And it goes without saying that I like Natasha with all her positive and negative features of character and admire her a lot.
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MY HOUSEHOLD CHORES
There are certain things in life which you have to do whether you like it or not. One of such things is household chores, doing which is a necessity. It is what someone in the family has to do every day in spite of his or her wish and desire. You can hardly find a person who doesn't like comfort, delicious food, clean and tidy clothes. But these things need somebody's attention and doing them is called housework.
To my mind housework is boring and besides it takes a lot of time with a hardly visible result. In my opinion it is not a bad idea to have a kind of subdivision of labour at home when each person knows his own daily household jobs. If every member of the family does his bit about the house then keeping it isn't difficult or boring and proves the proverb: "Many hands make light work". For example, the children should keep their own rooms tidy, make their beds, lay the table for meals, clear away the dishes and wash up. The mother could then concentrate on the more specialized jobs of cooking, ironing and mending. Shopping at the supermarket could be a kind of family outing. The father should do more difficult physical work. This is an ideal variant for me how to keep house.
In many families the problem of clearing up the flat or house becomes a generation gap. Usually children don't want to clean up their rooms and their parents make them do it. In most of the cases children consider that their parents have these old-fashioned ideas about making beds in the morning, washing the dishes after every meal, etc. They think that new generation shouldn't care about things like that. On this ground many conflicts develop. Sometimes children promise to help and then fail to do their jobs so parents have to make them do what they don't want to do or repeat in an angry voice to make the bed or to pick up toys from the floor. It seems you strange but my parents have never made me do anything. They only ask me to do something. I've always been a conscientious girl so if they asked me to do the house, to wash the dishes or other things I didn't like doing I couldn't refuse to help them.
To avoid conflicts many families engage a domestic servant. She cooks meals, goes shopping, does the house in one word she keeps house. But as for me, I wouldn't like anyone to command my own things. I think you are always able to manage your housework even if you are busy because to hire a servant is not a way out of this situation.
I'm happy that the problem of cleaning up our flat has never been a generation gap in our family. Of course sometimes we quarreled with my brother when we had to clean our room, but then we decided to make a schedule and cleaned the room in turn. Now as we all are busy people: our parents work, I and my brother spend most of the time in our educational establishments, each of us clean up the house when he or she has some spare time. On Saturday we usually have a big clean. We try to follow the rule of subdivision of the housework. Everyone has his two or three rooms to clean I usually clean the bathroom, our room and parent's room. I get out the vacuum cleaner and clean the carpet, then sweep the dust off the floors with a broom. After that I take a wet cloth and wipe the dust off every surface in the room. In the bathroom I usually scrub the sink and a bath with a washing powder Then I wash the floor. By the way I can not stand washing floor. I dislike it because your hands are rude and disgusting after doing it.
My brother usually clean the kitchen as it is the most difficult work, I think. The floor and the cupboards cover with dust and fat very quickly and sometimes you should even scrub the dust off. He also cleans the living room and the entrance hall. While we are doing the house my mum and dad go shopping. After they return home with large bags full of tasty food we begin cooking dinner. I should say I like cooking very much especially if it is a holiday dinner. My grandfather has had birthday recently, and we decided to cook a delicious dinner for him. So me and my mother garnered in me kitchen, switched on our tape recorder and began to cook. You know, we had a lot of fun, we were chatting and laughing. It seemed to me that we remembered all the jokes we had known. Our excellent mood helped us to cook very tasty dinner. Everyone was satisfied.
Household chores are the things which I can't avoid. Every day I make my bed, wash up the dishes, wipe the dust of the furniture and take out me rubbish. But I share my household chore with my brother. It is a great thing, to my mind. If I had no brother I have to clean up the flat on my own, but it is an awful thing. I don't like to draw my mother in doing the house because she usually has to do a lot of other things like cooking, washing, ironing and mending and it is enough for her I think. It is also my duty to buy bread and milk every day. I usually go to the baker's after my classes. I buy some white and brown bread, biscuits and cakes there. The shop is not far from our house and it doesn't take me a lot of time to do everyday shopping. But as I am busy with my studies I have no time to do it constantly. My parents understand it and sometimes it's my mother who buys bread.
