Every morning, Rekha takes exercise around some gardens in our neighborhood. One morning, she was walking ________than usual, and it was still dark.

As she was walking, a cyclist came up to her,________ her handbag and sped off with it! She________ him shouting “thief, thief”. A man further ahead must have________her or seen what had happened. He was________a car with a bucket of water near him. He took the bucket and________ the water onto the cyclist.

The cyclist drove off the street and   ________ his bike. Some other people rushed over and surrounded him. My friend Rekha was________ that the people would beat him. She begged them not to________him.

She bent down and asked the boy ________ he did this to her. He ________ that he was the son of a farmer and that this year their crops had ________. He said that the money lenders had threatened to beat up his father and hurt his________ if he didn’t pay on time. He said that he was hopeless and didn’t know what else to do. He was very________.

Rekha was________ moved by this story. That boy was so thin. She looked into the boy’s eyes and said that she forgave him. She then took out some ________ from her handbag and gave it to him. She told him that robbing was________ and that he shouldn’t do it again. He said he would follow her________. He told her that he was from a good family and was well brought up and that he had made a terrible ________.

The boy left thankfully. Rekha sincerely   ________ that this would be the last time that the boy tried to rob something.

It was December 2019, and Arens Smith, a US delivery ( 快递) driver, was taking his routine work as usual near the lake when he heard a sound.

He guessed about 15 feet from the ________________ banks was the ________________ of that cry—a half drowned dog, struggling to catch the ice on the lake.

How she got there, no one knows, but an elderly man was already on the scene, determined to______________   her. He’d entered the lake in a rowboat and was breaking the ice with a rock to create a _____________ to the dog.

It was slow going, and Arens, 44, thought he had a ______________ chance.

“Animals are my weakness,” he told the reporter, explaining why he ______________   his coat to save her, ________ the temperature was -30℃ .

His heart beating wildly, he ________ 16 feet of freezing water. Using all his energy to keep warm, he _____ about five feet toward her, caught hold of her ________, and pulled her to the ice. He then lifted the dog into the boat and slid it back to the _____________, where anxious bystanders carried the dog to visit a vet (兽医).

Later, back home, Arens took a warm ________ with the dog until they both recovered from cold. A few more minutes in the lake, the vet told Arens, and she would have _____________suffered heart attack.

The next day, Arens was back ________ in the same neighborhood when the dog’s owner came over to ________ him for saving the dog.

“Would you like to_____________ her?” he asked. He opened the door to his car.

And she rushed out. She ran straight to ______________, leaping on him and bathing him in wet __________. “That _____________ delivery,” laughs Arens, “was the most _____________ experience in my career.”

I used to hate being called upon in class mainly because I didn’t like attention drawn to myself. And ________ otherwise assigned a seat by the teacher, I always chose to sit at the back of the classroom.

All this ________ after I joined a sports team. It began when a teacher suggested I try out for the basketball team. At first I thought it was a crazy idea because I didn’t have a good sense of balance, nor did I have the ________ to keep pace with the others on the team and they would tease me. But for the teacher who kept insisting on my “________ for it”, I wouldn’t have decided to give a try.

Getting up the ________ to go to the tryouts was only the half of it! When I first started ________ the practice sessions, I didn’t even know the rules of the game, much ________ what I was doing. Sometimes I’d get ________ and take a shot at the wrong direction—which made me feel really stupid.________ I wasn’t the only one “new” at the game, so I decided to ________ on learning the game, do my best at each practice session, and not be too hard on myself for the things I didn’t know “just yet”.

I practiced and practiced. Soon I knew the ________ and the “moves”. Being part of ad team was fun and motivating. Very soon the competitive part in me was winning over my lack of confidence. With time, I learned how to play and made friends in the________ --friends who respected my efforts to work hard and be a team player. I never had so much fun!

With my ________ self-confidence comes more praise from teachers and classmates. I have gone from ________ in the back of the classroom and not wanting to call attention to myself,________ raising my hand—even when I sometimes wasn’t and not 100 percent sure I had the right answer. Now I have more self-confidence in myself.