POSTAL SERVICES

There are post-offices in every town and nearly every village in the country. If you want to post an ordinary letter or a postcard, you need not go to the post-office, you can drop it into the nearest pillar-box. If you want to send a telegram, you can either take it to the nearest post-office or dictate it over the telephone. Pillar-boxes are emptied twice a day.

If you want your letter to arrive more quickly than by ordinary post, you can send it by Air Mail. Letters are delivered to your home or office by a postman, and telegrams by a telegraph boy. When we want to send a letter, we must write the address on the envelope and stick the required stamps on it. For a registered letter, an air-mail letter or an ordinary letter to another country, we must stick more stamps on the envelope.

In most post-offices and also in many streets, there are public call-boxes from which you can telephone. All you have to do is to lift the receiver, drop a counter in the slot and dial the number.

If you want to send a parcel, you must go to the post-office, hand it to the assistant, who weighs it on scales and gives you the necessary stamps. The amount you have to pay depends on the weight of the parcel.

MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

People use various means of communication to get from one place to another. In the old days people had to travel several days, weeks and months to get to the place they needed. They either went on foot, by coaches driven by horses or on horseback or by. boats and ships. Then trams, cars, buses, planes, underground and other means appeared.

Many people like to travel by air as it is the fastest way of traveling. A lot of people like to travel by train because they can look at passing villages, forests and fields thro-ugh windows. Some people like to travel by car. There they can go as slowly or as fast as they like. They can stop when and where they want.

People who live in big cities use various means of communication to get from one place to another. Londoners use the underground railway. They call it “the tube”. Lon-don's underground is the oldest in the world. It was opened in 1863. There was one route at that time, four miles long. Now London's underground has 277 stations and it is 244 miles long. Londoners use buses. The first bus route was opened in London in 1904 Today there are hundreds of routes there. The interesting thing is that some of the routes are the same as many years ago.

London's buses are double-decked buses. Londoners do not use trams, though London was the first city where trams appeared. And now it is one of the biggest cities in the world where there are no trams. The last tram left the streets of London many years ago. Londoners use cars. One can see a lot of cars in London streets. When Londoners leave the town, they use trains, ships or planes.

Imagine you are one of the little old ladies. Write a letter to your favourite grandchild describing the robbery act againt you and how you felt about it.

Dear Claire,

Yesterday a terrible incident happened to me. I was returning home after buying some medicines in the chemist's shop and, while crossing the road, somebody snatched my bag out of my hands. It was very unexpected, but I wasn't taken aback and stroked the mugger with my umbrella I always take with me. It was unexpected too, but for HIM; he knocked off his bicycle and I started screaming at the top of my voice. He tried to get back onto his bicycle and escape, but I continued hitting, giving him no chance to do that. Fortunately the police was not too far, and they arrived rather quickly and arrested him. The police officer was very kind with me and escorted me home without other accidents.

That's all for this letter.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Your Granny

Have families changed in your country or are they the same as they were a century ago?

Russian families have changed greatly in this century. In the early 1900s a typical family included a mother, a mother, five or more children with their families, and even most of in-laws. Now the majority of Russian families are small. May be that's why the population of this country has stopped growing. A typical post-Soviet family has parents (a mother and a father) and two children. Grandparents come to visit, but do not usually live with their children. Most people get married between the ages of 20 and 23 but many marriages end in divorce, so there are a large number of "single parent family", one mother or father looking after their children alone.

Write about a period in your life when you were "having an amazing time".

This month is the period in my life when I'm having an amazingly bad time. I really don't know what is happening to me these days. I have no idea about what have been and are the reasons of this 'decease' and I don't want to look for them. The best description of my state is Indifference, complete and total Apathy toward everything taking place around me. This is really awful to attend lectures and seminars without any motivation, without even a wish to get education and become a lawyer in the near future. That's even worse to see a really interesting movie on television, a movie everybody likes and recommends, and to be bored to death because of some unknown reasons. Apart I'm very reserved person, so I'd never share my real feelings with anybody and I'd never express my real state outwardly. For everybody I'm really cheerful and joyful. As usual. And that's bad, amazingly bad!