on the 7th of January by the Orthodox Church. This holiday means the

beginning of the new year and the new life. English people celebrate this

holiday with the evergreen tree — Christmas tree. Children rut

along sock, called a Christmas stocking at the end of their beds and Santa

Claus conies down the chimney to bring them presents.

Christmas Day is the greatest holiday in England. It is interesting to

visit the shops before this holiday. There are a lot of nice Christmas

cards and presents there. English people like this holiday very much and

prepare for it beforehand. They buy presents for each other, try to send

Christmas cards for their relatives and friends.

It is interesting to visit London during this holiday. There is a

Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. We can see many lights, toys and sweets

all over this tree. Everywhere you can see slogans "A Merry Christmas and a

Happy New Year".

The traditional English dinner on Christmas is turkey and pudding.

NEW YEAR'S DAY

There are many holidays in our country. They are: New Year's Day,

Christmas, Women's Day, Victory Day, May Day and others.

I like New Year's Day, it is my favourite holiday. The 1st of January is a

winter holiday and now it is the first day of the New Year.

Peter the First changed the Russian calendar in 1699. He made the 31st of

December, 1699 the last day of the year. The first of January 1700 became

New Year's Day.

The 1st of January is in the middle of winter. The weather is usually fine

and there is a lot of snow everywhere. As the 1st of January is a holiday I

don't go to school and my parents don't go to work.

We usually have got a very interesting New Year's party at school. We

have got it on the 28th or 29th of December.

Our family prepares for this holiday beforehand. My father buys and

brings home a beautiful New Year's tree at the end of December. Our family

has a tradition to buy it. I like to decorate the New Year's tree with

toys, little coloured lights, sweets and a beautiful star on the top.

My mother and grandmother prepare our holiday supper and lay the table. I

make a cake.

All the members of our family clean the flat before this nice holiday and

then each of us try to dress well. We like to see the New Year in at home

with our relatives. They come to see us at 11 o'clock in the evening.

At 12 o'clock we are sitting at the table and we are glad to see the New

Year in. We say, "Best wishes for the New Year!"

I hope that next year will be better than the last one.

The New Year's Day is always connected with our new hopes and dreams.

It is a pleasant moment to get presents on the New Year's Eve.

I usually get many nice useful things from my parents and relatives.

My parents put their presents under the New Year's tree.

We don't go to bed till morning, we watch TV, dance, eat tasty things and

make jokes.

I enjoy this holiday very much.

YURI GAGARIN (1934-68)

Yuri Gagarin was the first cosmonaut in the world. Yuri Alexeyevich

Gagarin was born on the 9th of March, 1934. He was born in the village of

Klushino in the Smolensk region.

Yura was an active, brave and curious boy. His father was jack of all

trades and he helped his son when Yura made toy planes by hand. But the war

began. Yuri Gagarin and his mother, father, brother and sister left their

house and had to live in a dug-out.

After the war Gagarin's family moved to Gzhatsk. Now it is Gagarin. It

was named after the first cosmonaut.

In 1951 Gagarin graduated from a vocational school in Lyubertsy near

Moscow.

Yuri Gagarin attended an aeroclub and began to fly when he was a student

of a technical secondary school in Saratov.

In 1955 he entered a school for pilots. Then he became a pilot and joined

the first group of cosmonauts.

In 1960 Gagarin began to prepare for the flight into space.

On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin flew into space and spent 108 minutes

there. Jt was the first time in history that the Russian spaceship "Vostok"

with the man on board was in space. After his flight he visited many

countries and saw millions of people. Gagarin became a Hero of our country.

He died in 1968, but people always remember the first Russian cosmonaut.

THE MASS MEDIA

Newspapers

There are many kinds of newspapers in our country. It is possible to buy

them almost everywhere. But we can't read all the newspapers. We know that

it is necessary to read newspapers. Reading them we can learn a lot of

interesting and useful things. I think that everyone must read newspapers

every day. I read many newspapers and magazines.

Everyone has its favourite newspapers. I like "Vechernaya Moskva" best of

all. This newspaper was published on the 6th of December, 1923 for the

first time. It usually has 8 pages. You can read some news on the 1st page.

You can't know a lot about these events, you read only some facts, which

are usually short, but

interesting. If you turn the second page, you can read about our life. You

can read out events abroad and about your favourite artists and singers,

too. You л see some advertisements on each page the newspaper and use them.

