Meet Olivia: Audio / Reading and Practice

To All, Technical carrers, ADM and Night Shifts:

Here is the link to the next Practice:  Meet Olivia.

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http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/big-city-small-world/meet-olivia

Here is the transcript:

Hi everybody - welcome to London. My name's Olivia, pleased to meet you.

My surname is Barbieri, which is an Italian name because my grandparents were from Italy, but I'm English. I've always lived in London because I really like it here. It's an expensive city, but it has lots to offer. I don't think I'd like to live anywhere else.

I'm 28, which means I'm a little bit older than most of my friends and sometimes I think they see me as their mum or aunt or older sister, especially because a lot of my friends are a long way from their families. They're always asking me to help them out with their problems but I don't mind it at all. In fact, I quite like it.

I work in a small shop. It doesn't sound like a very exciting job, but I love it. I own the shop and we sell shoes, but they're not ordinary shoes. They're all special shoes, hand-made by craftsmen. We have lots of different kinds of shoes, some very posh ones for parties and some everyday shoes. But they're all unusual; funky I call them. It's not easy to get shoes like this so some of them are quite expensive.

Business is good at the moment but sometimes I get bored of my job and dream about doing something else, but I'm not sure what else I'd like to do. I really want to start up a website so I can sell our shoes online all over the world and so I can spend less time in my shop.

What else can I tell you? Oh well, in my free time I like reading and going to the cinema, going for walks in the park, oh, and I hate sports of any kind.

I really like my life here. I guess because I've got so many good friends. We all hang out together in Tony's cafe, which is right next door to my shop, fortunately, and ugh, by the way, I have a small nephew called Joe. He's five and he's a bit of a terror. I often look after him when my sister is busy - so watch out for him.