I should like to begin my talk with a familiar quotation. It is a pity I don’t know whom it belongs to. It runs as follows: "friendship is the wine of life”. So to have a true devoted friend is a great luck.  

I have a lot of friends. Some of them are my schoolmates, some are my neighbours and I have some whom I met a few years ago. But my close friend is Oksana. She is 16.  Oksana is tall and pretty-looking girl. Her peaches and cream complexion suits her dark brown eyes. She has a nice nose that together with her wonderful hair-do and charming smile makes her face beautiful. She is a very fashionable girl. Oksana has a queenly carriage and the clothes she wears always look great and beautiful.  But she is an attractive girl not only by her appearance, but also by her character and her inner world, because she is well bred, jolly and kind. She does well at school.

It is very interesting to speak with her, especially when she has fallen into the habit of reading a lot. She has read a lot of books and it doesn’t matter for her what kind of book it is. She enjoys them all and the only thing that matters for her is that book shouldn’t be dull but interesting. She says that the books are of great help at any time and they always must be at hand. Her idea is that it’s more convenient to have a library of her own comprising lots of books than to try keeping everything in her head.

I don’t like people who are bored at everything and who never make the slightest effort to be pleasant. That’s why my friend is Oksana, the most amusing and cheerful person in the world. She is a sunny soul by nature and always takes the slightest excuse to be amused and to raise the spirits of the other people around her.

Oksana and I are good friends. I enjoy her company immensely. I highly appreciate our friendship. I think there are not many people, whom I’m so attached to. We are always ready to help and support each other and try not to quarrel. But when sometimes it comes to quarrelling we try to make it up at once. I think that our friendship is very firm and I’ve got a friend for all my life.