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Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve.

Steve: You know, we’ve been trying to get our various Podcasts going again because we had some difficulty with our computers; with the sound systems.

And, so, we’re experimenting today with using what’s known as an Mbox with an older computer in our office.

And, I hope the sound is better for people.

We may get some reaction back from people.

But, that’s not a very interesting subject.

Jill, you have some exciting news.

I gather you’re gonna’ go traveling again.

Where are you going?

Jill: Yes.

I’m going to Central America and some of you will already know this.

Mark and I discussed this a little bit on a Podcast awhile ago.

But, yeah, I’m going to five of the seven countries in Central America just missing El Salvador and Panama.

Steve: Aha.

What is it that as you think of your trip to Central America, what is it that you look forward to the most?

Jill: Well, I guess the main thing is that I’m going to get married when I’m there.

Steve: Well, hold it!

I didn’t want to be the one to announce it, okay; but, since you have brought that into the equation.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: So, we have two subjects to discuss.

One is the fact that you’re getting married.

Congratulations!

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: I think that’s wonderful news.

Everybody here, all your friends, we’re very happy.

I can speak from experience.

Marriage is a very nice institution.

So, we can talk a little bit about that.

Is it fair to ask how long you and your future husband have known each other?

Jill: Yes.

It’s been almost five years now; so, quite a while.

Steve: It took you that long to convince him?

Or did it take him that long to convince you?

Jill: I was gonna’ say, it took him that long to convince me, you know.

Steve: Okay.

But, so, you’ve known each other for five years.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: And so, this trip to Latin to South America Central America, rather, is sort of like a pre-marriage honeymoon.

Jill: Yeah.

It’s a marriage ceremony, honeymoon, all in

Steve: Oh, you’re getting married down there?

Jill: Yeah!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Jill: We’re getting married in Costa Rica.

Steve: Why?

Jill: Just because we want to.

Steve: You don’t want your friends there?

Jill: No.

Nobody is coming.

Steve: Nobody’s coming?

Jill: No.

Steve: You’re getting married.

Are you gonna’ have a party or something?

Jill: We’ll have a party when we come back with everybody.

Steve: Oh, I see.

Jill: But, yeah, for us, getting married, it’s not a religious ceremony, it’s just a short ceremony.

A lawyer performs it on the beach at sunset in Costa Rica.

That’s it; very simple.

Steve: That’s fascinating.

And why did you choose Costa Rica?

Jill: Well, really, we were thinking of going on a trip to Central America, basically, because Chris has traveled extensively throughout the world to every continent and he’s been to South America a few times and Central America was one place he hadn’t been and really wanted to go.

And, you know, rain forests and beaches and volcanoes and things like that interest me as well.

So, I thought, well, hey, yeah, that sounds fine.

And it was either Belize or Costa Rica that we were going to get married in and Belize was just more complicated.

You had to be in that country for several days before you could apply for a license and there was just more complications.

So, it was just easier in Costa Rica and we went that route.

Steve: So, you’re going to fly into Costa Rica.

Are you going to get married right away?

Jill: Yes.

Steve: I should hope so!

Jill: Yes.

Steve: I mean and then you will travel?

Jill: Yes.

Steve: And how many days will you spend in Costa Rica?

Jill: We will be there for about a week in Costa Rica and then we will just make our way up.

So, we’ll go to Nicaragua for about a day and a half – two days, Honduras a couple days, then we will be in Guatemala for about five days.

There’s quite a lot of interesting things to see there.

Steve: And when you say you’re gonna’ move around like this, you’re gonna’ be traveling by what means?

Jill: Mostly, probably buses.

There are some flights we can take, but most of the bus trips are only gonna’ be five hours; not that long.

And by the time we get to an airport and take the hour-long flight and out of there, doesn’t save us much time to fly and it’s a lot of it’s very expensive to fly within?

Steve: And I would imagine that the local buses will probably be an opportunity to immerse yourself in the local culture.

I picture people and chickens and donkeys and so forth.

Jill: Yeah.

And I think that’s true.