When my mother is ill or away from home my father do the cooking, the buying of food and the planning of meals, but I do the washing up and ironing. There is one thing which I like doing about the house. It is ironing. May be it sounds fanny, but it is very interesting, I think. While ironing I'm having а rest. I turn on the music and iron the clothes and linen. Then I fold them neatly and put away. Ironing makes me think housework is not such an awful thing. Another thing I like a lot is looking after our indoor plants. My mother has a green thumb so we have a great amount of indoor plants at home. I enjoy looking after the flowers as it makes me feel relaxed and calm. More often I do it together with my mother. We water the flowers, then wipe them with a wet cloth or sprinkle with a sprayer. My mum always teaches me how to plant and look after the flowers. I try to take her advice as I want my own house to be full of such beautiful plants that we have now.
Now I'd like to mention the role of technical progress in making housework easier. In the XXI century it is almost impossible to imagine our life without automatic or electronic appliances which make the housework better and faster. As for me I can't imagine my life without a fridge and an electric iron. Fridge is necessary for freezing and saving food. I think food freezing is the easiest, safest and most natural way of preserving food. Practically all food can be successfully frozen and can be kept for long periods of time. Provided you use a freezer wisely, it can help to make significant savings on your household budget, particularly if you have a large enough garden to grow your own vegetables and fruit for freezing. We have a house in the countryside, where we grow vegetables, fruit and berries. In summer we freeze berries and vegetables. Then it is very pleasant to eat them in winter. In addition, food freezing saves you from frequent visits to shops. With a freezer you wouldn't be short of food when unexpected visitors arrive. Electric iron is very important as well because I can't go out when my trousers or shirt are crumpled. On TV they advertise a lot of things for making housework easier from washing powders to washing machines and vacuum cleaners. That's all very well but not all families can afford them as the majority of things of high quality are really expensive.
Generally I like the order, but there are people who keep all their things in a mess. They put empty soft drink cans on their desks, leave the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and only do the washing up when there isn't a clean plate to be found in the house. In the 4th form I visited Italy. When I came into the room of my hostess's child I was amazed by the mess. There were clothes on the floor, the bed wasn't made and the dust was on every surface of the room. I was shocked as I have never had such a mess at home. To my mind it is not comfortable to leave in such conditions. Besides it is not healthy. Many serious diseases can be caused by the dust and dirt. I want to add that it is not very pleasant to receive guests in such a room. My mum has always said to me that the way you keep the house shows what kind of person you are. I agree with her completely. Untidy people usually associate with irresponsible, absent-minded, indifferent and careless people. But when you come to somebody's house and see the order you will probably think that the host is punctual, responsible and conscientious.
I must admit that when I was nearly 7 years old I used to leave all my books, toys and colour magazines in a mess. But you won't believe, my parrot taught me to be orderly. That day my mother bought me new colourful magazines. All the day I was reading them. They seemed to me very interesting and exciting. There were a lot of crosswords, quizzes and games in them. When I had finished reading I put them on my desk and was ready to go for a walk. My mum let me know before going out that they could be spoilt by my parrot if I left them on the desk, but I didn't pay attention to her words. When I had returned I saw only scraps of paper on the table. My parrot tore one of my magazines into pieces with his strong beak. I was really disappointed. Since then I've always kept my thing in order.
So you see keeping house in order is important to me. It brings me as minutes of boredom so moments of joy and pleasure. I think I spend enough time on keeping the house and hope that such little but nevertheless necessary things like household chores will never become the reason for quarrels and conflicts in our family.
--------------------------------------------------------------
SEASONS OF THE YEAR
In my opinion a person's life depends to a certain degree on the climate conditions he or she lives in. Weather influences our emotions and even the physical state.
