When I was 25 years old, I had a big dream in my mind and lots of things in my backpack. I wanted to travel around Africa with my _______ So I left my hometown with great confidence and ______ in Cape Town on a one-way ticket, not really ______ what to do next. Luckily, before my trip actually started, I met a kind, old Nigerian man. He gave me the best travel ______ I ever received: “Be like a student on your way around the world.”

It sounds ______, but it really changed my mind about travelling. He helped me realize that travel is about learning and observing different ______ “It’s far to easy to go into ______ country for you and believe your ways are better. But if you study, ask questions, and ______ to learn from the locals, you’ll have far richer experience, ” he promised me.

On other trips ______ I was on my tour way to Cancun, I didn’t know the man so I was just a tourist. I only stayed there for a week to see the ______ and places of interest and then left. The culture didn’t ______ me. I left the cities and towns without really ______ anyone or anything. Those people and things existed in those very places to which I had ______ a visit.

This time, I promised myself that I would be a ______ student traveller. After seven months of ______ travelling from Cape Town to Cairo, I returned home. Having a student-like attitude helped me learn a lot. This trip satisfied me more than any other trip ever did to me.

Along with a dozen boys, I made a trip to Iowa in order to see a college that I was thinking of attending many years ago. Although the trip had been fun for the most part, I felt _________ from time to time. I was missing my family and _________that I wouldn’t be seeing them much if I studied here. I was also missing the_________of my home. I loved how they _________ a thousand shades of green in the spring and then became a sea of gold, red and orange in the fall. I loved the smell of the wild flowers.

Here in Iowa everything was flat. What I could see was a wild prairie (大草原) with no trees. All that I could _________was a mixture of corn, mud and pigs. One day after a long walk, I rested with my eyes closed and _________being back home again. _________, when I opened them, I saw something that _________my heart. It was a grassland sunset. It seemed to fill the sky from horizon to horizon. Gold, red and purple clouds all _________ together in a picture painted by nature’s own hand. It was so__________that it took my breath away. It made the sunsets of my hometown seem tiny in __________. At that moment I knew how __________ and judgmental I had been. This place also had its own __________. This place was also a part of nature’s creation.

Over the years to come I learned something else. Each of us has a(n) __________beauty as well. Each of us has our own unique__________and abilities.

For a long time, a boy wondered why his deskmate was always the first in the class, whereas he could only rank the 2lst. He asked his mom, “Am I more stupid than others? How come I always _______?” Mom was aware that her son’s self-respect had been damaged by the_______ system.

She was intended to say that intelligence_______ and her son’s friend really was smarter. Thank goodness she_______ the intention to say it.

After entering high school, her son tried as hard as he could, but her son’s friend still _______ him. But she was_______ of her boy for his hard. She decided to take him on a trip to the_______. On the trip, she at last_______ an answer for him.

Today her son no longer_______ rankings. He is now the top student in the top university he ________. Invited to speak to his old high school, he mentioned a valuable childhood ________:Once, on a trip to the sea, my mom said to me: ‘Do you see the seabirds________ food out there?’ When a wave comes near, the little birds rise quickly. The “clumsy” seagulls (海鸥) are far less ________ and have to struggle to get away from the________. But these “clumsy” birds prove to have the biggest, strongest wings, which allow them to travel the ________ and leave the little birds behind. Son, I felt you are one of those seagulls.”