Native English Conversation with Captions & Explanation

I really would um when we went when we went on our vacation in Argentina we went up to what was it called uh there's a really famous glacier and I'm terribly phenomenal not being able to remember the name of it but there's a really famous glacier oh no, that wasn't the one, well , let's start again. When we went to Argentina, there was one day where we went for a full day hike and in the end I think it was like five hours. We walked there and at the end there is a big bowl and a glacier and it was beautiful, it was a difficult hike, we got there and we took our little Bunsen burner and our plan was to get there to get a piece of ice and and boil it to make a cup of tea with glacial water, which we did and then that was our goal, just to get there, drink glacial tea and then walk back, um, it was beautiful, how was that taste?

It's just lovely. I mean, really you know, it's probably very old water, yeah, very old, um, but I mean everything up there in the mountains tends to be a lot fresher than, especially in London, what comes out of the pipes here. I had read it for thought when we first arrived. We moved into this house we're in, we had a lead pipe. I don't know if you knew that we had a lead pipe that supplied water and these days you're not supposed to have lead pipes for your water because the lead leaches into the water and can cause lead poisoning, so when someone came to check our pipes, they told us, "You realize you have a lead pipe in the house for water, you need to change it, so we Yes, so I'm sure the glacial ice provided much cleaner water than the one we get from the taps, yeah, yeah, anyway, back to vacation, last question: what's the best vacation experience you've ever had?

Can you put your finger on it? We had so many, but it's hard to pick one, yeah? I mean one vacation that will probably be remembered for us was Disney Disney World in Florida oh you went to Disney World yeah we did that for two weeks and that's when my oldest daughter who is almost 22 turned nine while we were . and I had a birthday there because we're four days apart um and we did a week well, I don't remember what we did, but we did Universal and Magic Kingdom and Epcot um and we stayed in a hotel.

It's not really a hotel, like apartments that had a community pool, a little bit out of the park district and then we spent a couple of days in Clearwater, close to the beach and stuff, so it was lovely, so it was just the four of you It was the four of my two daughters and it was exhausting, yeah, she would have had almost five years of emergency with her, yeah, um, and it was lovely because, so, there's four years between them, um, and the eldest was all. she's old enough to remember it and old enough to still be young enough to still be hypnotized by princesses and she got all glammed up at the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo boutique and we went swimming with dolphins for my birthday. in one of the parks that was in Discovery Cove, which is like a special dolphin, a place where you can swim with the manta rays and the sharks, so it was beautiful, it was amazing, it was lovely, it was exhausting having two little kids, but it was lovely Experience the magic through them, yeah, and I wouldn't want to do it now, nowadays, um, I can't remember any of the rides and stuff like that, but I just remember the parades, the fireworks, um, and the food was incredible, oh.

That's actually a good thing because I often find theme parks. I feel like they fall over the food, especially where we go around here, it's not like we're surrounded by theme parks, but we're in the south so there's quite a bit. There are a few theme parks nearby and it always tends to be that type of food very fast, kind of food that is mass produced, it's not very healthy, yeah, and it's not very tasty, yeah, and stuff like that, well, I think we ate in some restaurants and we also catered to ourselves at night, so we didn't eat as much food from the park, we would have picnics and take our own lunches and then come back and eat or eat outside the park, yes, probably for that reason, but I remember the portions. being huge and I remember Lauren got a pizza and then a cup of parmesan cheese oh wow and there's actually a picture of her but she was like do I have to eat all this cheese? because she thought it was for her and it was part of the meal when I said no that's just a shake but yes the portions were huge but it was a lovely lovely experience yes well but my favorite holiday apart Of that, it would probably be the tour in Scotland, which I never thought I would have enjoyed. touring Scotland in a caravan, um, but we were really lucky to have beautiful weather, yeah, and there were priests just out of season with all the mosquitoes coming in, so it was really lovely and it was outside of the school holidays, so it was It wasn't as busy, beautiful beaches and every turn we made or every hill we went over was a different view so sometimes we felt like we were in the Rocky Mountains, yes sometimes we felt like we were on movie sets.

It was amazing and you never knew where you were going to sleep the next night, so because you're moving on, yeah, it was really good to see a lot of different experiences. Yes, I spent a lot of time touring Scotland as an actress when When I first left university, maybe two three years, we had the same experience that even though it was winter, there were days when I think sunny winter days are beautiful in anyway, you know, it's fresh and the The colors are different, uh, but in Scotland it's such a beautiful landscape they have a lot to offer.

