1.   Arriving in the United States virtually penniless and unable to speak English, the pianist eventually taught himself the language by spending hundreds of hours in movie houses.

2.   Ballot access laws require spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and frustrating man-hours just to get on the ballot.

3.   Borrowers suddenly face spending hundreds of dollars more a year for home loans.

4.   Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars this year to upgrade its system, AOL acknowledged that it has had trouble coping with a crushing load of e-mail.

5.   Friends say that serving in the minority bored Bradley, and the prospect of spending hundreds of hours cajoling people for money for a bruising re-election fight depressed him.

6.   In sum, these SAT programs might help average test takers bump up their scores without spending hundreds of dollars on an SAT prep course.

7.   It serves as a lending library of adaptive technology so people can try out the expensive gadgets before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on them.

8.   Nine months before this British colony returns to Chinese rule, mainland companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new offices.

9.   This year the bank is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight AIDS and malaria.

10.   It checked the slide of the ruble against the dollar at the cost of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the foreign exchange markets.