1 . Last Friday, after doing all the family shopping in the town. I wanted to have a rest before catching the rain. I _______ a newspaper and some chocolate and _______ into the station coffee shop. It was a cheap self-service place with long tables to _______ at. I put my heavy bag down on the floor, _______ the newspaper and the chocolate on the table and then went to get a cup of coffee.

When I came back with the coffee, there was someone _______ in the next seat. _______ was a boy, with dark glasses and old clothes, and _______ bright red at the front. He had started to eat my chocolate!

Naturally, I was rather uneasy about him, but I didn’t want to have any _______. I just read the newspaper, tasted my coffee and took a bit of chocolate. The boy looked at me in _______.Then he took a ________ piece of my chocolate. I could hardly believe it. Still I didn’t say anything to him. When he took a third piece, I felt more angry than uneasy. I thought, “Well, I shall have the last piece.” And I got it.

The boy gave me a strange look, then ________ up. As he left, he shouted out, “There’s something ________ with that woman!” Everyone looked at me, ________ I didn’t want to quarrel with the boy, so I kept quiet. I did not realize that I had ________ a mistake until I finished my coffee and was ready to ________. My face turned red when I saw my unopened chocolate under the newspaper. The chocolate that I had been eating was the boy’s!

2 . Raynor Winn and her husband Moth became homeless due to their wrong investment. Their savings had been used up to pay lawyers’ fees. To make matters worse, Moth was diagnosed with a serious disease. There was no________, only pain relief.

Failing to find any other way out, they decided to make a________ journey, as they caught sight of an old hikers’ guide.

This was a long journey of unaccustomed hardship and ________ recovery. When leaving home, Raynor and Moth had just ￡320 in the bank. They planned to keep the budget low by living on boiled noodles, with the________ hamburger shop treat.

Wild camping is ________ in England. To avoid being caught, the Winns had to get their tent up ________ and packed it away early in the morning. The Winns soon discovered that daily hiking in their 50s is a lot harder than they remember it was in their 20s. Raynor ached all over and desired a bath. Moth, meanwhile, after an initial struggle, found his symptoms were strangely ________ by their daily tiring journey.

Eventually, the couple found that their bodies turned for the better, with re-found strong muscles that they thought had________ forever. "Our hair was fried and falling out, nails broken, clothes ________ to a thread, but we were alive."

During the journey, Raynor began a career as a nature writer. She writes,"Homelessness had taken every material thing from me and left me torn bare, an empty page at the end of a partly written book. It had also given me a choice, either to leave that page________ or to keep writing the story with hope. I chose hope.”

3 . It’s fourteen years since I left the Philippines to live with my family in the USA. A month ago, while on summer vacation back in my motherland, I learned a lesson from mosquito bites. Right before leaving Kennedy Airport in New York, my grandma ______ me of the behavior of the native mosquitoes around the _____ like me. She said, “There’s an old saying ---the ____ you stay away from the motherland, the sweeter your blood _____ to the mosquitoes.” Not _____ it,” I replied, “Grandma, that’s just an old wives’ tale!”

Well, less than a week after my arrival in Manila, I was already carpeted with a _____ of mosquito bites. I took many measures to keep myself from being _____, but they all proved useless.

Late one night in my cousin’s home, I couldn’t bear the _____ of the bites. Hoping to find some comfort, I ______ my cousin, who was sleeping peacefully in the bed next to mine. Unhappy for being ______, she said, “There is nothing you can do. Go back to sleep.” With a few turns, she slept again. Enviously _______her sleep, I hoped a big mosquito would ______ on her face. However, the mosquitoes would just lightly dance around her forehead and fly away quickly, never biting her. Amazed, I ran to others’ rooms, only to find they were all sleeping _______ as the same thing occurred again and again.

From those bites, I came to _______ my grandma’s silly tale. From then on, I’ve always tried to keep a(n) _______ mind about those strange old wives’ tales because they do have some truth to them.

4 . It was a cold January in 1925 in Nome, Alaska. The town was cut off from the rest of the world due to heavy snow.

On the 20^th of that month, Dr. Welch ________ a sick boy, Billy, and knew he had diphtheria, a deadly infectious (传染的) disease mainly affecting children. The children of Nome would be ________ if it struck the town. Dr. Welch needed medicine as soon as possible to stop other kids from getting sick. ________, the closet supply was over 1,000 miles away, in Anchorage.

How could the medicine get to Nome? The town’s ________ was already full of ice, so it couldn’t come by ship. Cars and horses couldn’t travel on the ________ roads. Jet airplanes and big trucks didn’t exist yet.

________ January 26, Billy and three other children had died. Twenty more were sick. Nome’s town officials came up with a plan. They would have the medicine sent by ________ from Anchorage to Nenana. From there, dogsled (狗拉雪橇) drivers—known as “mushers”—would ________ it to Nome in a relay (接力).

The race began on January 27. The first musher, Shannon, picked up the medicine from the train at Nenana and rode all night. ________ he handed the medicine to the next musher, Shannon’s face was black from the extreme cold.

On January 31, a musher named Seppala had to ________ a frozen body of water called Norton Sound. It was the most dangerous part of the journey. Norton Sound was covered with ice, which could sometimes break up without warning. If that happened, Seppala might fall into the icy water below. He would ________, and so would the sick children of Nome. But Seppala made it across.