Pretty extreme scenery at times, but it's also largely untouched. The population is not very large, so there is a lot of countryside that is just as it is. The colors up there, like in August, sorry, in the fall and in the winter, are stunning and we would be trying to find these little remote primary schools to go to and do our pantomimes too and find these amazing roads that we were driving on an amazing road . landscape and just thinking wow you know this is really unexpected because you think of Scotland in winter you just think of a lot of rain just infinite tolerance yeah yeah but it's not always the case anyway thank you for sharing all your thoughts and experiences for the holiday has been a pleasure, yes it has led to some lovely memories, yes ok now it's time to delve a little deeper into some of the things that were said during that

conversation

, let's get started Nikki, We recently went camping, not you and I, but My family went camping just for a weekend as a kind of test to see how we as a family with young children would deal with camping because I went camping when I was a kid. .

I'm sure you did. I did it well, yes, but me. I haven't done it as an adult with small children and I always thought it could be a pretty stressful experience, but you encouraged me to try it because you're a pretty experienced camper, isn't that the way to describe someone? like something experienced, an experienced camper, an experienced traveler means they have a lot, a lot of experience in doing that, yeah, yeah, we went camping, all my family vacations existed, I was camping, and then when I met. Neil, my husband, um, we went camping and then having kids, we went camping because it was affordable, oh, that's the main one, that's the main draw, the main draw, this is using the word draw to encourage, attract, attract if you draw something for yourself. and you bring it, it's not about taking a pencil or a pen and making a picture, it's about encouraging something to come to you, so what attracts you to a certain activity, so I asked or said, rather, that It's the main attraction, that's the main thing.

That makes you want to go camping, probably yes, and there are also many lovely parts of this country to explore and my husband loves to go out for walks, hikes, climbing and things like that, so he's really into the outdoors, right? is that so? Yes, be outdoors. I think this is self-explanatory, but it means that you are the type of person who is very comfortable and enjoys being outside doing outdoor activities. You could be someone who likes outdoor climbing or paragliding, hiking, mountain biking, so if you like the outdoors, do you like outdoor activity? Do you like the outdoors?

So, go to Cornwall and the whole south coast. We've done a lot of that. Yes, camping. Have you ever had horrible camping experiences that made you leave? Maybe camping isn't for me anymore. yeah that usually has to do with the weather here Nikki said it usually has to do with the weather with this little phrase meaning related to or that's what it's about so if I say why your friend is upset, have I upset her? ?, then you might say no, no, it has nothing to do with you or what you said, it actually has to do with his family.

She had a Fallout with her family, so she has to do with something else. We've had some pretty horrible storms when I've been camping in Cornwall, yes on the top of the cliff and you know it's very windy, very rainy and when it's windy if you have a tent that has a very thin canvas it flaps around and it's very noisy, we moved our tent and we have um we were in a tent and that was a pretty old school heavy tarp um Metal poles with iron pit, yeah Nikki described that old heavy tarp from a tent campaign was old school.

If you describe something as old school, it's similar to being old-fashioned, but it has a fresh feel to it, so something in the past was pretty cool, but it's still found occasionally today and it's still cool, let me call it old school, for example , if I decided to go out wearing the fashion that was the fashion in the '90s and I was listening to some of the best songs on my Walkman, then you might say wow, Anna is pretty old school and there was a lot of squeaking and rocking and stuff, so that It was, um, it's very loud and then the flood comes in too if things are touching the side or we would doubt we would always camp downhill a little bit so the floods would come down and get the runoff of all the rainbows, yeah, yeah, now here I said get the runoff of all the rainwater, the runoff when I talk about Rain is when all the rain falls on a surface and collects and literally runs off the surface where it collects, for example, the roof of a building when it rains , it rains all over the roof, but the rain tends to fall on the roofs.

It is sloped due to rain and there are usually gutters so there is usually some type of open pipe that will collect runoff, so runoff is the movement of water. We generally use this when we talk about rain, so all the water moves collectively after the rain. By now that thing that you know how to touch the side of the tent, so if you're inside the tent and you touch the side of the tent, anyone who's been camping knows that it can let rainwater in, which is a bit A nightmare when using inflatable beds, in case you are not familiar with the term inflatable bed, it is an inflatable bed, it starts out flat and although you don't inflate it with your mouth, you usually have a foot.

It actually inflates our inflatable beds, you plug them in, you press a button and it just goes off and it inflates and we have these huge inflatable beds, so when we went camping recently, our beds were really coming off the sides and unfortunately in all three of our nights I think it was because we were camping we had thunderstorms um and that's always a concern, but I would have thought that by now technology would have advanced here. I said that by now I thought technology would have advanced here. The phrasal verb to continue means to advance or progress.

You could say that food processing technology has not advanced in the last decade. I don't think that's true, but if it were true, if food processing equipment hadn't progressed in 10 years, then I could say it hasn't advanced or it's advanced quite a bit, so the stores now don't have that, but I guess which is about it being breathable, yes, because even if it hasn't rained, you also have condensation and I have some, I think because of breathing and body heat and then the difference in air temperature from the night, you touch the sides and it can be humid as you pass by, yeah, and I remember going to um, I can kagua, which is a mountain in Argentina.

