In the city of Fujisawa, Japan, lives a lady named Atsuko Saeki. When she was a teenager, she dreamed of going to _______.Most of what she knew about American was from the textbooks she had read. "I had a _______ in mind: Daddy is watching TV in the living room, mummy is baking cakes and my _______ goes to the cinema with her friends.

Atsuko planned to go to college in California. When she arrived, however, she found it was not her_______ world. "People tried hard to deal with problems, "she said. “I felt lonely.”

One of her _________ classes was PE. We played volleyball, "She said." The other students were good at it, but I wasn't.

One afternoon, the teacher asked Atsuko to hit the ball to her teammates so they could knock it over the net. It is not difficult for most students, _______ it frightened Atsuko. She was afraid of losing face if she _______.

A young man on her team found that. He _______ her and said in a low voice, "Come on, Atsuko. You can do that.”

“You will _______ understand how those words made me feel at that moment. Four words: You can do that. He encouraged me. I felt like crying with happiness. Finally, she made it through the class.

________six years have passed, Atsuko has never forgotten the words. She said. "When things are not going so well, I think of them.”