11. internship

Well, my opinion about this issue is somewhat confused because I do not actually know much about this topic, and because in Russia the situation with internship is quite different: I don't think that we have unpaid internships at all, but at the same time salaries that are paid for the work made are too low even to call it *salary* (it's better to say *pittance*); internship is compulsory part of education, and it doesn't free you from your diploma work. Now I'm going back to American system of inernship. I agree with the first writer more because, first of all, I also tend to think that unpaid internship brings mess to  the labour market, and, secondly, unpaid jobs always create wrong stimuli for empoyers and employees as well. I think all work that you've done must be paid appropriately.

I also share concerns of the second author: *caveat emptor* situation is really woth considering. At the same time author's overall positive attitude towards unpaid internship seems to me too optimistic and unsupported. The quots of happy students sounds a bit insincerely. Indeed, if your parents and you cannot afford to pay all the costs of unpaid internship without any payoff, you actually cannot apply to this vacancies. This point creates undesirable situation when only wealthy students can acquire the needed experience, and therefore get the higher position than their less provided for coursemates who can be actually more suitable for the vacancies they cannot get due to lack of experience.

Sorry for my confused argumentation. Thank you for reading.

10. Paradiso

The greyish view from 17th floor, NES building

A week of neither cold nor warm, neither sunny nor rainy wheather can lead anyone to depression. During the dark november evenings the only way to escape from the dreariness is to remember sometheing bright and colourful that happily hapenned in your life with a cup of hot milk and honey.

I usually dream of my visit to Sri Lanka last year, when from such "greyishness" we arrived at sunny and warm cost of the ocean. It really looks like a picture from paradise: coconut trees, vast sandy beach, and the huge wavy ocean, in which I could swim for more than 3 hours at a time.

My typical day began with waking up early in the morning and having a breakfast which consisted of dairy products (though I suppose Indians do not drank any milk due to their religion) with some local jam. Than I went swimming and swam all the morning to the dinner, which could not be refused because you desperately want eating because of the sea climate. Than my parents and I had nap, played some games such as table tennis, and went back to the beach. It got dark very fast, and beautiful equinoctial night sky with thousands of stars with the moon which beautifully highlighted clouds appeared. We went to have another meal, and I ended my day with browsing the net, talking on Skype or chatting in facebook with my dearest friends.

One day we went for some excursion to feel the local atmosphere. We saw elephant farm, drank pure Ceylon tea, and visited its former capital Kandy where British governor used to live. At the evening our group visited the beautiful gardens of the Cenral park where we discovered many amazing trees and plants and even found a tree planted by Yuri Gagarin :)

After swimming or eating nothing could be better than lying on the beach reading something interesting. Due to my school programme I had to read *Master and Margarita* there. It was very interesting reading, and the thing that amazed me most was that on our way back during the night flight somewhere in the sky over the Indian Ocean I read an end scene where Woland with main heroes also fly through the night sky! So under the moon and over the night ocean I could lively imagine how these events could occur. Mystic. That's how I ended my trip to paradise)

Thank you for reading.

9. two countries, one hope.

Most Russians think about America (namely, America - this title's used more often than the U.S.) as such a mythic country in which they never will be and never have been to, but about which they hear practically every day in the media. They listen to American pop-stars, watch American moovies, and some time ago they learnt the history of cold war at school. So, there a lot of stereotypes and prejudices raised by both our media and Hollywood. What is America? I think that the most popular answers would be: sheriffs, copps and Wild West, Chuck Norris and terminator, New York and skyscrapers, capitalists and the CIA... I tried to invent the most typical answers, still I realise that it's my own choice based on my way of thinking. Nevertheless, in my opinion, people see only these exotic things and don't see the main point. We are both the nations of dreamers, and here I want to present you my evidence:

These statues are symbols of the future where we'd like to live in: The Statue of Liberty, whose lamp illuminates the way to the American Dream, symbolises Freedom and Liberty, the sweet American Dream itself, and

Worker and Farmer (or "Kolkhoz") Woman, who are walking up to the skies of sunny communistic tomorrow, shows permanent dreaming of bright future in Russia whether we believed in God and Tsar or in Communism.

You can see that the Dream is indeed one for both countries: it's a Dream of hapinnes; it's an ideal towards which we are moving. Moreover, it is visualised similarly! both statues hold in raised hands items related to the future: a torch which enlights the world and shows the right way and a sickle and a hummer - working tools by which the bright future will be created.

Time goes by; epoches come one after another,  bringing new ideas and new idols, but our hopes and dreams are stay the same as they have always been for our people. It's a thing to think about. We are close in the way we dream. So, why don't we join our efforts in making the better future?

Thank you for reading.

8. The Book

The end scene.

You see, this is the last book I finished reading past week. I'd been reading it for more than 2 weeks because it was very difficult to read about all these mishaps that haunt the main hero, Holden, during his straying among buildings of New York. He wanders along its streets, like in a desert; he is so close to his home, but he is desperately homeless. Every injustice makes him suffer, and causes a storm in his soul. He is very irritable and he can involuntarily hurt the others. He is a kind of ethical tuning-fork for the author...

And for me... My sister, who'd adviced me to read it, said that I'd better read it now because later I just wouldn't understand it. And by the end of my reading I realised why. At that moment main hero explains what he wants doing in his life. He wants saving children, playing in the rye, from plunging over the cliff into the abyss, from the cruelties of the adult world. Now I'm by myself stay on the edge of the new life, but now I'm more confident about it because this book and its heroes will serve me like a compass in the ocean of passions, intrigues, and hypocrisy, that is espcially necessary right now.

Thank you for reading the post about my reading)