2 . It was Thanksgiving morning and in the crowded kitchen of my small home I was busy preparing the traditional Thanksgiving turkey when the doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw two small children in rags huddling together.

“Any old papers, lady?” asked one of them.

I was busy. I wanted to say “no” until I looked down at their feet. They were wearing thin little sandals (凉鞋), wet with heavy snow.

“Come in and I’ll make you a cup of hot cocoa.”

They walked over and sat down at the table. Their wet sandals left marks upon the floor. I served them cocoa and bread with jam to fight against the cold outside. Then I went back to the kitchen and started cooking.

The silence in the front room struck me. I looked in. The girl held the empty cup in her hands, looking at it. The boy asked in a flat voice, “Lady, are you rich?”

“Am I rich? Pity, no!” I looked at my shabby slipcovers (沙发套). The girl put her cup back in its saucer carefully and said, “Your cups match your saucers (茶碟).” Her voice was hungry with a need that no amount of food could supply. They left after that, holding their bundles of papers against the wind. They hadn’t said “Thank you.” They didn’t need to. In a special way they had reminded me that I had already had so much for which I should be grateful.

Plain blue china cups and saucers were only worth five pence. But they did match.

I tasted the potatoes and stirred the meat soup. Potatoes and brown meat soup, a roof over our heads, my man with a good steady job—these matched, too.

I moved the chairs back from the fire and cleaned the living room. The muddy prints of small sandals were still wet upon my floor. Let them be for a while, I thought, just in case I should forget how rich I was.

3 . In all one’s lifetime it is oneself that one spends the most time being with or dealing with. But it is ______ oneself that one has the least understanding of. When you are going upwards in life you tend to overestimate yourself. It seems that everything you seek for is within your ______. When you are going downhill you tend to underestimate yourself.

To get a thorough understanding of oneself is to gain a correct view of oneself and be a realist-aware of both one’s strengths and shortages. You may ______ hopefully to the future but be sure not to ______ too much, for ideals can never be fully realized. You may be ______ to meet challenges but it should be clear to you ______ to direct your efforts. That’s to say, so long as you have a perfect knowledge of yourself, there won’t be difficulties you can’t overcome.

To get a thorough understanding of oneself needs self-appreciation. Whether you think you are a towering tree or a blade of grass, a high mountain or a small stone, you ______ a state of nature that has its own reason of existence. If you ______ admire yourself you’ll have a real sense of self-appreciation, which will give you confidence. ______ you gain full confidence in yourself, you’ll be ______ to fight and overcome any difficulty.

To get a thorough understanding of oneself also requires doing oneself a favor when it’s needed. In time of anger, do yourself a favor by giving an ______ to it in a quiet place so that you won’t be hurt by its flames; in time of sadness, do yourself a favor by sharing it with your friends so as to change a gloomy mood into a cheerful one; in time of tiredness, do yourself a favor by getting a good sleep or taking some stimulant. Show yourself loving concern about your health and daily life. ______ you know perfectly well when and how to do yourself a favor, you won’t be confident and ready enough to ______ the attack of illness. As you are aware, what a person physically has is but a human body that’s vulnerable when ______ to the elements. So if you fall ill, it’s up to you to take a good care of yourself.

In a word, to get a thorough understanding of oneself is to get a full ______ of one’s life. Then one will find one’s life full of color and flavor.

5 . Once upon a time, a daughter complained to her father that her senior high school life was unhappy and that she was tired of struggling with homework all the time.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, h placed potatoes, eggs and coffee beans in them. After 20 minutes, he took them out, putting the potatoes and eggs in a bowl and the coffee in a cup.

Turning to his daughter, he said, “Look closer, and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After puling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to taste the coffee. Its good smell brought a smile to her face.

“Father, what does this mean?” she asked. He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and the coffee beans were in the same adversity (逆境)—the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently.

The strong and hard potato became soft and weak in boiling water. The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new. “Which one do you want to be like,” he asked. “When adversity knocks on your door, how will you respond?”

In life, challenges happen to us all, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.

6 . I’ve had a string of bad luck lately. Last week, my washing machine broke. I planned to _________ it myself but soon found the repairs would cost more than a new one would. Then this week the _________ thing happened to my daughter’s washing machine! This time I _________ called a friend to help. Once again, however, it was broken beyond _________. I ended up having to _________ two. While both the new machines got delivered quickly, I still _________ about what I was going through in my heart.

The moment I did, my _________ traveled back to the days when I was a child. I saw my grandma _________ an old-fashioned washing machine with my jeans and shirts. It didn’t have a spin dryer (甩干机) inside so she had to put each item through a pair of rollers to _________ the water. When the washing was done, she’d often pat the machine __________. She had grown up hand-washing clothes and was __________ for the machine that did so much of the work for her.

