family story
A Family Story
Vocabulary
| rural | consist | major (2) |
| pupil | plentiful | operator |
| lake | baseball | maintain |
| geese | bridge | sweetheart |
| goat | update | major in |
| divide | divorce | coworker |
| sewer | drop out | graduate |
Grandmother
About three times a year, I visit my grandmother in a rural village.
She and her six brothers and sisters were born and raised there. They helped their parents raise vegetables and fruits. They fed pigs, sheep, goats, ducks, geese, chicken. And they milked the cows and made cheese and butter.
School
My grandmother also attended the village school. It consisted of a large building divided into several classrooms.
There the pupils learned reading, writing, mathematics, history and literature.
After graduating from high school, my grandmother moved to a big city.
The City
Jobs were plentiful at that time, and she found work in a factory that made chocolate candy.
It was here that she met my grandfather. He had also come from a farm and worked as a machine operator and repairer.
They got married at age 21, bought a small house and had four children; my father was the youngest child.
Father and Mother
In his childhood, my dad mostly played with his friends. They liked baseball, basketball, reading comic books, riding bicycles, swimming in a lake and watching TV.
At university, my father studied civil engineering. He then worked for the city, constructing and maintaining roads, bridges and sewer systems.
When he was 27, he married my mother, a teacher. They had been high school sweethearts.
Sister and Brother
Together they bought a big house and had two children: my older sister and I.
My sister majored in psychology at university and became an office worker. Later she married her coworker and had a daughter . . . seven years later, they got divorced.
Computers
As for me, I like computers: playing video games, surfing the internet, downloading music and movies, chatting and blogging.
I attended university for two years, studying philosophy, but I dropped out.
Today I design websites and update social media for different companies.
I live with my girlfriend. She is a web writer, and we both work from our apartment.
Questions
1. Was the writer’s grandmother born in the country or the city? What did she do when she was a child?
2. The grandmother stayed in the village for her whole life. Is this correct or wrong?
3. What does the writer say about the chocolate factory?
4. The father had a very different childhood from the grandmother. Yes or no?
5. What was his father’s profession or career? What was his mother’s profession?
6. Did the sister have the same career and life as her mother?
7. Was the writer’s childhood and career similar to his father’s?
A. Does this story sound similar to your family history or your friends’ family history?
B. Talk about your grandparents
C. Describe your parents’ lives.
D. What about you and your siblings? Are the lives of you, your parents and grandparents significantly different?
E. Is life easier, the same as, or more difficult than before?
F. Will future generations be different?
