1 . When I was little, I always wondered what it would feel like to be an adult. Last summer, I went to Los Angeles for six weeks for an internship(实习). After depending on Mom’s _______ for the first 17 years of my life and the college canteen for the last two years, suddenly being in _______ of making my own meals was worrying. I had so many _______. Would I make friends? Would I be able to _______ through heavy traffic in LA? Even the idea of driving to some crowded beaches without having a definite plan for parking _______ me.

Somehow, I made it through. I _______ out the trash, did the dishes and went shopping. Sure, my meals usually _______ easy stuff like cheese and noodles, but what _______ was that I made them. Most _______, I drove the entire way home from LA to Michigan ________—36 hours of driving, with only a couple of CDs to keep me ________.

The most impressive moment was during my first night of driving. ________ I drove for ten hours, I ________ in Flagstaff, Arizona for a quick ________ at a small Italian restaurant at 10 pm.

As I went back to my car, I realized that I wasn’t going to ________ at my Albuquerque motel until 3 am. It was too ________ to cancel my reservation(预定) and ________ a closer motel, so I drove another five ________. When I fell into bed that night, I started laughing. I was in the middle of New Mexico, but it felt like ________ and I had a good sleep.

Since then, I have learned that being an adult is facing a thousand things at once and being ________ but living in it.

Alexis Langlois, who manages a large farm, heard her neighbor crazily knocking on her front door on a Monday afternoon.

“There’s an emergency”, Amber Countryman yelled. “The horses are stuck in the water.” Langlois was struck with “absolute panic”. She threw on her winter boots — without socks — and rushed toward the small pond on the 80-acre property. She was surprised by what she saw: four horses were in the water up to their necks in 10 feet of ice water.

She immediately called 911.While waiting for help to arrive, “people just started showing up,” she said. “Neighbors were pouring in. People came with ropes, chainsaws, shovels and pick axes.”

“I grabbed a bunch of supplies,” said Countryman, whose two teenagers and their friend also as sited with the effort.

“It was-8℃that day,” she said, adding that she brought out handwarmers and water for the helpers.

Everyone was determined to get the horses out of the pond — which is about 15feetwide.

Beneath a six-inch layer of ice, the water was “just barely above freezing”, said Chris Yerkes, the South Kalispell Fire Department chief who rushed to the pond with about a dozen volunteer personnel.

When the firefighters arrived, neighbors had already attempted to pave a path through the ice toward the edge of the pond using pick axes, sledgehammers and shovels, and “we continued with that effort.” Yerkes said. Unfortunately, “as we got closer to the edge, we realized there was about three to four inches of mud.”

The thick layer of mud — which the rescuers couldn’t cut through — blocked the horses from climbing out. Firefighters enlisted additional support from Flathead County Animal Control, as well as staff from local equestrian organization Rebecca Farm.

“There had to have been at least 60 people here,” Langlois said. “It was very swift action on everybody’s part.”

It took nearly two hours to find a workable solution that could bring all four horses to safety.

To get the horses out, they used a powerful tractor (拖拉机) to get the animals out of the mud and ropes to pull them over the edge.

I found the kitten sitting on the front step of our house. He was black and white and looked quite weak. Where did he come from? I noticed he had no collar around his neck. Who would be so irresponsible?

I went inside and opened a can of fish. After I placed the can in the doorway, the kitten hungrily lapped it up and then walked right inside the house. Later, after jumping onto a bunch of pillows on the couch, he began to groom his hair.

I bet his last owners didn’t love him at all! I thought. If someone can’t take care of their kitten, they deserve to lose him! Our family never owned pets, but I had always wanted one. It’s a good thing I found that kitten and took him in. Thank goodness he found me!

The kitten kept meowing quite a lot. And then, it started trying to bite my hand.

“Hey, kitten! I’m not food!” I said. But the kitten tried again to bite my finger. I knew I had to get him some proper cat food. “You stay put, kitten!” I told him. “I’m going to get you food!” Then I grabbed my keys and headed out to the pet store nearest to our house.

On my way to the store, I spotted a sign on the telephone pole:

LOST KITTEN-Black and White, very friendly. If you find him, please call us.

“If you were so worried about your kitten,” I thought, “maybe you should have taken better care of him!”

When I walked into the pet store, I found that the place was packed with kids handing out flyers about the same cat to customers inside. In the back of the store, I saw a boy under 10 years old, crying in his wheelchair. “I can’t believe I lost my kitten!” he said to his parents.

I looked at the flyers on the wall carefully this time — it was definitely the cat I had back at home!

The little boy began to cry with laughter.

9 . The Art of Healing

The sea fires our imagination and rekindles our spirit.

Wyland

It was Christmas Day 1984, and I began painting my first Whaling Wall in Hawaii. The giant ________ wall, three hundred feet long and twenty stories high,________ Kaiser Hospital. Patients, many sick and ________, looked out of their windows and saw a ________ pale brown wall, the architects’ answer to saving costs. But I saw the wall as a perfect canvas(画布)to ________ life-size whales and other colorful marine life.

As I began painting that first day, I ________ an old man with an IV(静脉注射器)________ to his arm sitting in a wheelchair, watching my every ________

Day after day this man would ________ on the balcony of his hospital room and spend nearly every moment ________ me paint my largest marine mural. I would wave to him each day, and he would wave back with all the ________ left in his fragile body. Four months later at the dedication ________ of the mural, I cut the ribbon with city ________ and thousands of supporters and looked across the parking lot where, among the many ________ rooms, I caught a(an)________ of the old man. He tipped his hand to me for what I knew would be the last time. I tried to ________ my emotion as I waved back. I found out later from his family that he had an ________ cancer and should have died ________ before, but had wanted to live to see the mural ________

The man died shortly after the dedication ceremony; his memory and ________ will live with me and within that mural forever.

10 . Volunteering wasn’t my cup of tea. The thought of giving up my precious _________ in exchange for nothing didn’t interest me. But then, at the age of fifty, suddenly, I had way _________ time on my hands, as the result of a medical condition.

The first year of my _________   retirement was spent mostly sitting for hours _________ feeling sorry for myself. The following year I was so _________ with life that I cleaned out more closets than I’d ever realized one home could have. By the time the third year rolled around, I _________ that, in fact, I’d been _________ the thing that I’d valued most in my life.

So the moment I saw an advertisement for _________ at the local Humane Society shelter for animals, I made a decision and dashed off an e-mail to the shelter letting them know of my _________ . Much to my surprise, soon, before the day was __________ I had a return e-mail and I went right to work the next day. There was never a boring moment and __________ a new animal that needed love and the reassurance (保证) that it would soon find its new __________ .

A fresh enthusiasm for a(n) __________ life can often be found in the strangest places. I would have __________ the opportunity, if I had not been willing to __________ the most precious thing in life-my time.