I mean, there are local buses that are like that for sure.

But, on our longer trips, there’s air conditioned, you know, like Greyhound-style buses; sort of first-class, if you will, buses.

So, we’ll take those for our, you know, longer journeys.

Steve: That’s what Chris has promised you?

Jill: Well, yeah.

I don’t know if I believe him, though.

Steve: But, I’m sure that our stereotype sort of vision of a bus in Central America with all the chickens and the donkeys is probably more a product of Hollywood than reality.

I know that, in my own experience, the standard of comfort you now get in buses in countries all over the world — air conditioned, music, you know, DVDs, you name it — I’m sure that on the major routes in Central America they have similar service.

Jill: Well, I’m hoping, I’m hoping.

I mean, when I was in China last year, we took a bus and it was just fine.

It was comfortable, it was air conditioned, you know, it was fine.

So, I’m hoping it will be like that.

Steve: Now I know, Jill, that you are not the most adventurous eater in the world.

What are your.you know, how local are you guys gonna’ go insofar as your eating?

Jill: Well, I think Central America is not that different from Canada in a lot of ways.

I think it’s I’ve heard there’s a lot of chicken and rice.

Steve: Beans.

Jill: I’ve heard that it can be quite bland, actually.

So, for me and my stomach, that will probably be fine.

Steve: Bland is good?

Jill: Well, no, I do like flavor and I do like some spice; but, when I’m traveling, I think something that’s a little on the bland side is maybe better for me.

Steve: So, I’ll ask my first question again.

Leaving aside the fact that you’re getting married there, which is wonderful and congratulations, if we just look at the travel part of it, what is it that you are most looking forward to seeing and doing in Latin America or in Central America?

Jill: Well, I think going into the rain forest and the cloud forest in Costa Rica and, you know, seeing all the different birds and monkeys and wildlife, I think, is one of the highlights.

And, also, there are some fabulous Mayan ruins in Guatemala as well as Honduras.

I’m looking really forward to those some volcanoes that we’re gonna’ hike up and then, also, we’re gonna’ have some beach time in Belize on the Caribbean.

So, I’m just looking forward to it all.

And we’ll be in some colonial cities for a couple days.

So, it’s just a mixture of everything.

Steve: My goodness.

Are you apprehensive, concerned, worried, about any aspects of your trip?

Jill: I would say that I’m a little worried about some of the poisonous snakes, spiders, things like that, that we will probably encounter or at least see in the rain forest or, you know, even at our hotel.

We are staying at a very nice place in Costa Rica, but there’s scorpions around and, you know, I’m not a huge fan of bugs and insects and, especially, poisonous ones.

But, I think it will be fascinating at the same time.

I’m a little bit scared, but I think it will be interesting, too.

Steve: Okay.

Well, you know, I think that’s interesting.

And maybe we’ll have an opportunity when you get back to talk about what you saw and probably you’ll find some things down there that you didn’t expect to see.

Jill: I’m sure.

Steve: So, thank you very much and congratulations, again.

Jill: Thank you.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

I’d like to talk a little bit more about words.

Learning words, really, is the fundamental task in language learning. The words are the meaning. The words?how they work together, how they change form in some languages, what prepositions they take, getting familiar with the words, the meaning of the words, I mean, this is the fundamental task and there are so many words.

And we have A.J., who has a very exciting blog called Effortless Learning and is now working on learning Spanish and, of course, he sent me a little comment where he sort of said how frustrating it is when you can’t seem to remember the words that you’re learning. If that’s true for him in learning Spanish where there are a lot of words in common with English, it’s an even bigger problem for people who are Chinese speakers or Japanese speakers trying to learn English where there is very little in the way of common vocabulary. And, of course, it’s the same for me now learning Russian where there is very little common vocabulary.

So, I talked a little bit in two blogs here about some strategy. But, first of all, I think attitude, again, is very important.