I think I'm right. I went there and we were walking to a base camp there and a little bit beyond, so we had to spend the night, maybe we spent two nights on the side of the mountain and we were in these big tipis. tents and it was set up well, it was a huge tent and inside the tent they could sleep about 16 people and there were all kinds of different hikers from all over the world and Nick and I this is like our first couple's adventure um and they had bunk beds installed and just very basic bunk beds, not very comfortable bunk beds, if you're not familiar with this phrase it refers to two beds stacked on top of each other, these are very popular with children because if you have one If you have a lot of children and Noyou have enough rooms or a lot of space inside your house, then you can put two beds in one room and provide sleeping space for two children and you would just like to take a bunk bed, which was now a totally open plan.

Nikki asks if everything was an open plan inside this store. If something is open plan, we use this to describe many houses or accommodation. An open plan means that the rooms are not really separate, that you have one big space that everyone is in. and all operating areas are simply open within that space, so an open plan living room on the ground floor of a house would mean that the kitchen, dining room and living room are not separated by walls, all They are in a large open space. all the beds open in the middle and beds around the outside and that thing you said about condensation was what we had to deal with on the two nights we were there, there were a couple of beds that looked like they were the best beds in the house now this one phrase may seem confusing because I said that these beds seemed to be the best in the house when we talk about something that is in the house or the best in the house where normally I just say that it is the best in that space, so, for example, when You go to a theater or some type of entertainment venue, then you can buy the best seats in the house.

Oh these are the best seats in the house or I can't believe you bought these seats. They are the worst seats in the house, I mean, it's a theater, not a house, but we still say they are the best seats in the house. When you are in a restaurant, you can order House Red or House White, which means red wine, which is the common red. the wine they sell at that particular restaurant or their common default white wine would be their house white and we wonder why no one occupies these beds. These are really a prime location on the right side of the store.

Prime location. This phrase is usually used when talking about houses or accommodation. Prime location is like the best location, either because it is the most convenient or the most desirable. Maybe it's near facilities that people like to be around, like a gym or a nice park, a river or a train station. to travel to the local town, I use this phrase sarcastically to say that some beds were in the best part of the store, the main location of the store, but we realized that, you know, you threw your things in and they were quite wet and re like oh why weren't they what's happening here let's choose another bed now here I used the phrasal verb continue I said what's happening here or what happened here continue in this context means it will happen often people will say what's happening what happened or what happened yesterday there were a lot of people hanging around the corner of the street what happened or what happened during that time they're basically asking what happened or what was going on tell me um but then at night there were puddles of condensation from all the respirators in the store because There are, you know, maybe 10 bodies there.

I talked about condensation from all the respirators here. The word respirators is not a typical way to refer to a group of people, but here I. I am referring only to a group of people who breathe condensation, that is, where moisture in the air hits a cold surface like a window and becomes liquid, so if there is moisture or water droplets on the inside of the window in a Cold morning, that's condensation. yeah, it's really cold outside because it's snowing, there's like a glacier there and there's snow on the mountain, so it's cold, that's all this condensation on this, in this tent, it just means that at some point in the night you had this drip, drip, drip and you might have changed the bed because you're covering yourself in someone's breath pretty gross um pretty gross this means really nasty or really gross pretty gross I also used the phrasal verb articulated for articulated means something that changes the balance is an important point that could turn the scales like the hinge of a door a hinge will mean a door is open or closed if a situation depends on a specific factor then it depends on that factor to determine the outcome your camping experience has always depending on the weather that's how I should have phrased that so the weather can make it an amazing or terrible experience but yeah your bad experiences have always depended on if the weather was bad the weather really does and do you ever go camping ? like something romantic just you and Neil or it's always a big family and friends adventure.

Well, I use the word Venture here instead of Adventure. Venture only refers to an activity, but it often has this feeling of risk or uncertainty associated with it, so you might consider camping as an adventure, you don't know if it will be an amazing experience where the sun shines every day, the perfect temperature and there is no wind and everything is wonderful or if there will be storms and strong winds. that will blow away your tent a terrible rain that will wash away your tent is a bit risky so there are risks involved in this activity long before we had children we went camping together in the Lake District and then we we went to Blackpool for a couple of nights and it's nice because if you have a small tent and you camp very basic you can pack up and go somewhere else, but I think if I wanted romance now I'd probably go for a bit more luxury and such maybe glamping or a caravan um not a caravan a motorhome okay okay interesting here Nikki said the word Deluxe Deluxe is another way of describing something that is luxury or something better than standard and glamping, as I explained in the

conversation

, is a combination of the word glamorous and camping, so it's a glamorous version of camping, so five years ago, for our 20th wedding anniversary, we hired, took a train to Edinburgh and then hired a caravan and traveled around the west side of Scotland, which was lovely and again it was you presenting somewhere.