According to the dictionary weather is the general condition of the atmosphere at a particular time and place, with regard to the temperature, moisture, cloudiness, etc. Air, fire, earth and water are the elements of the weather according to the ancient Greek philosophers... Substitute the Sun for fire and we have the essential components of the weather machine. Without air warmth and water the Earth couldn't support life, but without any single one of those elements weather wouldn't exist. The air is the medium in which all weather happens, heat from the Sun provides the energy that drives the weather machine, and water provides much of the variety of our day-to-day weather.
Weather changes according to the seasons. Every season has its specific features of the weather, which are different. In general a season is one of the four periods of the year. Each season lasts about three months and brings changes in temperature, weather, and the length of daylight.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the climatic seasons differ by about six months. This hemisphere has summer when the Northern Hemisphere has winter. Some regions don't have all four climatic seasons. In parts of the tropics, for example, temperatures change little, but the amount of rainfall varies greatly, so that these regions have a wet season and a dry season. The Polar Regions, on the other hand, have a light season and a dark season. In these parts of the world the sun shines almost all the time in summer and almost never during winter.
The changing of the seasons is caused by the changing position of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Astronomers can tell exactly from the Earth motion around the Sun when one season ends and the next one begins. The dates used for the first day of each season mark the beginning of the astronomical seasons, but the beginning and the end of the climatic seasons vary from these dates from place to place and from year to year.
Spring is the first season of the astronomical year. It is a transitional period between the extreme temperature cycles of winter and summer. Spring profoundly influenced the ancients and played an important role in mythology, folklore and art. Ancient painters and sculptures often depicted spring as a female figure carrying flowers. The early Christians regarded the seasons as symbolic of the course of human life, seeing spring as rebirth or resurrection after the death that winter seemed to symbolize. The season is marked by all kinds of beginnings: seed planting, graduations and weddings. For many people spring starts when British Summer Time begins and the clocks are put back by one hour. This normally takes place at the end of March and it adds an extra hour of daylight to the day.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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MY HOUSEHOLD CHORES
There are certain things in life which you have to do whether you like it or not. One of such things is household chores, doing which is a necessity. It is what someone in the family has to do every day in spite of his or her wish and desire. You can hardly find a person who doesn't like comfort, delicious food, clean and tidy clothes. But these things need somebody's attention and doing them is called housework.
To my mind housework is boring and besides it takes a lot of time with a hardly visible result. In my opinion it is not a bad idea to have a kind of subdivision of labour at home when each person knows his own daily household jobs. If every member of the family does his bit about the house then keeping it isn't difficult or boring and proves the proverb: "Many hands make light work". For example, the children should keep their own rooms tidy, make their beds, lay the table for meals, clear away the dishes and wash up. The mother could then concentrate on the more specialized jobs of cooking, ironing and mending. Shopping at the supermarket could be a kind of family outing. The father should do more difficult physical work. This is an ideal variant for me how to keep house.
In many families the problem of clearing up the flat or house becomes a generation gap. Usually children don't want to clean up their rooms and their parents make them do it. In most of the cases children consider that their parents have these old-fashioned ideas about making beds in the morning, washing the dishes after every meal, etc. They think that new generation shouldn't care about things like that. On this ground many conflicts develop. Sometimes children promise to help and then fail to do their jobs so parents have to make them do what they don't want to do or repeat in an angry voice to make the bed or to pick up toys from the floor. It seems you strange but my parents have never made me do anything. They only ask me to do something. I've always been a conscientious girl so if they asked me to do the house, to wash the dishes or other things I didn't like doing I couldn't refuse to help them.
To avoid conflicts many families engage a domestic servant. She cooks meals, goes shopping, does the house in one word she keeps house. But as for me, I wouldn't like anyone to command my own things. I think you are always able to manage your housework even if you are busy because to hire a servant is not a way out of this situation.
