Our first night, we drove through the desert, and then through roads cut through hills. The next day we went through the Rocky Mountains. It was__________driving up long inclines (斜坡) with abrupt U-shape turns on the steep hillsides, then driving___________slowly with great caution. Beyond Colorado, we drove through miles of______________, where I saw actual food being grown. I__________some of the crops.

In one small town we passed through, Aunt Betta decided I needed new___________and took me to a country__________. I was used to____________ dresses and skirts. Now I had my first pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, shorts and a T-shirt. I loved them all.

_______we reached our destination. Uncle Bill’s aunt had a perfect little two-story house. The first thing I__________was a bed in a cute little room — for me! I looked forward to that. It would be like sleeping in a dollhouse. In the backyard, I saw red things______________ the back fence. Uncle Bill’s uncle said, “I think you never ate a___________tomato in L.A..” I hadn’t. He_________picked one for me.

All the adults cried when we______________ , but I took home all the____________ of everything I’d seen. Back in L.A., my lungs hurt when I took a deep breath. I____________ the fresh air. I dreamed of homegrown tomatoes. My country clothes seemed out of__________, but I wore them anyway.

I was two weeks late starting__________ , but I told my teachers only that I’d been in Pennsylvania and decided to_________all the rest to myself. If only they could have experienced everything that I did!

Learning to dive is something I’ve always found excuses to not learn how to do. Something always comes up. I don’t have the money, I don’t have anyone to go with, I’m too _______ , I’ll learn when I get to Thailand, etc. The list goes on and on.

Traveling to Fiji with Gary, a French boy, I was finally   _______ by him to go scuba diving. “If you don’t do it, I’ll ________ you on Twitter.” he said. With the thought of public embarrassment and the ________ he’d come on my first dive, I       _____. I was going to learn to scuba dive.

Making our way down the island chain, we found a dive shop. The dive master, John, had been_________ for 13 years and the surrounding area had some of the best diving in the Yasawa Islands. There was no better time or place to _________

Dive day came, and the ________ took Gary and me on a shallow dive across from the island. They taught us how to ________, put on our equipment, and what to do in an ________. I took a deep breath, asked not to get the bends, grabbed the instructor’s ________, and began to descend(下沉).

We began the dive on the surface, and I felt like I was ________. I felt I was there for ages. Then I stopped and ________. Whoa! I was underwater. I was five meters underwater! We continued diving down, reaching a depth of about nine meters. The _______ had some good corals, but the fish were ________, though their colors were amazing. And then, before I knew it, it was over. The ________ was gone, and it was time to _________

Reaching the surface, I was grinning from ear to ear. “Can we ______     again?” I asked. And there it was. I was _______. Back on the shore, I went to John and said ________, “You were right. I loved it.”

A few years ago, I went through a period of depression. It was so severe that life didn’t seem worth_______. It was like permanent winter, so cold that the sun would never_______.

Then I saw snowdrops (雪花莲) pushing through the freezing,   iron-hard_______.   I looked at them every day until I felt that if they could come back to life, then so could_______. Those green shoots gave me_______in a way that nothing else had.

As spring came, I started to put in more and more plants, until the garden was brilliant with_______. I could spend hours _______ in gardening. Life was growing through my hands: gentle, peaceful, but, above all,_______. If I gave love, it was_______, a hundred times.

The   form of depressive illness I have is biological. It has________ generations of my   family and follows no rules nor reason. I can be________ when the sun is shining or when I am with loving friends. Of course, fresh air and exercise help to________ the depression, but for me ________ is more than that. It ________   strength as well as hope. I often stands in the garden before a tall tree, huge and strong. It lives through freezing temperatures and strong winds. It ________ but never breaks. And so I learn that we may be battled and injured, but we should   never give up.