Every night you could camp on the side of the road next to a lake or lock. Nikki used the word pitch when she was talking about pitching the tent or pitching is the verb we use when we talk about pitching your tent or motorhome. or your caravan so wherever you decide to stop for a given period is where you ride and that area is often known as your pitch so when you go camping you will pay for a pitch when you arrive they will tell you your pitch is there and you go to your plot and you set up your tent, um, or you could also go to a campsite, yeah, and do you get online, do you need to get online or like, do you have bathroom stuff that you need to empty or So, does that work now?

I use the phrasal verb connect, so connect when we talk about camping is connect the electricity, especially if you have a caravan or motorhome, you will have electricity on board in the actual vehicle. and all you need to do is connect the main cables to the mains. There will be a mains box somewhere and then you will have power. I recently went camping and we decided to get a plot with an electrical connection so we could carry our cables. and we ran a cable from the box to our tent and then we had several outlets that we could plug into our little mini refrigerator, charge our phones, and have a light that we could turn on and off easily and conveniently, and we didn't have to depend on the battery power so if you're on the side of the road it's pretty basic so you duck on the side look for a bush somewhere yeah here Nikki is using the word duck if someone falls short which means who need to go to the bathroom, but there are no facilities nearby, so they are nowhere near a real public bathroom, so they may need to find a place to crouch.

They'll probably hunker down in the bushes or somewhere private they can find with my kids. I call this a wild Wii. they need a wild wheel they have a wild way if we are not close to any public facilities but you have your electricity and gasoline on board the phrase on board simply means it is literally on the vehicle that is why we talk about being on board a it is sent on board of a bus so when you're on something it's on board or you're on board so you don't need electrical hookups oh right look how a canister gets on yeah right a gas canister for anyone who doesn't know, it's a tub or pot that contains gas we call it a gas canister, it's fine if it's just for one night, but then when the van is running we charge our phones and stuff, so that was fine, but of course from time to time you know.

I wanted a decent shower and a bit of luxury when you go to the Louvre, so you would go to a camp, yes, yes, very nice. I haven't done a motorhome, we thought about it and you can hire them like Airbnb, you can hire them, go travel somewhere, rent a van, do what you did, just travel around an area and bring it back. I think it could be a good option, yes, and glamping is certainly good, it's new, it's like a fad, no. although I think you know you're here for the long haul, yeah, a fad is something that becomes popular pretty quickly in popular culture, so a lot of people talk about it, it becomes something that's in every magazine, on everyone's news articles.

Posting pictures about it on social media is a fad, often fads are short lived, which is like glamping, glamping, ah, glamorous, so I refer to Nikki as a glamorous, a glamorous is a way to describe a person who is quite glamorous and who is always well dressed they always have their hair well combed they just look glamorous Nikki is definitely glamorous they tend to be like um Yurts is the word for these long term permanent tense structures, they are still canvases but often they are more permanent made with wooden poles and you have a little bit of luxury there so there may be electricity in the copper bed, a bed that is really important and then maybe like a rug or some type of flooring inside so you're not alone on the ground, so that's the glamour, as far as it goes, you obviously really like camping, which I always found quite surprising at first because you're quite glamorous.

I would say you know, yeah, well, you always like it. You have nice clothes and you always like to present yourself very well. You seem to give the impression that this is a phrasal verb that means how other people perceive you. I think I'm warm, friendly and helpful, but I can come off as grumpy and selfish, so your appearance is how other people see you, which may be different from how you think you're portraying yourself. How do you introduce yourself? I hope you don't like it, you care about your appearance. You always do your hair very well and you know that you visit hairdressers frequently and like to treat yourself, so I always thought that was a little disconnected because it seems that you know that you prefer a five star hotel where you would be yes, being pampered is You'll be treated in a pretty relaxing way, so if a woman is talking about meeting up with her friends for a pamper night, then she's probably referring to getting her nails done, toenails done, maybe getting a good treatment on hair, probably a facial package they could hire a masseuse or someone to give them a facial, a head and shoulder massage to pamper me, my partner gave me a whole hour to enjoy a nice bubble bath with petals of pink. and a glass of wine and some good chocolates, my favorite chocolates and I felt like I was being pampered.

I had some time to relax well, but do you ever do that kind of thing? Do you spend your holidays at the hotel? And um, I've never been on a hotel vacation with my family, with kids, or with my extended family, so I've been on a city break. A city break is a short trip, usually two, three or four nights in a major city, so a city break could be a weekend in Bath. or Edinburgh, maybe a trip to Paris for a few nights which would be a city break and we stayed in a lovely place or apartments and we have done holidays abroad where we have stayed in Villas, but I have never left our Honeymoon A honeymoon is the vacation that is taken after getting married, so it is the vacation that married couples will take after they have celebrated their wedding ceremony.