Don’t give up; don’t get frustrated. You will find it difficult to retain words. You will learn the same word 10 times. It will be frustrating to lookup a word and then realize that you have already seen that word. What’s the solution? Well, in the first period of language learning you have to listen to a limited, a small amount of content, over and over again. And you should read it and you should lookup the words, not in a dictionary that you thumb through like the old-style dictionaries, but using an online dictionary or using readers that have word lists. So, you have this limited content.

You read it, you listen to it, you make lists of the words or you have lists of the words, you study these individual bits and pieces and then you go back to listening and reading. And, hopefully, you have the patience and you have a strong enough desire to learn the language that you can do this. And you take–I have my iPod with me now with Russian wherever I go and I have listened to some items 30 or 40 times. So, that’s the initial stage. It’s that very intensive stage where you’re focusing on a small amount of content; but then, the next stage.

After a while, you can’t do that anymore. After a while, it’s just too boring.

So, now, you are at the stage now where you’ve learned to say hello, how are you? My name is such and such. But, now, you need to increase your vocabulary so you can actually talk about meaningful things or read meaningful things. Now here, as much as possible, try to find interesting content that you select. You have to be in charge. As long as you are waiting for someone to teach you, you will never learn. So, nowadays, there are Podcasts. There is all kinds of content on the Internet. At The Linguist we have a huge library, which we will continue to expand. Select something of interest. Select something that is just a little difficult for you. We make this easier for people to do at The Linguist.

So, now, instead of listening 30 times to the same content item, you may only listen three or four times. And you may progress through five or six items, not necessarily understanding everything or learning every word, and then you go back to the first one again.

But, throughout it all, the key concept or one of the key ideas that I think all language learners have to have is that when you are learning a foreign language, there will always be uncertainty. There will always be–you know, the language is a little fuzzy. You don’t fully understand why the words come together that way. New words seem so difficult to remember because the sounds, the combination of sounds in those words, are so different from your own language. It just seems to frustrate you.

You have to remember that everything that is frustrating in the language, everything that is difficult to learn, will, over time, become easier. Your task is to stay with it. Everything you can do that helps you stay with it is going to help you in the long run. That is why we place so much emphasis on finding content that is interesting, so that at least if you can enjoy the listening and reading, then you will be less frustrated at your inability to remember everything. And move along, even though you haven’t mastered the last chapter or the last content item, move along to the next, do three or four and then go back to the first one. And, if you do this, if you continue doing it, you will gradually accumulate words. You will not lose.

Your vocabulary will grow. It will not decline.

Anyway, that’s a start on this subject. And I look forward to hearing questions or contents from others and, if there’s interest, I’ll maybe have another little chat on this subject.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Mark: Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to the EnglishLingQ Podcast; Mark Kaufmann here. Today, Jill and I are going to have another chat about a variety of things. This is natural conversation which, we think, is a very good way of learning a language. First of all, how are you today, Jill?

Jill: I’m well, thank you.

Mark: Oh, I do want to remind everybody to make sure to visit our website at thelinguist.com in order to get the most out of this Podcast by reading it, saving words and phrases and, of course, you know, talking to our tutors, writing, the whole ball of wax, as we say. What’s new, Jill?

Jill: Well, it’s March 1st and it happens to be snowing outside right now in Vancouver.

Mark: Which makes me happy; I don’t know about you. I think you like snow, too.

Jill: I do.

Mark: I don’t know what it is. Whenever I see snow falling I get excited.

Jill: Well, I think we may have talked about it when we were talking about skiing in the past; but, just that it’s not very often that we get snow in Vancouver and so although this winter we’ve had a lot more than usual. It’s kind of a novelty for us and we usually just get a whole lot of rain and I think the snow is a lot prettier than the rain, so.

Mark: Absolutely; absolutely and I think and, as you say, this winter the weather has been a little cooler than normal, I think; although, I don’t know. I mean, the last few years before this year were abnormally warm so maybe everybody’s been spoiled; I don’t know.

But, we usually don’t get very much snow so when we get it, yeah, we are definitely excited.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: A lot of people now are grumbling because they’re, you know, ah, it’s so cold.

Jill: But it’s not really that cold. I mean, it’s not minus 10 or something.

