When I started playing soccer, I just fell in love with it. As many ________ do, I wanted to be a soccer player when I grew up. But when I was nine, I started losing my eyesight, and it got increasingly difficult to play.

At first, I tried to just work harder. But everything was becoming more ________. At some point, if you don’t have eyesight, and you are trying to play a sport that you have to see the ball, it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you train. It becomes impossible for me to keep playing against people with ________ eyesight.

My elder brother is the one who got me started on the right way after I ________ rock bottom. He had swum for a couple of years and ________ me to try it. That brought me back to a better place mentally（精神上）, and I was able to change from playing soccer to sports that I ________ do, like swimming, cycling, and running, and that is called triathlon（铁人三项）.

I was lucky that my parents could ________ me. They worried about my safety, but never stopped me. In my senior year, I signed up for my first triathlon and I had never done anything like it before.

I loved it. That first race was excellent. ________, that race was a turning point. It opened a new door in sport and in life for me. When I went to Michigan for college, I started the triathlon team there.

Perseverance（坚持）is a learned skill, and it ________ from facing difficulty and challenges. Sometimes you have to change the path you thought you’d be on, but you can still keep moving on that ________ road. That’s the most important life lesson I have learned.

There is a famous traditional story in China called “Yu GongYi Shan”. In the story, the foolish old man, Yu Gong, and his family ________ next to some big mountains. Whenever they tried to travel anywhere, the mountains got in their way. Yu Gong wanted to make traveling more ________ for himself and his family. So, ________ he was almost 90 years old, Yu Gong still decided to move the mountains by carrying them away little by little.

A wise old man, Zhisou, _______ Yu Gong’s idea. “________ foolish man you are!” laughed Zhisou “With the little time you have left and such little power, you could not even dig out a tree from the mountain! How could you ________ move all the rocks and earth?”

But Yu Gong ________. “It’s true that I will die, but I have my sons, and they will have theirs. Then their sons will have sons, and those sons will also have sons. I will have endless sons and grandsons, but these mountains will not grow bigger. So why can’t they be moved?”

The story of “Yu Gong Yi Shan” has been read for ________ years and Yu Gong’s spirit has had a strong influence on Chinese people.

Today, the saying “Yu Gong Yi Shan” has become a symbol for marching forward when facing great ________. Perhaps a problem may seem too difficult to start with, but with hard work and help from ________, you might surprise yourself.

Every one of us goes through ups and downs in life. I led an easy life. I didn’t have too much ________ getting money for the family. But I always wanted to do something that would make my family feel __________ of me. I started working as a salesman in a factory. To get more orders and sell more products, I __________ nearly half of all the stores that might have an interest in my products in New York. From carrying boxes of goods to filing sales sheets, I did almost everything I could. It wasn’t a wonderful job. But everything had an effect on my learning. Every day, I wondered if this could bring me __________. Later I found that my aims (目标) should be a bit _________ and I should learn more. I was getting extra money to support my own education, so I went to __________ after work.

Occasionally, I got the chance to join a software (软件) house. This was my beginning into the technological world, where I wanted to stay. I started digging deeper into the new world and was able to __________ things from the people I was working with quickly. My growing knowledge made me be able to speak at important public meetings. For two years, I carried on working hard on big or small businesses and __________ ended up joining a big company.

Today I’m proud to say that I have been very successful. It has been quite a hard __________—from carrying boxes of goods to an important role of a company. And it just goes to __________ that one can always make his dreams come true if he tries his best to explore a new world by learning and working hard. After all nothing is impossible if you put your heart into it.