An all-inclusive hotel is never made. A high-end hotel. It's always like a hotel with its own kitchen. An all-inclusive hotel is or an all-inclusive holiday would be a holiday where you have the hotel which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner, so three meals of the day and usually drinks They would be included so you can go to the bar and have any drink at any time. On an all-inclusive holiday, high-end means luxury, so something that is high-end would be more expensive, it would be better quality, and self-catering accommodation is where you have accommodation that has a kitchen so you can take care of yourself. yourself and be able to cook and you have a refrigerator to store food, yes, a microwave oven, that kind of thing, yes, yes, so this year we are going to Santorini and we will stay in two places on the island and breakfast is included, but notthere is no place. cook so we can't shop and cook, which is fine with me because I don't want to shop, cook and wash, so yeah, we'll just eat out to eat out, this just refers to going.

Go to a restaurant or cafe for your meals. There will be some lovely places, I'm sure. Do you avoid all-inclusive vacations because of the cost? No, it's more because my husband doesn't want to be tied up. to something means to be stuck, whether you feel obligated to stay somewhere or with someone you are tied to or that you have to stay with a certain thing because you paid for it, then the reason Nikki's husband doesn't care I liked the idea of ​​an all-inclusive vacation because I didn't want to be tied to the same restaurants, the same food options, I didn't want to commit to hotel food, a hotel that provided the food if the food wasn't excellent. and you feel like you have to stay there because you've paid for it within the cost of the vacation, but you can get some hotels that have like 12 restaurants and they're all different, you know different areas, different types of food lots. of variety, yeah, but um, yeah, I've never done that, yeah, I haven't, but for me it's always been about the cost.

I have always tried to look for something cheap and affordable, this just refers to something that is affordable. for your budgets, if something is cheap, it is a good way to say cheap or cheaper options when going on vacation, for example, last minute deals or a last minute deal refers to something you buy at the last minute and It is very cheap because it is last. minute, so for example if you book a holiday you will usually book it months in advance. You book your flight to book your hotel, however if you are bold or if something changes at the last minute and you decide to book today to a holiday when flights leave in two days, then it is a last minute holiday and because it is like that. last minute because you're booking it at the last minute it's going to be cheaper therefore it's going to be a deal so you could go to your travel agents and say hey I'm free this weekend.

Do you have a last minute city getaway? You have someone? last minute deals on city breaks, sometimes half board or bed and breakfast if we are in a hotel, half board is a holiday where you pay for the hotel and breakfast and lunch are usually included, but not dinner, maybe in some cases it will be different. combination in Bed and Breakfast is only the breakfast included in the accommodation or like when we went to Argentina, it was literally just going from hostel to hostel. I don't think I would do that these days, as you get older you think so.

Yes, and how is it less patience or you just want a little more security when you travel? Yes, especially when you also have a family with you. Yeah, and then when you're even older and you have nothing. I don't have a family and as Neil and I are just starting the holiday without our kids we want a little more luxury now so we can go from the extremes so here Nikki got confused between two sentences so she started with one sentence but then she changed her mind and went to a different phrase and then together they didn't make much sense she says we can go from extremes what she started to say was that we can go from one extreme to another that is a phrase we can go from one extreme to to another so if We're talking about temperature to go from one extreme to another is to go from freezing cold to boiling hot, so you can say, "Oh, our weather goes from one extreme to another on Sunday, it was snowing on Monday in the morning, it was a heat wave, but we You can also say go to extremes, which simply means that you move to the extreme of any situation, so we were going camping and we had a very bad time here, she said: very hard to hard, it's like a colloquial slang phrase that means to do things. that's not a luxury, like sleeping on a camping bed or sleeping on the ground, but maybe you're eating very basic food freshly cooked over an open fire, that would be difficult, the word "rough" we would often use for people too if they're sleeping on the street, so someone who's homeless we would say they're sleeping rough, but we've also been seeing vacations with hot tubs on the balcony or, you know, hot tubs and private pools and stuff like that, so yeah, there's a good flip side, yeah, here Nikki said a good flip side, so when we talk about the flip side, we're talking about the opposite extreme, we can use a lot of different phrases here, we can say, on the one hand, you've got this, but then the opposite. to that or against that, on the other hand, we have this, so, for example, you could say, on the one hand, that I really like warm weather, but my opposite point of view is that, on the other hand, it makes all my food runs out very quickly and kills my plants. but on the other hand I hate hot weather so you are presenting opposite sides so you can also say I really love hot weather but on the other hand turn it around.

I hate hot weather, so have a little luxury once in a while. hot tubs are all the rage right now on the other thing, uh, I cut the sentence in half here. I said hot tubs are all the rage right now. What I should have said is that they are hot right now, so something is hot then. means it's very popular right now, it's what everyone is talking about and what everyone is excited about right now, even in Center Parks you can get your regular Lodge or a deluxe Lodge with a hot tub, it's like you have to have a hot tub to make your super vacation I had a vacation in Center Park so I turned 40 and decided to spend that extra money on getting a hot tub but the whole week I was there to celebrate my 40th birthday the weather was really bad so that I remember saying: "let's go." all at night, while the kids were sleeping, with my mom, my dad and my partner, Nick, come on, put on your swimsuit, let's go out to the jacuzzi, light on, in case you're not familiar, the jacuzzi refers to that.