Mark: No.

Jill: It’s pretty close to zero. It’s almost, you know, in some areas of the city it is only raining. It’s not even cold enough to be snowing, so it’s very borderline. And I find that often it feels colder when it’s 5 degrees warmer than this and it’s raining than it feels right now.

Mark: I agree with you except I really notice the temperature when I’m riding my bike to the office.

The last few days have been cooler, but I like it because it’s not raining. I much prefer it, as you say. Riding my bike in the rain is less fun. Although riding in the snow is lots of fun.

Jill: So, anyways, yeah, I think March is people typically think of it as the beginning of the spring. We usually, in Vancouver, start having some flowers come up in February, in fact; you know, crocuses, daffodils, those sorts of things. And so, if we get snow or cold weather in March people don’t like that very much because spring is supposed to be here.

Mark: And we think we live in the

Jill: the tropics or something

Mark: lotus land portion of Canada when, in fact, actually, we’re quite far north.

Jill: It’s still Canada.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: What I often think about when we talk about our weather here or doing stuff, especially winter activities, I think about people our members who live in climates where there really is no winter.

Jill: Like Taiwan.

Mark: Yeah, or even the southern U.S. or Australia or Hong Kong, I mean, parts of Japan. There are lots of places that really don’t get that cold in the wintertime. I often wonder what they make of our conversations about snow and winter and skiing and probably things that they have very little experience with.

Jill: Right.

Mark: Anyway

Jill: I think we’re kind of lucky, actually, that we get to experience different seasons.

I really appreciate all different seasons for different reasons. Spring in Vancouver typically is quite rainy, but I like it because there are lots of flowers out. The city just smells beautiful. Everything looks beautiful and fresh; the promise of summer. So, I like spring. Summer, of course, is great with the sun shinning, you know, you can go to the beach, you can sail, you can golf, you can do all the things you want to do. And then fall; the leaves are turning colors. They are beautiful. And then winter with all the rain. Not so great, but, you know, you get the snowy days in there that are kind of neat. I like that we have seasons.

Mark: I agree with you, but I think you may be an optimist. I think there’s a lot of people probably that would be quite happy to have nice, sunny, summer days every day.

Jill: Probably; probably.

Mark: It explains why a lot of people from the rest of Canada, especially, but even from Vancouver, spend a significant part of the winter down south like in southern U.S. or places where they get?

Jill: Well, retired people, anyway.

Mark: Retired people. That’s right.

Where there’s more sunshine and warm weather.

Jill: Right; less winter.

Mark: Less winter, yeah. I think, over time, people get a little tired of the winter.

But I agree with you. It’s nice to have the changing of the seasons maybe partially because we’re used to it; I don’t know. That’s what we’ve always had.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: Speaking of the weather, though, given that it is a crummy time of year, I know that you are planning on going to South America.

Jill: Central

Mark: Central America in April and I’m going to Hawaii in ten days or so. So, we can’t love the weather here that much, I guess.

Jill: Yeah, well, yeah. It’s nice to get a break; to have a break.

Mark: It definitely it’s a real treat I find to go somewhere warm after, you know, it’s been coldish, cold, since October, you know, really.

I mean, in October you’re not running around in shorts. September is about it for shorts. So, it’s been many months now and especially our springs as we’ve talked about in the past. Our springs here can be

Jill: wet

Mark: cool and wet, really. Like March, it’s not uncommon for us to get snow in March and for the mountains to continue to get snow in March. The skiing in March is excellent and, actually, at this time of year instead of going somewhere warm, I’m just as happy to go skiing; both are a treat. But this year we’re going to Hawaii, which is going to be great.

Jill: Hawaii is always great. I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody who doesn’t love Hawaii who’s been there.

It’s beautiful and they’ve got, I think, one of the best climates in the world, you know. It’s one of those places that is always warm, pretty much. Yeah, they have maybe a rainier season, a rainier time, but it’s never cold and I find it doesn’t get so hot that you can’t bear it. You know, like some places just get so hot and so humid that you don’t even want to be outside, whereas even in the middle of summer, yeah, it’s very hot, but it’s not unbearable.