A huge snowstorm hit on February 1. A musher named Kaasen had to brave this storm. At one point, huge piles of snow blocked his ________. He had to leave the trail (痕迹) to get around them. Conditions were so bad that it was impossible for him to ________ the trail again. The only hope was Balto, Kaasen’s lead dog. Balto put his nose to the ground, ________ to find the smell of other dogs that had travelled on the trail. If Balto failed, it would mean disaster for Nome. The minutes passed by. Suddenly, Balto began to run. He had found the trail.

At 5:30 a.m. on February 2, Kaasen and his dog arrived in Nome. Within minutes, Dr. Welch had the medicine. He quickly gave it to the sick children. All of them recovered.

Nome had been ________.

5 . Monty owns a house ranch (牧场) in San Sedro. Once when asked about his success, he told the story about a young man, son of a horse trainer.

One day at high school the boy was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he_________

That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his_________of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, _________the location of everything important there.

The next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he got his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a _________that read, “see me after class."

The boy went to the teacher. The teacher said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You come from a _________family. Owning a ranch requires a lot of money. There's no way you could ever do it.”

Then he added, “If you will rewrite this paper with a more practical goal, I will reconsider your _________”

The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. Finally, the boy turned in the same paper. making no_________at all.He stated,“You can keep the F and I’ll keep my _________.”

Monty then said,“I was that boy. And the best part of the story is that two summers ago that_________ teacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week. When he was leaving, the teacher said, “When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I__________a lot of kids” dreams. Fortunately, you had enough courage not to give up on yours.”

6 . My kids and I were heading into the supermarket over the weekend. On the way, we spotted a man holding a piece of paper that said, “________ my job. Family to Feed.”

At this store, a ________ like this is not normal. My 10-year-old noticed him and make a comment   on how bad it must be to have to stand outside in the cold wind.

In the store, I asked each of my kids to ________ something they thought our “friend” there would appreciate. They got apples, a sandwich and a bottle of juice. Then my 17-year-old suggested giving him a ________. I thought about it. We were ________ on cash ourselves, but... well, sometimes ________ from our need instead of our abundance is ________ what we need to do! All the kids declared something they could do away with for the week.

When we handed him the bag of ________, he lit up and thanked us with ________ eyes. When I handed him the gift card, saying he could use it for whatever his family might need, he burst into tears.

This has been a wonderful ________ for our family. For days the kids have been looking for others we can ________! Things would have played out so ________ if I had simply said, “No, we really don’t have ________ to give more.” Stepping out not only helped a brother in ________, it also gave my kids the ________ taste of helping others. It’ll go a long way with them.

7 . Many years ago, I owned a service station and roadhouse on the main road between Melbourne and Adelaide.

One very cold, wet night at about 3:30 am, there was a ________ on the front door of our house. A young man, wet from ________ to toe, explained that he had ________ out of petrol about 30 km up the road. He had left his pregnant (怀孕的) wife and his two children behind at the car and said that he would hitchhike (搭便车) back.

Once I had ________ a can with petrol, I took him back to his car where his two-year-old and four-year-old children were both ________, saying that they were cold. Once the car had started, I suggested that he ________ me back.

Before leaving, I had turned the heater ________ in the roadhouse, so that when we went in, it was nice and warm. While the little ones played and ran ________, I prepared bread and butter for the children, and hot chocolate for the ________. It was about 5 am before they ________.The young fellow asked me how much he owned me and I told him that the petrol pump (加油泵) had ________   $15. He offered to pay “call-out fee”, but I wouldn’t accept it.

About a month later, I received a letter from Interstate, a large bus company that we had been trying to ________ to stop off at our roadhouse for a long time. It turned out that the young fellow I had helped was its general manager, the most ________ person in the company.

In his letter, he thanked me again and ________ me that, from then on, all their buses would stop at my service station. In this ________, a little bit of kindness was rewarded with a huge amount of benefits.

10 . For centuries, people have had a strong sense that it is absolutely beneficial to read fairy tales to children. However, the benefits might have been ____. Some researchers are reassessing this long-established belief and after years of surveys and observations, they are sending out the message: reading too much Cinderella to your daughter may ____ damage her in later life. A paper to be developed at the international congress of cognitive psychotherapy (认知心理疗法) suggests a link between the ____ of women abused (虐待) by their partners and early exposure to the wrong sort of fairy tales. It says girls who ____ Cinderella, Rapunzel and Beauty in Beauty and the Beast were more likely to stay in ____ relationships as adults.

The theory was developed by Susan Darker Smith, a psychotherapist at the University of Derby. She interviewed sixty-seven female abuse survivors and found that sixty-one ____severe abuse because they believed they could change their partners with patience and love. The same view was ____ by male survivors who had been abused as children. Hardly any of the women and men in a control group, who had not ____ abuse, thought they could change their partners in this way. These women and men said they would ____ a relationship rather than suffer the abuse from a partner. Ms. Darker Smith found that these abused women were much more likely to sympathize with Cinderella and other female characters who tended to obey instead of ____.

Although most girls heard the stories, damage appeared to be done to those who ____the characters as role models. “They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partners’ ____,” she said. “____ in children to stories that emphasize the transformational qualities of love may make women believe they can change their partners.” For example, they might never have understood the obvious ____ in the story of Rapunzel, who remained locked in a high tower until rescued by a knight on a white horse, who broke the door down. “The question,” said Ms. Darker Smith, “is why she did not break the door by herself? After all, being ____ is a desirable characteristic that children should learn to possess from the early age and prevail in the life time. ”