Tub of water that you sit in to relax, so it's not a bath. Normally you would have it in a social area like a garden or sometimes in hotels. Places you might go to celebrate may have a hot tub, so you would usually wear a swimsuit. in the jacuzzi and usually it has bubbles and the water is warm and you go in there with your friends or your family to talk and relax and have a nice time like in a jacuzzi. I know it's very stormy and cold, yes, but I paid for it. We're going to enjoy it and it's hot when you come in, yes, it's just cold when you come out, it's lovely, it was lovely, but it was quite unusual, so we have a jacuzzi in Santorini, a large and pleasant shaped jacuzzi. bathtub, but I guess if it's that hot you can also have it cold, yes it's so refreshing that you wouldn't want to get into a hot tub in the middle of summer in Santorini, so I think they are more in those hot places, I think they are more for the night, aren't they just for yes, yes, yes, that will be nice?

So, Neil is really a nature lover, didn't he say that he likes to go hiking and stuff like that, have you accompanied him on these types of really adventurous hikes and trips, because he spends a lot of weekends away from home camping and things like that? Yeah, so he knows my limits, so he probably wouldn't take me to Snowden or anyone else. So, he takes my youngest daughter, right? She can keep up with him here. Nikki says she can keep up with him. Keeping up with someone in this context means staying with them walking or cycling or whatever doing that activity at their pace, so they're not getting ahead of you, you're staying with them going at their pace, if you're walking. down the street with someone and they're falling behind, you can turn around and say keep going, or they might say no, slow down.

Can't I climb a few flights of stairs? She also said that I can't climb some flights of stairs, so a flight of stairs refers to a set of stairs in an average house that has an upstairs and a downstairs. be a flight of stairs if you're in a building that has many floors there will be several flights of stairs oh really without um you know, needing a break and pausing to catch my breath, but I went up oh, what was it? Sir Arthur's Mount, so Arthur's chair in Scotland, yes, it was like a mini mountain, some people call it a hill, but I needed walking sticks, walking sticks, yes, and I actually found it easier and also for get off, they are very useful and I think if I had them more on walk-ins or on walks it would be easier, yes I use them Nick and I use them when we are walking because especially when it's not stable underfoot if it's a a little off-road, well, off-road refers to anything that's not on the usual track, so if you're walking through the countryside, you might be walking down a country lane, but if you go off-road lane alone in open fields, where there is no established place to walk then you are off the road this is most often used to talk about driving if you are driving off the road or cycling off the road then you are not going on the usual piste, you go free wherever you want to go, if you are skiing, this is called off-piste, yes, and there are loose stones and gravel and things like that.

So having sticks can help you keep your balance, yes, yes, waiting for me, I get quite dizzy. Neil is very patient when he goes for a walk with you on the occasions when he takes his time or always says come on, keep going, like cracking the whip to cracking the whip to cracking the whip means flexing your authority to tell someone to work harder, so it's using your power or your powers of persuasion to make someone work harder, so I'm your teacher if you're in my class and you're not doing anything. work, you're just daydreaming. I could come up to you and say: work harder or you'll be grounded, that's me cracking the whip.

Obviously I wouldn't do that, but that would be cracking the whip. No, I think he is quite patient because He also likes to look around and absorb what is around him and he loves to look at trees and/or forage for food is where you go out into nature and find food that is wild like berries from trees, so you may find mushrooms growing in The Woodlands, to find foods that grow naturally in the wild, is not the same as growing food intentionally on your plot or in your garden, if you grow your own carrots and tears them off, that is not to look for food, looking for food is going to look for it where nature put it.

Yeah, when you're looking for different things, yeah, she recently went on a Bushcraft therapy course and learned a lot about different foods that you can use, like stinging nettles and stinging nettles, it's this beautiful stinging plant that stings your skin if you walk over it. Yes, you could use it for healing or you can make soap with nettles. You can make a healing ointment. I think they are also nettles, which you wouldn't think because they sting you, but you can actually eat them and they don't. It doesn't sting your mouth um nettle tea and different soups if you're out in nature, he loves it, he would love to live sustainably and live off the grid, like he's Bear Grylls, yeah, yeah, whatever you would like to live off the grid is to be off the internet and be inaccessible and untraceable in the modern world, some extreme cases for living off the grid is to be completely without electricity or anything provided by The Wider community, so if you live in a remote location where you have a well for your own water. or a river or stream where you get your own water you have a fire you collect firewood so you don't have central heating you don't have electricity you don't have internet or phone line you're off the grid his grills are a popular character, he's a real person, but he's okay known for being like a wild man outdoors, he can survive in all kinds of different environments, he lives off the grid and he has all these adventures, so he's pretty famous in popular culture right now.