You can learn about the weather from the pages of is newspaper.

If you are fond of football, basket-ball tennis, you read articles about

sport events in our country and about our famous sportsmen. If you want to

buy something you have to read the last page. There are some humorous

stories in this newspaper.

Magazines

It is interesting to look through some magazines or read them. It is

possible to subscribe to some of them or buy them. We usually subscribe to

the magazine "At the wheel". As we have a car it is useful for us to read

it. My mother prefer to read the magazine "Liza". She says that it even

helps her in some cases.

Television and radio

I think that they are very popular means of information. They are popular

among young people in our country. We can know a lot of news watching TV or

listening to the radio set. All members of our family watch TV very

regularly. We like such programme as "My family". I prefer to discuss some

problems with my parents after it. I have many favourite TV programmes but

I haven't enough time to watch all of them.

MY HOBBY

What is a hobby? It is what you can and like to do, when you have free

time. We choose a hobby according to our character and taste. When we have

a hobby our life becomes more interesting.

Very often our hobby helps us to choose our future profession because we

learn a lot of new things.

Many people are interested in music. They collect records. Others like to

read and collect books. People living in cities and towns like to be closer

to nature and they spend their free time in the country.

Some of us go on hikes, some like to work in their gardens, take

photographs or knit.

For example, gardening and growing roses is the most common hobby among

Englishmen.

Both grown-ups and children are fond of playing different computer games.

It has become one of the numerous hobbies.

I have got a hobby too.

My name is Nastya. Sometimes I have got some free time. As my hobby is

cooking I like to make cakes and pies. My cakes are very tasty, but I like

pies best of all. I'll tell you how I make pies with cabbage.

First of all I take a head of cabbage, cut and put it into a frying-pan.

Then I take carrot and peel it. By the way I have a very comfortable grater

at home. I like to use it when I make my pies. I usually grate carrot,

onion using my favourite grater. I put grated carrot into the frying-pan,

then I salt cabbage and carrot to my taste, mix them and add some water.

Then I stew these vegetables in the frying-pan. I usually buy some paste

for my pies.

I cut up paste, roll it and make small pies. Then I put pies with stewed

cabbage into the oven. It takes twenty minutes

to bake them. My parents and friends like to eat my pies. I advise you to

make such pies and I hope that you'll like them too.

MY SCHOOL

At the age of 6 or 7 all boys and girls go to school. I go to school too.

The number of my school is 338. Our school is large and light. It is

neither old nor new. There is a schoolyard around it. It is a pity, but

there are no flowers near the school. You can see a sportsground behind the

school. Sometimes we have physical training lessons there.

Our school has got three floors. There is a workshop on the ground floor.

It is big. There are all kinds of tools and machines there. The boys of our

school have a wood-work room too. They learn to make things of wood in this

room. There is a room for manual work for girls. It is not on the ground

floor, it is on the second floor.

There are some computer classes, and pupils like such school subjects as

Computing.

If you enter the school and go to the left you see a dining-room. Here

pupils and teachers have their breakfast and dinner.

The dining-room is a clean one. There are many nice pictures on the walls.

There is a gymnasium near the dining-room. All pupils like to go there,

because they like physical training lessons.

Our school has got a library. It is on the ground floor too. There are a

lot of interesting new and old books in it. But our library has no reading-

room.

Our school has got many classrooms. We have got two English classrooms.

History, Geography and Physics classrooms and others. They are big and

light and each of them has got two large windows with green curtains,

flowers on the window-sills, a bookcase near the door, the blackboard on

the wall.

The teacher's table with many books on it is situated not far from the

blackboard.

There are twenty desks and some comfortable chairs in the classrooms.

There is a TV set in each classroom. Sometimes it is used during the

lessons.

There is a school hall on the second floor where meetings and conferences

take place.

We organize concerts, parties when we celebrate our holidays. Pupils of

our school sing songs and dance modern and folk dances and perform some

plays there. The last bell is organized at our school in a proper way. It

is a very remarkable day in the life of all the pupils. The pupils of the

first form and the pupils of the eleventh one are preparing for this day

with great pleasure.

The teachers' room is on the second floor. There are tables and chairs

for teachers, a TV set and a telephone there. It is a comfortable and cosy

room and the teachers like to spend their free time in it. I like my

school. I go there and get knowledge.

