Leisure activities in the past and now / Adriana Iglesias

I’ve always thought that children have everything they want, and that they don’t have time to get bored. Leisure activities have improved a lot; I mean, there are many video games and facilities that 30 years ago people couldn’t imagine they would exist someday.

When my parents were very young, they used to go out with their friends. They went to the park with them and sometimes with their family. There, they exercised or they just played on the children’s playground. When they became teenagers , they started to do different things. For example, my mother loved reading romantic novels, and my father joined a band. At nights, they went to the disco to dance or to date someone, since that was the place where my parents met.

My grandparents used to do similar things. They lived in villages and there, they played popular games and they took care of animals like horses, sheep and cows. They liked going fishing to the river and there they swam. They also had picnics and went camping. My great- grandfather would hunt and he taught my grandfather how to do it, though he didn’t like it because he was fond of animals.

Nowadays, people do different things, but also the same as them. I sometimes have lunch with my friends in a restaurant and then we spend the rest of the day together. In summer, we go to the swimming pool, which is crowded, and we sunbathe, swim in the pool and play cards. Some people love going to the shopping center. They can buy clothes or whatever they want. Others like reading and they can spend all their time doing it.

One of the things that has always been very important is spending time with your family. I meet them every Sunday, and we always have a good time together. I think this was even better in the past, because it was very common to live with your grandparents or other members of the family, so you could see them every day.

We should do more things outdoors, as people did in the past. Although they didn’t have electronic machines, they knew how to have a good time and spent more time with their friends, something that helped them to be sociable and more confident. Many people stay at home watching TV or playing computer games, instead of playing sports, going to the cinema…
In conclusion, our leisure activities can improve even more if we mix things people did in the past with other things we do now. Maybe, if you’re used to doing something, you can make an effort and try to make it funnier than it is. It just depends on how you want to spend your free time.

by Adriana Iglesias Pazos, 1º E Bach