Bear Grylls is known as the survival and outdoor adventure guy, it really was amazing, when we went, when we went, on our holiday in Argentina, we went up to what was it called, there's a really famous glacier and I'm terrible for it. Can't remember the name, but there is a very famous glacier. Oh no, that wasn't the one. Well, cut it, start again. When we went to Argentina, there was one day where we went for a full day hike and in the end I think it was like a five hour hike and at the end there is a big bowl and a glacier and it was beautiful, it was a hike. difficult, we got there and took our little Bunsen burner.

This is something that reminds me of science class in school and college. A Bunsen burner is a small device where with a flame you have a small gas tube that connects to a gas container or the gas mains and it's a single small flame and you can heat things on top of it, so a small Bunsen burner and our plan was to get there to get a chunk of ice and boil it to make a cup of ice water tea, which we did and that was it. our goal just to get there drink ice tea and then walk back um it was it wasbeautiful how was that taste it's just lovely I mean it's really you know it's probably very old yes very old water yes um but no, I mean everything that's up there the mountains tend to be a lot cooler than, especially in London, what is taken out of the pipes here.

It scares me to think that when we first moved into this house we're in, we had a lead pipe in here. I talked about a lead pipe. the pipe that brings our water into the house, if there is a broken pipe somewhere then the water board has to come out and fix the pipe, a lead pipe is the material, so it is a material that carries water from From one place to another. Don't know. Do you know if he knew we had a lead pipe supplying water and these days we're not supposed to have lead pipes for water because lead leaches into the water and can cause lead poisoning if you look at it?

I like to move and spread so that something seeps into the water and then almost absorbs into the water and comes out and spreads. So when someone came to check out the plumbing, plumbing is the general term for anything that has to do with water. so your taps, your pipes, your boiler, anything that supplies water in your house or deals with water in your house is plumbing. They said he realizes he has a lead water pipe in the house and needs to change it, so we did. yes, I'm sure the glacial ice provided much cleaner water than we get from taps, yes, yes, anyway, back to the vacation, last question what's the best vacation experience you've ever had?

Can you identify it? The second point is to find an Exact, if I have a general pain in my body but I don't know what is causing it, I would say that I can't determine what the problem is, but something is wrong. I have some kind of strange sensation in my back. I feel very uncomfortable, but I can't pinpoint exactly where the pain is. We had so many it's hard to pick one, yeah, I mean, one vacation that we'll probably remember for us was, um, Disney, Disney World, in Florida, oh, you went to Disney World, um.

Yeah, we did it for two weeks and that's when my oldest daughter, who's almost 22, turned nine while we were there and I had a birthday because we're four days away from here. Nikki says we're four days away from what she really meant. There were four days between our birthdays, right, um, and we did a week, we did, but we did Universal, Magic Kingdom and Epcot, um, and we stayed in a hotel, not really a hotel, like apartments that had a communal pool. Communal means shared by a wider group of people, so if you are staying in a hotel but it is only a one star hotel and you don't have a private bathroom, so you don't have a bathroom as part of your room, you should use it. a communal bathroom for everyone at the hotel to use this bathroom a little bit outside of the park district and then we spent a couple of days in Clearwater also near the beach and stuff so it was lovely so it was just the four review that It was the four of your two daughters and it was exhausting, yes, it is exhausting, she would have been almost five, so it really magically was her, yes, um, and it was lovely because now there are four years between them, this is very typical . for the

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s to do it Nikki said there are four years between them there is that contraction it would be there are four years between them instead of four years between them because to say that there is there is there is there is there contracting there is there is is much more difficult we really don't do it We could say there are four years between them, but that takes longer, so we tend to contract and change theirs, so if you hear or see that written on a transcript, never write it down, but if you see it written on a transcription is because when we speak to make it easier we just change there is there is it's easier to say there is there are four years between them um and the oldest result is old enough to remember it and old enough to still be young enough to still be hypnotized by the princesses and she glamorized herself in the bibbity Boppity Boo beautifying yourself means becoming more glamorous to look good and to look glamorous for an occasion, so we often embellish ourselves if we are to continue. a night out or for a nice meal or an event like a wedding boutique and um and we went swimming with dolphins for my birthday it was at one of the parks that was in Discovery Cove which is like a special place for dolphins when can. swimming with the manta rays and the sharks, that was beautiful, amazing, um, it was lovely, it was exhausting having two little kids, but it was lovely to experience the magic through them, yeah, and I wouldn't want to do it now, nowadays, um.

