Julie and her family
“There are five of us in my family. There's me, my mum and my dad, and my two sisters. I'm the eldest, so I look after the younger ones when my parents are out. My cousin, who is an only child, says that must be hard — but we're a close family, and I like it.”
“Are you still at school? Yes — I'm in the first year at a local secondary school. After that I want to go on to university. Some of my friends will leave school at sixteen and start work.”
“What do your parents do? My dad runs a shop near the market and my mum works as a lawyer. My uncle is self-employed — he repairs cars at home. My ambition is to be a lawyer too, like my mum, when I grow up. Would I like to do the same job as my parents? Half of it, yes.”
“All my cousins on my mother's side live in Bukhara. My grandmother is my closest relative — I take after her, everybody says so, and I get on with her better than with anyone else.”
Julie's cousins have chosen very different paths. One works as a nurse, another wants to be an engineer, and the eldest is already a teacher in a village school. Her aunt is a doctor in the district hospital. “I come from a large family,” Julie says, “so somebody does almost every job.”
Not everything is easy. Her sister, the youngest, sometimes gets upset when Julie is late home, and Julie is angry with her when she uses her things without asking. Their cousin Rustam, who used to visit every day, goes out a lot now, and they all miss him. Last month he rang to invite them to a family party — and nobody could remember whose birthday it was.
Savollar: 1. How many people are there in Julie's family? · 2. What does she say about her position in the family? · 3. What are her parents' jobs? · 4. Who does she take after?