Remembering this helped me realize that I was looking at things in the __________ way. I was getting __________ in the inconveniences of modern life instead of being thankful for all I have. The good old days had their share of __________ and joys. And so do the good new days. What __________ is how we live them and what we can learn from them.

7 . There are many principles(原则) and values all people live by. The _________that I live by is honesty. I have always been taught that lying will just get me into more trouble than I might already be _________. Being honest is a _________ all people need to have and use to go _________ in life.

Ever since I was a little kid, my parents have _________ me to be honest _________ it is the right thing to do. As I got _________, I realized something very important that could _________ the way people take me to be a person. If just once you stop being honest and tell a lie, it will _________ change people’s opinion of you and their whole way of acting __________ you. When you tell a lie, you lose that person’s __________ forever or have to work your whole life to get it back.

It is my personal __________ to achieve great things in life and honesty will sure help me get there. For me right now losing somebody’s trust would be a truly __________ thing. Whatever you do for a living or __________ you live, honesty is something important for all of us.

Honesty gets you much higher in life than getting into more __________ like lying . Lying can __________ get you into trouble dealing with the government. Honesty is just as important to me as my family. Already, I know it is something that will __________ my future and my relationship with all people. It is something about myself that I hope to never __________ no matter what happens. Most of all honesty will help me no matter whether I’m at school, home or just __________ with friends. It is something I hope my children will also have and __________.

8 . A video about a homeless man went viral. Johal, a video-maker who is especially known for his social_________, decided to give a homeless man some money and_________his reaction.

In the video, approaching a_________homeless man, Johal carefully places some money on his bag. Minutes later, when the man wakes up, he’s surprised to see the cash and looks excited and grateful. The man walks to a store, steps out with a bag of_________, probably to face the cold nights, and returns to his bench (长凳).

Johal sits beside the man, talking on the phone with a friend, asking if he can borrow some money for his daughter. The homeless man_________listens to their conversation. After Johal hangs up, the man asks if he’s okay. Johal says he’s getting his daughter some_________while having a hard time financially.

In a (an)_________turn of events, the man asks Johal to_________his bag and leaves with the shopping bag. He comes back_________after returning the items and offers the money to Johal, who is a total__________, comforting he can go by without a blanket but the girl needs the treatment. Touched by the homeless man’s kindness, Johal__________this is an experiment and offers $500 to the man, leaving him in__________.

__________but true, the result proves that those with less are the ones__________most. Indeed, heroes are the ones with a __________.

9 . When I think of the word perfect, I think of something only a few can achieve, anything that I can compare myself to. For a few weeks, I have been _______ one girl who is in a few of my middle school classes. It seems like she has a _______ life—lots of friends, all A's, and everything anyone could ever want, _______ in my point of view.

One day, I was talking to my teacher about one of the upcoming tests when I saw the girl _______ me in a strange way. I _______ started to feel surprised and think, “Why is she looking at me? Did I do something wrong? Is my hair messed up?” When the class was over and everyone was _______ to their next class, she caught up to me and said, “I just thought you should know, I think you are really _______ . " I then watched her as she walked away and thought, “She thinks I am pretty?”

The whole day, I _______ up thinking about one thing. That was, “Why does she think that?" After thinking about that _______ in my head through each second of the day, I came to learn one big ________ in our life. In the whole society, almost everyone has a（n） ________ of their own insecurities（不安全感）, even though they may not be discovered on the outside. In this case, I was thinking that she was everything I wanted to be and she ________ the same of me. Both of us are not perfect. It is our ________ to either accept that and love ourselves or keep torturing（折磨）ourselves with ________ . I think that being able to fully love yourself is the ________ meaning of the word perfect.

10 . Lewis B. Smedes once said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” For years Tom Anderson’s life was withered up (枯萎) by the memory of his ________in an adventure that ________ the death of one of his classmates. He and his wife________ after six years of marriage. Then the news about Tom changed. His wife Betty came back; he ________a fine position.

One day he told me what had changed his life, “I used to think nothing could ________what I had done. The thought of my ________would stop me in the middle of a smile. It put a ________between my wife and me. Then I had an ________visit from the person I dreaded (恐惧) most to see—the mother of the college classmate who died. ‘Unless you forgive, you cannot love.’ She said, ‘And without love, life has no ________.’ She paused, and then said________. ‘You are the one person who hasn’t forgiven Tom Anderson.’ I found there in her eyes ________ to be the person I might have been if her boy had lived. For the first time in my life I felt ________ to love and be loved.”

Forgiveness is truly the________grace (慈悲), through which we gain the freedom to learn from experience. But forgiving our shortcomings doesn’t mean ________ that they exist. On the contrary, it means facing them ________.