THE CINEMA

The Lumiere brothers made their first film in 1895. This film was

demonstrated in one famous cafe in Paris.

The first films were silent and short, but they were popular among people.

The USA was the leader in the production of films. The first sound film

appeared in 1927. Soon coloured films appeared.

Cinematography has a long history in our country too.

Pioneers of the Russian cinema were Protozanov, Gardin, later Pudovkin and

Dovzhenko. At that time films were silent and black-and-white.

Later films became sound and colourful.

Some years ago it was popular to go to the cinemas in Moscow. It was

difficult to buy a ticket for a good film and we had to stand in a queue

for hours.

But now we prefer to stay at home and watch TV and video films.

In England the cinema is usually called "the pictures". The prices of

cinema seats in London are high. In the past cinemas were more popular than

they are now. It is interesting that in some towns in Britain the cinemas

are closed on Sundays.

I like to see documentary films best of all. Some of them are rather

interesting, because they tell us the truth about the history of our

country.

I like to see films about school life. As I study at school, such films

are connected with me. It is interesting to see films bout school life in

England, France, Spain and in the USA. It is interesting to know about

foreign education and to see their schools.

My favourite Russian film is "Moscow doesn't believe in tears". It is the

true story about the girl. She leaves her village for Moscow. This film

tells us about her difficulties, about her wish to live in the capital,

about her friends. I am sure that it is a kind and a clever film.

THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY

There are many interesting galleries in our country. The Tretyakov

Gallery is one

of the famous and well-known picture galleries in our country and all over

the world.

The State Tretyakov Gallery is situated in a Russian-looking building in

the centre of Moscow. This gallery is named after its founder Peter

Tretyakov. He began to collect Russian paintings in 1856. He wanted these

paintings to be seen by people.

This gallery and collections of paintings were nationalized in 1918.

The first works in Tretyakov's collection were the paintings of the "Pere-

dvizhniki". The collector bought paintings "Morning in a Pine Wood" by

Shish-kin and "Ivan Tsarevich on the Grey Wolf "by Vasnetsov.

The gallery has got many halls. There are halls devoted to the great

Russian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. We can see pictures by

such painters as Serov, Repin, Ivanov, Levitan and others. You can see the

landscapes "After Rain" and "Golden Autumn". These paintings by Levitan are

beautiful. I like to see his paintings because he is one of my favourite

artists. I compare his painting "Golden Autumn" with the poem "Autumn" by

Pushkin.

There are some paintings by Repin in the Tretyakov Gallery. His paintings

are connected with the history of our country. For example, his painting

"Ivan Grozny Murders His Son Ivan". There are some portraits of Lev Tolstoy

and a self-portrait of Repin in this hall.

I like the painting "Trinity" by Andrei Rublyov. This work reflects the

life and soul of the Russian people.

This gallery has many new exhibits now. You can see works of the painters

of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century there. I like

works by Gerasimov. I think that he is a very talented painter.

BOOKS IN OUR LIFE

Books... I think that we can't live without them.

I consider that books are with us during all our life. When I was a child

my parents read them to me. I was pleased to listen to the stories and

tales. I learned a lot of interesting things from books. I remember, I

liked thick books.

Later I could read myself. I like to read books about animals, nature and

children.

I like to get presents on my birthday. I am happy if it is a book. It

doesn't matter what kind of book it is. I like to read almost all books. If

I have got time I like to spend it with my favourite book. When I was

fifteen I was fond of reading too.

But I preferred to read books about travels. I travelled with the heroes

of the stories. I saw many interesting places and learned a lot of

important facts about other countries and people.

Now I like to read books on science. You can learn many things from

books. I am sure that books play a very important role in my life.

Our family has got many books. All the members of our family buy books

and read them. My mother says that books help us in self-education.

In ancient times books were written by hand. It was difficult to write a

book with a pen. Then printing came into our life. Printing played an

important role in the development of literature and culture.

Now there are a lot of books in the shops, there are many books in our

flats. But it is difficult to buy all books which we want to read. That's

why we get books in public libraries.

There are some problems in our life and sometimes it is difficult to

solve them. I think that books can help us. Last year I read a very

interesting book "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser. This novel was

published at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel describes the

tragic fate of a boy and a girl, Clyde and Roberta by name. It is a sad

story. This novel was written many years ago, but it is popular nowadays.

Books must be our friends during all our life.

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