I can't remember any of the rides and stuff, but I just remembered the parades, the fireworks, um, and the food was amazing, oh actually, that's good because I often find that at theme parks I feel like they're falling down now. about food. To use the phrase fall over something is to perform poorly in an area, so if I say that you were doing very well but then you failed the grammar section of the test, then that would be the area where you stopped. You did well when you started to do poorly, especially the ones we go to around here, it's not like we're surrounded by theme parks, but we're in the south, so there are quite a few theme parks nearby, and it always tends to be that way. . that type of very fast food, type of food that is mass produced, not very healthy, yes, and not very tasty, yes, and I think we ate in some restaurants and also served ourselves at night, so no We ate so much. a lot of the food in the park we had picnics and um, we took our own lunches and then we would come back and eat or eat out prepared lunches is a very common term, especially if you have school-age children, a packed lunch, I'm sure you can guess it.

It's a lunch that you pack and take with you, so if you're going from home to school or home to work or on a day trip, you might decide to take a packed lunch, make some sandwiches, wrap them up and put them on. in a box and you carry your lunch box out of the park, yeah, probably for that reason, but I remember the portions were huge and I remember Lauren got a pizza and then a cup of parmesan cheese, oh wow, and there's actually a photo of her. but she said: do I have to eat all this cheese? because she thought it was for her and it was part of the meal when I said no that's just a shake but yes the portions were huge but it was just a lovely experience.

Yeah well but my favorite holiday other than that would probably be the Scotland tour which I never thought I would have enjoyed touring Scotland in a campervan but we were very lucky to have beautiful weather yeah and it was Priest just out of season with mosquitoes, they all get into mosquitoes mosquitoes refer to these little flies as mosquitoes and they bite and there are a lot of them and they come out in the hot summer weather, especially where there is water, so if there is a lake or a stream, a often find swarms of mosquitoes and midges and they get in your face and then bite you so it was really lovely and it was out of the school holidays so it wasn't so busy now Nikki talks about being out of the school holidays so that we talk about being in school holidays and outside of school holidays.

These are times of the year, if you book a holiday during the school holidays, we are talking about when the schools are not available when the schools are not running when the children are not in school, that is, during the school holidays. If you don't have kids you will try to book your holiday outside of the school holidays so you won't want to book during the time the kids are off because everywhere will be twice as expensive and really busy, beautiful beaches and every turn we took or every hill we went over there had a different view, so sometimes we felt like we were in the Rocky Mountains, sometimes we felt like we were on movie sets.

Here Nikki referred to the incredible views as similar to those of a film set. A movie set would refer to something that looks beautiful like it would in a movie, so they have these amazing sets, but it's just a movie set, but sometimes in real life. the views can be so beautiful that they look perfect, like they were made for a movie, like a film set, it was amazing and you never knew where you were going to sleep the next night, so since you're moving on, yeah, it was really good I see a lot of different experiences, yes, I spent a lot of time touring Scotland as an actress when I first left university, maybe two or three years and we had the same experience, even though it was winter.

There will be days when you know, I think sunny winter days are beautiful anyway, you know, they're crisp and the colors are different, ah interesting. I referred to the views I saw as crisp, like the winter days were crisp when I talk about the day is cool, I mean the weather is mild, so it's not hot or oppressive and it's not too cold or windy. , it's just a little crisp in the air, it's a little cold in the air, but not too cold if it's On a cold, bright day, if the sun is out, everything is a little crunchy, so literally the leaves They will be dry and when you walk on them they will be crunchy and crunchy, but also the colors are vibrant so it all has a very harsh effect.

Edge you can see everything very clearly because the sun clearly shows all the edges, it is well defined, but in Scotland it is such a beautiful landscape that they have a lot to offer. Pretty extreme landscapes at times, but it's also a largely untouched town. It's not very big, so there are a lot of fields that are just the way they are, yeah, and the colors up there, like in August, sorry, in the fall and winter are stunning and we would be trying to find these little remote primaries. schools to go and do our pantomimes ah a pantomime a pantomime is a well known British tradition.

This is a theater show that occurs during the winter during the Christmas holidays, usually sometimes after Christmas and until January, and a pantomime has its origins in the Latte Comedy. it's a very big style of interaction with the audience, comedy and songs, it's a whole lesson on its own, so it's a theater, a style of theatrical show as well and just finding these amazing roads that we were driving along along a incredible landscape and think: wow! I know this is really unexpected because you think of Scotland in winter, you just think of lots of rain, endless tolerance, yes, yes, but it's not always the case, thank you for sharing all your thoughts and experiences over the holidays, it's been a pleasure, Yeah.

It's taken me back here Nikki said it's taken me back If something takes you back then it reminds you of something in the past oh this song takes me back This song reminds me of a time in the past so some lovely memories yeah, okay, okay, well, I Hope you found this helpful and thank you so much to Nikki for joining me in today's video. If you find

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speakers quite difficult to understand, perhaps check out this lesson. If it doesn't appear on the screen, I'll put a link in the description below until next time take care and bye