice as she gave me away, which __________ them to support the family. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been possible on their own. I was ____________ what my birth mother might be doing and what she might look like. I created a(n) ____________ in my head.

Alter a long process, the moment finally came---we were to ____________. So, there we were, in a room. I found we had much ____________: we shared a sense of humor; we ____________ old pictures, finding both like the "V" gesture. She apologized for any problems with my frizzy（卷曲的）, crazy hair and __________ herself. We laughed, when admitting both were in a close relationship with flatirons（熨斗）because of frequently __________ the wildness of our hair.

She said she had made a(n)____________ decision, when watching me leave with only the hope that another family could provide what she couldn't. She said she hesitated for long but knew she was right, I knew she loved me very much.

2 . Last spring, I was fortunate to be chosen to participate in an exchange study program. In my application letter, I was careful to______how much I wanted to see France; evidently, my excitement really came through in my words. Once I_______that I was going, all I could think about was the fun of foreign travel and making all sorts of new and____friends. While traveling was inspring and meeting people was_____, nothing about my term in France was what I______.

The moment I arrived in Paris, I was_______by a nice French couple who would become my host parents. My entire experience was joyous and exciting__________I received some shocking news from my program coordinator(协调人): there had been a death in my host parents’ extended family. They had to travel outside France for several weeks. That afternoon, I had to_________out of one family’s house and into another. The exchange coordinator told me I’d have a_________this time and asked whether I could share a bedroom with an English speaker. To avoid the temptation (诱惑) to_________my native language, I asked not to be_______with an English-speaking roommate. When I got to my new room, I_______myself to my new roommate Paolo, a Brazilian(巴西人) the same age as I, who I was surprised to find playing one of my favourite CD! In just a few hours, we knew we’d be good friends for the rest of the_______.

I left France with many________, so when people ask me what my favorite part of the trip was, they are always_______to hear me talk about my Brazilian friend Paolo and the scores of weekdays in class, weeknights on the town, and weekends_________France we enjoyed together. I love how people______seem so different, but end up being so__________. The most valuabe lesson I gain from studying in France wasn’t just to respect the French people_______to respect all people, for your next best friend could be just a continent away. I would recommend an exchange program to anyone who wants to experience foreign culture and gain meaningful_______.

3 . My father wasn’t sentimental about material goods and never saved about material goods and never saved anything except once. It had something to ______. with a baseball game. Dreaming that someday I would watch my heroes at Yankee Stadium, I wrote a schedule and every night, ________ at the summer dates. To my surprise, one evening I saw my father ________ it. The following Sunday, he said,“________ some coins from my bag and each week we'll add to it, and maybe we can ________it this summer. ”

I washed out a jar and ________ a label: YANKEE STADIUM FUND, 1960.

The day is coming but with no ________ of my father. I held our money jar and tried not to accept still another year of waiting when the door crashed open and my father ________ "We're going!"

My father bought two ________ tickets. It was even more ________ than I had imagined. I sat cheering every ________, but my father made no ________ of it. His face lined with exhaustion ________ working all week. After the game, when we got home, my father said," Save that jar. Well start putting money in tomorrow for our ________ "game". Immediately I taped on a/an ________ label: YANKEE STADIUM FUND, 1961.

Months later, my father died. I walked to my father' bedroom, hoping to find some ________ I noticed his old prayer book ________ on the dresser. As I slowly thumbed through the yellowed pages, something blue fell out and ________ to the floor. I picked up the   ________ ticket stub(存根) and read, October 1,1960. General Admission. My father, who saved nothing for ________ reasons, had decided to save this.

4 . I lived in America with my teenage son Karl. After his father died, Karl became very shy, quiet and only concerned about his thoughts. As a_________ parent, I tried to do my best to talk to him. But the more I tried, the more he __ When his report card arrived during his third year. it said that he had been__________95 times from classes and had six___________grades for the year. At this rate he would never________ . I sent him to the school adviser, and I even begged him. __________worked.

One night I felt so powerless that I got down _________ my knees and prayed for help. “Please God, I can’t do anything more for my son. I’m at the end of my hope. I’m giving the whole thing up to___________. ”

One day, I was at work when I got a (an)_________ . A man introduced himself as the headmaster. “I want to talk to you about Karl’s absence. ”________he could say another word, I was very upset and all my__________and sadness over Karl came__________into the ears of this stranger. “I do ___________my son but I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything to get Karl to go back to school but nothing has worked. It’s out of my ________ . ” For a moment there was (a)__________on the other end of the line. The headmaster seriously said, “Thank you for your time”, and hung up.

