Shopping
When we want to buy something, we usually go to a shop. There are many kinds of shops in every town and city, but most of them have a food supermarket, a department store, men`s and women`s clothing stores, a grocery, a bakery and a butchery. Frankly speaking, I like to go shopping on my own at big department stores and supermarkets. They sell various goods under one roof and this is very convenient. Sometimes I like to go about window shopping which is nicely dressed. By the way, I respect only first-rate shops. A department store consists of many departments such as: ready-made cloths, fabrics, shoes, sports goods, toys, china and glass, electric appliances, cosmetics, linen, curtains, cameras, records, etc. You can buy everything you like there. There are also escalators in big stores which take customers to different floors. The things for sale are on the counters so they can be easily seen. In the women`s clothing department you can find dresses, costumes, blouses, skirts, coats, beautiful underwear and many other things. In the men`s clothing department you can choose suits, trousers, overcoats, ties, etc. In the knitwear department one can buy sweaters, cardigans, short-sleeved and long-sleeved pullovers, woolen jackets. In the perfumery they sell face cream and powder, lipsticks, lotions and shampoos. In a food supermarket we can also buy many different things at once: sausages, fish, sugar, macaroni, flour, cereals, tea. At the butcher`s there is a wide choice of meat and poultry. At the bakery you can buy brown and white bread, rolls, biscuits. And now we will pay another shop a visit. It`s the greengrocery which is stocked with cabbage, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, carrots, green peas and something like that. Everything is here ready-weighed and packed. If you call round at a dairy you can buy milk, cream, cheese, butter and many other products. The method of shopping may vary. It may be a self-service shop where the customer goes from counter to counter selecting and putting into a basket what he wishes to buy. Then he takes the basket to the check-out counter where he has to pay money for the goods. If it is not a self-service shop, and most small shops are not, the shop-assistant helps the customer to find everything he needs. By the way, every sizeable town has a market but big cities, like Moscow, Minsk and etc. usually have two or even three markets where local people sell spare potatoes and carrots from their dacha plots and different traders sell melon, oranges, bananas. For instance, in Minsk there are about two big universal markets like Zhdanovichi and Kumurovsky which sell not only food stuff but also other useful things like cloths, CDs, and even cars. Of course, it is out of the question that little food markets can be organized by local citizens near different stores and supermarkets. Setting a good pattern (давать пример) the food and cloths market "Zahodny" can be remembered here. I guess that cloths market "Dinamo" is also worth mentioning. There are also mini market in our town. You`ll often find dried fruit, cheese, nuts, honey, meat and other food stuff in the markets too. Markets are such colourful places to visit even if you do not need anything to buy; try to go in the morning for the liveliest scene and the best selection. You can bargain a bit for prices. So, as you see, everything you want can be bought in a store or market but there is a great problem. It`s money. In addition, I`d like to say the same as the old proverb does, "Everything can be bought and everything can be sold." And now I`d like to tell you alittle story of my shopping experience on last Saturday. Frankly speaking, I do not like to save money for a rainy day but truthfully speaking I always try to be in the chips (быть при деньгах), so when I go shopping I usually waste the full sum of it that I`ve got for a present. Well, at 9 o'clock in the morning I left home to go to the shops. There wasn't much on my shopping list: I just needed some new batteries to my radio, a birthday card for my mother and some groceries at the supermarket. I decided to drive to the centre of Minsk myself because I find it's much quicker to do your shopping on your own and you don't have to spend any time doing what someone else wants to do. While I was in the centre this time I decided to have a look round the bookshop. The shop was open so I went inside and there must have been thousands and thousands of books under the sun. The shopkeeper was awfully nice and he started asking me about the kinds of books I liked and he showed me some really interesting titles so I bought a couple for myself. Then, just as I was about to leave I spotted (увидеть) a shelf fall of old guide books and travel books I was looking through them absent-mindedly when I found one all about our town and what it was like a hundred years ago. I couldn't resist (сопротивляться) buying it. After that I tried a few shops to see if they had any batteries in stock(в наличии), but they didn't have the size I wanted. I had more luck with the birthday card but I was so fed up(сытый по горло) with shopping by this time that I forgot to get several of the things I needed for dinner. By the time I got home, I was so worn out (усталый) that I had to spend the afternoon in an armchair.