1 . Sometimes you meet people in the most unexpected places who can change your life. When Michael Skinner, a student at the University of Notre Dame, called for an Uber after a formal event during Junior Parents Weekend, he had no idea that the driver would leave a lasting impact on him. As the engineering major made a friendly conversation with his driver, Doug Anderson, the New Jersey native asked him about his family.

That’s when Anderson began telling Skinner about his 11-year-old daughter Tori who he and his wife adopted when she was five. Tori was born with a condition that caused her to have only half a palm and one finger on her hands. Anderson explained to his empathetic (共情的) passenger that her hands made his daughter feel embarrassed and unhappy looking so different from her peers.

Wanting to help their child, he and his wife spoke to doctors from several hospitals about getting their daughter prosthetics (假肢) — only to hear that a child quickly outgrows the artificial limbs, making them even more expensive for the parents.

With the family welcoming two other children with special needs, the Andersons were extra careful to watch their spending. The circumstances led Anderson — who’s 58 — to become an Uber driver to make some extra money that also allowed him to interact with all kinds of people. People like Skinner, who luckily enough, was able to help his family. If there is such a thing as fate, the pair’s meeting was a welcome chance encounter. Skinner works at e-Nable, an informal student engineering club that 3D-printed robotic hands and they needed a child to test their creation after enduring an ongoing lag in their projects. Tori was the perfect candidate.

After several back-and-forth meetings, Tori can write, throw a baseball, and perform many other acts once considered impossible thanks to her new hands. Although Anderson never took the driving job expecting an outcome as bright as this, the father feels thankful fate stepped in.

2 . My baby son was in the hospital, connected to a NG tube(鼻饲管).

I just couldn’t stand the _______ sight of food being slowly pushed through his nose into his stomach. The lovely dreams I had of nursing my baby, and rocking him while he fed, were _______. On the fifth day, I _______, saying I wanted to feed him with a bottle. The doctors _______ and closely recorded my son’s feeding to see if he was able to get _______ milk intake without the tube. 18 hours later, the doctors commanded the tube to be reset immediately.

The next morning, when I saw the tube in his tiny nose, a _______ that he wasn’t improving, I _______. The situation felt so _______. Seated close to my son’s bed, I started crying desperately.

Then came a young nurse. I couldn’t help asking again if we could take the tube out, though fully aware that she could not overrule the doctor’s _______.

She ________, “Not today. But remember, tomorrow is a new day.”

She’s ________. Today, there may be heartache, but tomorrow has its own ________ that NG tubes cannot touch. The advice of this nurse completely changed my ________ away from focusing on the challenges to seeing the promises tomorrow might bring.

On day ten, the doctors approved ________ the NG tube completely. ________, “tomorrow” came.

3 . I was eleven years old when I spotted my neighbour, Julie, working in her garden. “There’s a hedge(树篱)growing over the pathway near here,” Julie said. “It’s become so overgrown. I was planning to cut it back myself. Would you like to help out?” The following Sunday, we wheeled Julie’s garden bin down to the hedge and reduced it.

We posted photos of our handiwork on Our Malmesbury, our local Facebook Group. One person, a wheelchair user, was so grateful that they didn’t have to go on the road anymore to pass the hedge. The comments and reactions just kept on coming. The whole town of Malmesbury in Wilts hire seemed to welcome our team spirit and felt inspired to follow our lead. Many people raised their hands to volunteer and do more to keep our town tidy. This was the beginning of many community projects completed by volunteers in our community.

With many willing hands, our town has transformed. Before, the town looked a bit run-down, but now, the place looks cleaner and tidier.

When we first started, everything was done out of my parents’ garage. But as time went on, donations came in from the local community. Our garage got filled up so quickly with brushes, gardening tools, and even donated power tools like leaf blowers. It got so big that we had to move this all to Julie’s spare garage.

I created a Facebook page and website to support our projects. Our Facebook page ‘Helping the Community of Malmesbury’ currently sits at 669 members and is a place for all the locals to share what litter picking and cleaning up they have been up to. When community members plan a clean-up, they can contact us via the website to access any tools and equipment they need to complete a project.

6 . On a summer evening, my wife and I were on our way to the grocery store when I noticed a man sitting on the sidewalk. A used advertisement banner (横幅) draped loosely around his waist was his only _______in the bad weather. The blank look in his eyes indicated he was possibly incapable of _______mental function. We tried asking him a few questions, but he showed no _______that he had heard or understood us. “He looks starving. Let’s buy him a loaf of bread, my wife_______.

When we returned, he wasn’t there.________,we decided to go home, wondering what to do with the loaf of bread. We'd barely gone a hundred meters when we ________him. He was seated with a family of migrant labourers who had camped there. Surprisingly, none of the family members seemed to________his presence. In fact, he looked to be quite welcome. Out of curiosity, I stopped my motorcycle and ________.