Karl’s next report card showed an obvious__________in his grades. Finally, he even made the honor roll. In his________year, I attended a parent-teacher meeting with Karl. I noticed that his__________were astonished at the way he had turned himself around. On our way home, he said, “Mum,__________that call from the headmaster last year?” I nodded. “That was me. I thought I’d play a joke but when I heard what you said, it really hit me how much I was hurting you. That’s___________I knew I had to make you proud. ”

5 . My family is still recovering from the hard time of the past few years. It began when my teenaged son became _______.

As anyone who has ever _______ a seriously sick child knows, the stress doesn’t go away. Every day the air carried the _______ of an approaching storm. My husband and I seemed to forget how to _______ — we couldn’t have a simple conversation without fighting and tears.

One night, my son and I were discussing Valentine’s gifts. I _______ that his dad gave me a kazoo (卡祖笛) for our first Valentine’s Day.

My first _______ to this gift was confusion, which quickly turned to _______ when I, a professional saxophone (萨克斯风) player, couldn’t get it to make a _______. The kazoo eventually was _______ away and I hadn’t thought of it __________ that evening. Interested, he asked to see it. After some trouble, I found it __________ in a dusty box.

“You couldn’t make a sound?” he asked, amazed, turning it __________ in his hands. “What’s so hard about it?”

“I don’t know. It just never __________.”

My husband grabbed (抓住) the kazoo — “It’s __________! Look, you just do this …” — and blew. __________ happened. Surprised, he tried again, only to produce a sound like an angry bee.

We burst into laughter as if the long-settled dark cloud had __________ and let in a ray of sunshine. Eyes met and souls __________. My son took a turn on the kazoo. He did no better than us. More __________.The mood stayed light for the rest of the evening.

Even though we have gone through a lot, __________, we can still connect as a family. There is always light to lead the way out of the __________.

6 . One night after dinner my dad told my brother and me that we needed to have a family talk. As I sat on the foot of my parents’ bed watching my mom _______to tell us what was going on, I heard the two words that would change my whole_______:multiple sclerosis (MS) (多发性硬化). I was only 14 then. _______all I could do was burst into tears.

The house was a mix of_______and quietness in the weeks that followed. I had never felt so alone and helpless. I was sure if I hadn’t gotten _______I would have gone crazy. After a few months I went to my first MS support group. I was excited to_______these meetings and ask the doctors there all the questions that the articles hadn’t_______.When the speaker named Rita that night stood and introduced herself, I was_______to hear she was a nurse who is _______for multiple sclerosis. I had__________heard of a nurse having such a specific field.

As she __________, I discovered how much Rita understood about how this disease was__________ my family. Over time I __________Rita’s job really mattered. That’s when I discovered I__________to be a nurse. The work my mom’s doctors and nurses have done with her has vastly __________her life. They teach her to be__________and supply her with many types of __________.

I think the best people to help others get through __________are those who have gone through them firsthand and I feel that my__________will help me become an __________nurse who can help other families get through hardships of having a loved one with an illness.

7 . Another person's enthusiasm was what set me moving toward the success I have achieved. That person was my stepmother.

I was nine years old when she entered our home in rural Virginia. My father_________me to her with these words: “I would like you to meet the fellow who is_________for being the worst boy in this county and will probably start throwing rocks at you no_________ than tomorrow morning.”

My stepmother walked over to me, _________my head slightly upward, and looked me right in the eye. Then she looked at my father and replied, “You are_________This is not the worst boy at all, _________the smartest one who hasn't yet found an outlet(释放的途径) for his enthusiasm.”

That statement began a(n)_________between us. No one had ever called me smart. My family and neighbors had built me up in my_________as a bad boy. My stepmother changed all that.

She changed many things. She_________my father to go to a dental school, from which he graduated with honors. She moved our family into the county seat, where my father's career could be more__________and my brother and I could be better__________.

When I turned fourteen, she bought me a secondhand__________and told me that she believed that I could become a writer. I knew her enthusiasm, I__________ it, and I saw how it had already improved our lives. I accepted her__________ and began to write for local newspapers. I was doing the same kind of__________that great day I went to interview Andrew Camegie and received the task which became my life's work later. I wasn't the__________beneficiary(受益者). My father became the__________ man in town. My brother and stepbrothers became a physician, a dentist, a lawyer, and a college president.

