Last Sunday, my family went for walk in a nearby park. We wanted to breathe the fresh air and having fun there. However, when gone out, we found it was cloudy and smoggy (烟雾弥漫的). Only a few people were walking quick on the streets wearing their masks. I was wondering what was the matter when my little brother begins to cough loudly. Suddenly I realized that it was air pollution. So we had to go back to home that day. Smoke from cars, buses, and factories make the air dirty, that is harmful to our health. I think they all should do some thing to keep the air clean.

   Just like everyone，I have experienced ups and downs in my life. I am an aerospace engineer（航空工程师）from India. I was told by my relatives，close friends and others that it was _________ for a non-IT student to pursue（继续进行）a master's degree in IT and graduate from a US university.

I had never taken courses _________ to computers or programming. I was never interested in being a _________，but things changed. Computers became my companion and I _________ how dependent on them I was. I _________ imagining the backend processes happening inside the CPU and they amazed me. That's why I _________ to pursue a master's degree in IT.

At first，it was too _________. Coming from a middle-class family，the huge cost was a big _________. My English accent was terrible. Most _________，the course seemed impossible at first. But I never __________.

I got a few offers，but I decided to choose my university __________ it promises students to help them learn practically. During my first month，it was difficult to understand the American's __________ and finish my assignments. But I never gave up. I walked two miles to the __________ every day so that I could use my travel money to buy a meal. I started looking for __________ and I got an offer to work as a student assistant.

I took it as a __________, and I believed that hard work was my strength. Right now I am graduating with good grades and a job offer from a company that has asked me to start right after ________.

If you want to achieve something, you need to __________ yourself and start working on your __________.

Hard work always pays off. To be __________, you need to start from somewhere and always question yourself about the limits of how far you would go to __________ your goals.

   When she was just 17 years old，Liz crashed into the back of a truck that was waiting to turn in a left-turn lane（车道）. The crash is a life-changing one for her. Because of the crash，she's blind in one eye，loses her sense of smell，loses some of her hearing，loses the ability to create tears，and she cannot fall asleep naturally.

“Initially，I thought I would not be defeated but clearly I was completely wrong. Apart from the medical problems，the hardest part about my life after the car accident was the fact that I was alone，”Liz said.“Everyone was away at college，but I wasn't. I couldn't drive or go to college. My friends who used to hang around with me were there for me at first，but after a while they stopped coming by.”

“I viewed her Facebook page，and she said on there: Can anybody please hang out with me today？I don't have any friends，”recalled Liz's mother，Betty.

In time, Liz and her mother teamed up with the US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to make a video. They wanted to get the point across that texting and driving can have life-transforming consequences.

In the video Liz appealed to drivers not to text when driving. She admitted she was checking and sending messages via her phone when she crashed her car into the back of the truck.

“Don't text your loved ones when you know they' re driving,”said Liz's mother.“It can change their lives forever.”

“If you get a text, don't look at it,”Liz said.“It's not worth it.”

   I was one of the young US soldiers in Saudi Arabia. At one time before the Internet，our only lifeline to friends and family was the mail we sent and received.

One evening the mail soldier called my name and，instead of a letter，handed me a large box from my grandmother in Oklahoma. One of the great hardships of the war for me was the absence of my grandmother's cooking—her fried chicken and onion，corn bread，and，most of all，her desserts. But on that evening I was about to take a gastronomic（美食的） journey home: I opened the box and found two dozen pies made by my grandmother.

A man from New York approached and asked me what I had received. I couldn't answer；my mouth was full of pie. So I just offered him one. “So nice！”he said. “What are they？”He had to wait a few moments for an answer，but eventually I explained. As insurance，I offered him another pie to keep him quiet.

Once a day for the next three weeks，I imagined returning home to my grandmother's kitchen，if only I had had a few sweet bites at a time.

Some of my earliest memories are associated with my grandmother's pies. She had been baking pies since before the Great Depression. She would have astonished the judges on today's TV cooking challenges. I remember coming across a persimmon（柿子）tree once while out hiking. It was autumn，and the fruit was soft and sweet. I picked a few dozen and brought them to Grandma. Guess what！The next day I walked into her kitchen to find a persimmon pie waiting for me.