I'm happy that the problem of cleaning up our flat has never been a generation gap in our family. Of course sometimes we quarreled with my brother when we had to clean our room, but then we decided to make a schedule and cleaned the room in turn. Now as we all are busy people: our parents work, I and my brother spend most of the time in our educational establishments, each of us clean up the house when he or she has some spare time. On Saturday we usually have a big clean. We try to follow the rule of subdivision of the housework. Everyone has his two or three rooms to clean I usually clean the bathroom, our room and parent's room. I get out the vacuum cleaner and clean the carpet, then sweep the dust off the floors with a broom. After that I take a wet cloth and wipe the dust off every surface in the room. In the bathroom I usually scrub the sink and a bath with a washing powder Then I wash the floor. By the way I can not stand washing floor. I dislike it because your hands are rude and disgusting after doing it.
My brother usually clean the kitchen as it is the most difficult work, I think. The floor and the cupboards cover with dust and fat very quickly and sometimes you should even scrub the dust off. He also cleans the living room and the entrance hall. While we are doing the house my mum and dad go shopping. After they return home with large bags full of tasty food we begin cooking dinner. I should say I like cooking very much especially if it is a holiday dinner. My grandfather has had birthday recently, and we decided to cook a delicious dinner for him. So me and my mother garnered in me kitchen, switched on our tape recorder and began to cook. You know, we had a lot of fun, we were chatting and laughing. It seemed to me that we remembered all the jokes we had known. Our excellent mood helped us to cook very tasty dinner. Everyone was satisfied.
Household chores are the things which I can't avoid. Every day I make my bed, wash up the dishes, wipe the dust of the furniture and take out me rubbish. But I share my household chore with my brother. It is a great thing, to my mind. If I had no brother I have to clean up the flat on my own, but it is an awful thing. I don't like to draw my mother in doing the house because she usually has to do a lot of other things like cooking, washing, ironing and mending and it is enough for her I think. It is also my duty to buy bread and milk every day. I usually go to the baker's after my classes. I buy some white and brown bread, biscuits and cakes there. The shop is not far from our house and it doesn't take me a lot of time to do everyday shopping. But as I am busy with my studies I have no time to do it constantly. My parents understand it and sometimes it's my mother who buys bread.
When my mother is ill or away from home my father do the cooking, the buying of food and the planning of meals, but I do the washing up and ironing. There is one thing which I like doing about the house. It is ironing. May be it sounds fanny, but it is very interesting, I think. While ironing I'm having а rest. I turn on the music and iron the clothes and linen. Then I fold them neatly and put away. Ironing makes me think housework is not such an awful thing. Another thing I like a lot is looking after our indoor plants. My mother has a green thumb so we have a great amount of indoor plants at home. I enjoy looking after the flowers as it makes me feel relaxed and calm. More often I do it together with my mother. We water the flowers, then wipe them with a wet cloth or sprinkle with a sprayer. My mum always teaches me how to plant and look after the flowers. I try to take her advice as I want my own house to be full of such beautiful plants that we have now.
Now I'd like to mention the role of technical progress in making housework easier. In the XXI century it is almost impossible to imagine our life without automatic or electronic appliances which make the housework better and faster. As for me I can't imagine my life without a fridge and an electric iron. Fridge is necessary for freezing and saving food. I think food freezing is the easiest, safest and most natural way of preserving food. Practically all food can be successfully frozen and can be kept for long periods of time. Provided you use a freezer wisely, it can help to make significant savings on your household budget, particularly if you have a large enough garden to grow your own vegetables and fruit for freezing. We have a house in the countryside, where we grow vegetables, fruit and berries. In summer we freeze berries and vegetables. Then it is very pleasant to eat them in winter. In addition, food freezing saves you from frequent visits to shops. With a freezer you wouldn't be short of food when unexpected visitors arrive. Electric iron is very important as well because I can't go out when my trousers or shirt are crumpled. On TV they advertise a lot of things for making housework easier from washing powders to washing machines and vacuum cleaners. That's all very well but not all families can afford them as the majority of things of high quality are really expensive.