What power__________has! When that power is released to support the certainty of one's purpose and is__________ strengthened by faith, it becomes an irresistible(不可抗拒的) force which poverty and temporary defeat can never________.

You can communicate that power to anyone who needs it. This is probably the greatest work you can do with your enthusiasm.

8 . A child wrote a heartbreaking letter about smartphones and when his parents read it, they were _______ to tears.

The use of smartphones had such a(n)_______ on our society. Tasks much _______ and communication is much more convenient(方便的) because we can carry around our smartphones wherever we go. While there are so many _______ to have a smartphone, there are many arguments against having one too. And a child _______ his complaint(抱怨) in a very _______ letter that his parents read.

The child’s mom just so _______ to be his teacher and she gave her students a _______ to write a paper on what they would like to be in this modern world. She was _______ the homework in the kitchen and flipping(快速翻阅) from one paper to the next and writing down their grades in between. Then ________ she came to a stop.

She could not ________ what she was reading. Her husband noticed her ________ and asked her what was wrong. And she told him, a child wrote that he would like to be a ________, but for reasons that were so ________.He felt that his parents ________ their smartphones so much and that they paid more attention to their smartphones than they did to him. He ________ that as soon as his dad came home from work he went straight to his phone ________ paying attention to him. She was already in tears, but her husband was even more ________ when she told him that it was their son who wrote it.

Stories like this always remind me to be more ________ about the time and attention I give to my smartphone. I think I will start ________ my phone when I am spending time with those I reassure(珍惜).

9 . Now I am living in Italy, working as an English language assistant. I am living with one of the _______ from a local school, who is very kind. At the moment, it’s a bit _______ as we don’t always understand each other. This is known as a _______ barrier(障碍), when two people cannot communicate because they don’t have a language in _______.

I have learnt that it is more _______ speaking in real life than speaking it in the classroom. My teachers could _______things to me in English when I didn’t understand. My _______ doesn’t speak any English. When I don’t know the _______ in Italian, I try to explain it and when that doesn’t _______, I try to show the thing I’m talking about.

Yesterday, the Internet wasn’t working and I had to __________ my housemate where the router(路由器) was so I could find the password for the Wi-Fi. I had no __________ what the Italian word for router was so I tried to explain it several time. In the end, I called it the “Internet box” and she __________ what I meant.

However, it isn’t all __________. When we finally understand each other, we both __________ and have a little celebration. Sometimes I feel very __________ because keep making many mistakes, but my housemate __________ me nicely and tells me that I’m doing well. I can also feel my language __________ because I have no choice but to __________ Italian. I hope that I will be speaking like a real Italian by the time I __________. I’m determined to __________ over this language barrier.

10 . One day, many years ago, when I was working as a psychologist at a children's institution in England, an adolescent boy showed up in the waiting room. I went out there where he was _______up and down restlessly.

Tim wore a black raincoat that was_____ all the way up to his neck. His face was pale, and he stared at his feet while wringing（扭）his hands nervously. He had _________his father as a baby, and had lived with his mother and grandfather ever since. But the year before he turned 13, his grandfather and mother were killed in a car accident. Now he was fourteen and in family care.

I looked at Tim. He was very ______and depressed. He refused to talk to me. The first two times we _______, Tim only sat hunched up （蜷缩） in the chair without saying a word. As he was about to leave after the second visit. I put my hand on his shoulder. He didn't _______ back, but he didn't look at me either.

“Come back next week, if you like, ”I said. I ____ a bit. Then I said, “I know it hurts. ”

He came, and I _____ we play chess. He nodded. After that we played chess every Wednesday afternoon in _______and without making any eye contact. It's not easy for me to _______ in chess, but I admit that I made sure Tim won once or twice.

Usually, he arrived earlier, took the chessboard and pieces and set them up before I even got a（n） ______ to sit down. It seemed as if he enjoyed my ______. But why did he ______look at me?

“Perhaps he simply needs someone to share his _______with, ”I thought.

One afternoon. Tim took off his raincoat and put it on the back of the chair. While he was setting up the chess pieces, his face seemed more ________and his motions more lively.

Some months later, I sat staring at Tim's head, _____he was bent over the chessboard. I was thinking about how little we knew about the healing process. ______, he looked up at me. “It's your _______ ,” he said.

After that day, Tim started talking.

Maybe I gave Tim something, but I learned a lot from him. He showed me how one without any words can________ another person. All it_______is a hug，a shoulder to cry on, a friendly touch, a sympathetic nature and an ear that listens.