There is a fine line between a parent who is active and open-minded and one that doesn’t know when to let go ( 放 手 ). As my daughter, Nicole,_______ to leave home for college, I’m discovering how hard it is to stay on the right side of this line. When I hold _______ the apron strings ( 围 裙 带 ) connecting us, Nicole, eager to_______independence, tries to loosen my grasp. What_______ is an awkward mother-daughter, push-me, pull-you kind of tango.

For the past two years, it’s gone like this:

Mother’s question: “Have you thought of taking an advanced placement class (高阶课程) so that you can _______ college credit?”

Daughter’s response: “No, I’m not interested in that.”

I bit my lip a few times and Nicole shot me a few glares.

Two months ago, she was _______   to a great university. However, I was still the mother having a_______ time letting go. The night before the introductory meeting of the university, I had read the course catalog carefully and _______   courses which I thought looked good. We met on the campus the next afternoon, and Nicole’s face_______   with excitement,   “I have had my entire schedule figured out,” she said. “Already?” I was astonished,________ she should have discussed it with me. I examined the schedule. Nicole hadn’t taken a (an) ________ one of the courses I had suggested. Every course she had chosen________ suited her interests. Just then I saw a mature, capable young woman with a________ mind and the ability to shape her future. She no longer needed her mother to evaluate every ________ she made. I felt proud, though still a bit________.

I________ the lessons carefully. Nicole has________ to learn over the past 18 years: responsibility, sympathy, and hard work. There have been a few holes along the way.________ , she is well-equippedand eager to ________ the future. The next step, I recognized, was mine to take: giving my daughter and myself the________ we both needed.

A man landed on a deserted island after a shipwreck (船只失事). Every day he prayed, ________someone could pass and save him, but to his ________, no one ever came.

Months went by and this man learned to ________food and firewood from the island and stored them in a hut (小屋) which served as a ________ for him on the deserted island. One day when he returned to his hut after hunting for food, ________, he saw his hut was on fire, along with almost everything he had! The only thing________was the clothes on his back. The man grew so ________that he fell on his hands and knees crying heavily when he happened to look up and ________a ship coming in his direction. The man was ________. As they were heading back to civilization, the man asked the captain, “How were you able to __________me?” The captain __________, “We were voyaging across the ocean __________a cloud of smoke going up __________our attention. We decided to go to check it out and that’s why we found you!”

In life we will always be __________with challenges, problems and disasters. Always keep in mind that a disaster can sometimes be good __________.

On Christmas of 2017, I was born again. We like to spend our Christmas holidays somewhere warm abroad, and that year we _______ Uganda. Nature, wildlife, and sunny days were a _______when it was so _______and dark in Europe. Life was beautiful, and we had a rental car and a busy schedule ahead to explore the country.

This is where this short travel story turns into one of my most _______travel experiences. At Murchinson Falls National Park, we had a car accident. I lost _______of the car, and it rolled over, destroying windows, chassis, and the engine. But we were alive! My right arm was _______injured, but we _______to walk to our lodge ( 小 屋 ), not far inside the _______. In the lodge, I was _______to learn that there was a pretty decent American hospital in Masindi that was just a one-hour drive away. Moreover, one of the lodge’s guests was a nurse who ________the wound while we were waiting for the taxi. The hospital took care of us and after a couple of injections and stitches, I was ________ to head to our new hotel in Masindi; however, my wound required daily ________and more injections, so we were ________to stay in town for a few days.

The town’s highlights were the market and our ________ visit to the hospital, so we ________ looking for the small things, ________with the medical staff and the people in the market, and learning more about their customs.

We learned to slow down. When we were allowed to ________ , we took a road trip through the country to see something else. We did not care about our travel ________ anymore – we were ________, and we wanted to enjoy Uganda’s unique nature and its people. In the end, our Uganda trip was not about the places that we saw, but the people that we met. It was travel for ________more than sightseeing.