It was dinnertime and the family was________around an open fire. The man was eating hungrily from a plate—identical to the ones from which the family partook their meals. Even as she roasted more food, the lady watched on the stranger ________, making sure that his plate was not________.The other members of the family chatted happily as they ate. The family was far from ________because they were the people who had no roof over their heads. But they shared what they had, not something they had no _________for. Overcome with guilt, we________the loaf of bread near the man and rode away, but not before_________the true meaning of giving and sharing.

7 . Dad is a retired patrol (巡逻) officer. In his precinct (警区) lived an infamous family, which consisted of a________single mother and her four sons.

The three older sons were all________in crime. Many of the patrol officers knew the mom and________she knew them.

She was always very________when questioned about her sons’ whercabouts (行踪).On one visit, my dad________a conversation. During their talk, she expressed her________in regard to her youngest boy. She felt powerless in________him to the straight and narrow. But the environment would not allow it.

My dad agreed to offer the only________he could think of on the spot. He asked the con-cerned mother if she would allow her youngest boy to spend the summer at our house. It would be________for the boy to see another side of family life which he had never been________to.

Although we must have seemed very unfamiliar to him, he had no trouble________.The whole neighborhood welcomed him and he loved the________. At the end of summer, he re-turned to his mother.

I________about him several years later. Dad told me that after going back, the youngest son decided to go to night school for accounting. He eventually________an office job. He was the only son in that family who did not become a(n)________.

Have you ever noticed how certain smells can call up particular emotions or memories? A whiff of perfume(一阵香水味)or after-shave recalls a favorite person; the delicious smell of warm bread tickles the taste buds(味蕾).

Think about newly cut grass or how the air smells after a thunderstorm. Burning leaves on fresh and cold fall days always remind me of the football at the weekend. Perhaps the smells that surround Christmas carry the most memories. The fresh green smell of pine trees; the fragrances of a variety of food, especially the ones given off by cookies being baked in an oven and hot chocolate. Moreover, the scent of wood smoke around the burning fire can also bring warmth and the comfortable feeling to our mind. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.

But the smell I associate best with Christmas and winter is a wet dog. Our dog was mostly an outdoor dog and was often wet completely in the rain. We tried to dry him off as soon as he came in, grabbing the old, dirty towel by the door. He usually shook himself before we could catch him. The walls of the back entry were always spotted with brown mud all winter. We brushed him regularly in spring and summer when winter fur fell out by handfuls, but baths were rare. So, of course, his smell built up over time. Try as we might, we never could completely get rid of that smell. It lay hidden deep in his fur and skin.

The distinctive smell of the wet dog was a reminder of the Christmas vacation when I was twelve, and the cousins from Ohio were visiting. We had gotten shiny, slippery flying saucers as gifts and were also blessed with fresh snow. The four of us spent as much time as possible sliding down the short hill to the pond. Naturally, we tested the ice on the pond before sliding the first day, and we knew we could slide across it and lengthen our ride.

On the third day, we were so eager to play that we did not check it.

I stepped down the bank carefully to reach him, but the dog was faster.

10 . My childhood was a painted picture of sunny sky and rolling green fields stretching to the horizon. It tasted of sharp berries and smelt of sour grapes. My family lived in a cabin(小木屋) in the countryside but I lived in my mother’s arms. They were so delicate but strong, her red hair falling around me like a curtain separating me from the world.

Childhood was simple. The borders of my village were the furthest my troubles went and monsters only lived in the pages of books. Every day was a waking dream of running races and muddy knees. My village was archaic, dying cabins housing dying farmers with dying traditions. There weren’t many children but me and the other boys; boys of butchers and sellers formed our own group.

They called us wild. I suppose we were. Trees and mountains formed our playgrounds and fights broke out as easily as sudden laughter. Liberated from the restrictions of society, we would bound into the woods, deeper and deeper until we found a lake which, with a wild yell, we would jump into all at once.

My most vivid memories from boyhood center around that lake. Water shone brightly and the sounds of our screams broke into the outcry from birds. The shock of cold water against sweating skin would wake every nerve in my body and my bare feet would hit the sinking muddy bottom. As we submerged(淹没)， time would suspend， movements slowing as bubbles rose around us.

I was drowning. I was living. I was living. I was drowning.

For timelessness or a second (both felt the same), we would suspend, curl up, and then be forced back out into breathing air.

We should have known that it wouldn’t last forever. Yet, even under the best circumstances, there’s something so tragic about growing up: to have your perspective on the people and life around you change;to always struggle to reach a mirror only to find yourself tall enough to see your reflection one day. And find, a different person staring back out at you.