Generally I like the order, but there are people who keep all their things in a mess. They put empty soft drink cans on their desks, leave the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and only do the washing up when there isn't a clean plate to be found in the house. In the 4th form I visited Italy. When I came into the room of my hostess's child I was amazed by the mess. There were clothes on the floor, the bed wasn't made and the dust was on every surface of the room. I was shocked as I have never had such a mess at home. To my mind it is not comfortable to leave in such conditions. Besides it is not healthy. Many serious diseases can be caused by the dust and dirt. I want to add that it is not very pleasant to receive guests in such a room. My mum has always said to me that the way you keep the house shows what kind of person you are. I agree with her completely. Untidy people usually associate with irresponsible, absent-minded, indifferent and careless people. But when you come to somebody's house and see the order you will probably think that the host is punctual, responsible and conscientious.
I must admit that when I was nearly 7 years old I used to leave all my books, toys and colour magazines in a mess. But you won't believe, my parrot taught me to be orderly. That day my mother bought me new colourful magazines. All the day I was reading them. They seemed to me very interesting and exciting. There were a lot of crosswords, quizzes and games in them. When I had finished reading I put them on my desk and was ready to go for a walk. My mum let me know before going out that they could be spoilt by my parrot if I left them on the desk, but I didn't pay attention to her words. When I had returned I saw only scraps of paper on the table. My parrot tore one of my magazines into pieces with his strong beak. I was really disappointed. Since then I've always kept my thing in order.
So you see keeping house in order is important to me. It brings me as minutes of boredom so moments of joy and pleasure. I think I spend enough time on keeping the house and hope that such little but nevertheless necessary things like household chores will never become the reason for quarrels and conflicts in our family.
--------------------------------------------------------------
SEASONS OF THE YEAR
In my opinion a person's life depends to a certain degree on the climate conditions he or she lives in. Weather influences our emotions and even the physical state.
According to the dictionary weather is the general condition of the atmosphere at a particular time and place, with regard to the temperature, moisture, cloudiness, etc. Air, fire, earth and water are the elements of the weather according to the ancient Greek philosophers... Substitute the Sun for fire and we have the essential components of the weather machine. Without air warmth and water the Earth couldn't support life, but without any single one of those elements weather wouldn't exist. The air is the medium in which all weather happens, heat from the Sun provides the energy that drives the weather machine, and water provides much of the variety of our day-to-day weather.
Weather changes according to the seasons. Every season has its specific features of the weather, which are different. In general a season is one of the four periods of the year. Each season lasts about three months and brings changes in temperature, weather, and the length of daylight.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the climatic seasons differ by about six months. This hemisphere has summer when the Northern Hemisphere has winter. Some regions don't have all four climatic seasons. In parts of the tropics, for example, temperatures change little, but the amount of rainfall varies greatly, so that these regions have a wet season and a dry season. The Polar Regions, on the other hand, have a light season and a dark season. In these parts of the world the sun shines almost all the time in summer and almost never during winter.
The changing of the seasons is caused by the changing position of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Astronomers can tell exactly from the Earth motion around the Sun when one season ends and the next one begins. The dates used for the first day of each season mark the beginning of the astronomical seasons, but the beginning and the end of the climatic seasons vary from these dates from place to place and from year to year.
Spring is the first season of the astronomical year. It is a transitional period between the extreme temperature cycles of winter and summer. Spring profoundly influenced the ancients and played an important role in mythology, folklore and art. Ancient painters and sculptures often depicted spring as a female figure carrying flowers. The early Christians regarded the seasons as symbolic of the course of human life, seeing spring as rebirth or resurrection after the death that winter seemed to symbolize. The season is marked by all kinds of beginnings: seed planting, graduations and weddings. For many people spring starts when British Summer Time begins and the clocks are put back by one hour. This normally takes place at the end of March and it adds an extra hour of daylight to the day.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37