Mark: No.

I mean, their temperature range — if you look at it — their range is, I don’t know, 25 to 30. Like that’s perfect. I mean, that’s you know?

Jill: What else could you ask for?

Mark: What I always say is everyday in Hawaii is like our best day of the year here in Vancouver, you know.

Jill: That’s right; that’s right.

Mark: It’s the same temperature and not humid,

Jill: lots of sun.

Mark: Really lots of sun and, yeah. And, you know, anytime you go somewhere for the sun, you want to be pretty much guaranteed that you’re gonna get it. There’s nothing worse than going somewhere for the sun and having it rain the whole time.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: It can still happen to you in Hawaii, but rarely, I think.

Jill: I think there are certain months. I do know people who have gone and had quite a lot of rain. So, I think I forget what it is.

I think it’s sometime in the fall. I think it’s maybe October, November, somewhere in and around there where it is a bit rainier. But, you know, I think

Mark: I don’t know what we will do there if it rains on us. I guess we’ll find stuff to do, but that’s not ideal.

Jill: Well, I think it’s common, too I went one time, I think in March, and it did rain I think once or twice and poured; it rained very, very hard one time. It was just literally like, I don’t know, a foot of water within an hour; it just poured. But, it was a shower and then it was over.

It was an hour or two hours long and then it was sunny again and it was nice the rest of the time, so.

Mark: Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think you can get a bit of that. I think when we’ve been in the past we’ve had a bit of that; but, like you said, you get a brief rain storm and then it clears up and back to the sunshine again, so.

Jill: And it keeps everything in Hawaii lush looking, you know. They definitely get rain, but that’s why it’s so green; all the flowers. There are so many bright flowers everywhere. It’s not like the desert, you know, other hot places where it’s so dry that everything is brown and not very pretty.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, the rain is a good thing.

Mark: Yeah.

Although, there are parts of Hawaii, you know, that are in the rain shadow. Meaning, I think, that they get a lot of rain; I don’t know the difference. The rain shadow either means you get a lot of rain or you don’t get any. But, they have both sort of types of microclimates in Hawaii where one side of the mountain gets all the rain and the other side doesn’t get any.

Jill: Right; that’s right.

Mark: But, in general, yeah, you’re right. It’s very lush and smells great and it’s just paradise.

Jill: Yeah.

It’s a great place.

Mark: Speaking of great places, you’re going away.

Jill: Yeah.

We are going to Central America. So, there are seven countries in Central America and we are going to go to four of them.

Mark: I thought you were going to say and we’re going to see them all.

Jill: Well, yeah, we’re going to four out of the seven,

Mark: That’s pretty good.

Jill: which is still a lot of traveling around; hence, the reason I am only allowed to take one backpack — not a suitcase — not more than one backpack.

Mark: I sense a little resentment.

Jill: No, no.

It’s just this is how my boyfriend likes to travel. He doesn’t like to stay in any one place for too long. He wants to go to a country and see it.

He doesn’t want to go stay at a resort somewhere and just hangout, which is great. I agree.

I’m glad that we’re going to see different places. It’s just, yeah; I can’t pack as many shoes as I’d like to pack. I can’t pack as many clothes as I’d like to pack. You have to be you just have to pick and choose what you take and you can’t take too much, which means you’re washing things more often; sometimes just hand washing, you know, with soap or shampoo in your hotel. This is what we did last year when we went to China for two and a half weeks. I found that I definitely needed my clothes washed at one point. I just couldn’t stand it anymore and they got quite dirty in China. There’s a lot of dust and stuff.

And so at one hotel there was laundry service. I think a lot of the nicer hotels there’s laundry service and so we got it once and it was extremely expensive, of course. Any kind of service like that at a hotel is going to be very expensive, so you don’t do it very often.

Mark: No.

You might have been able to find some kind of a laundry.

Jill: Laundromat.

Mark: Laundromat, I don’t know, but some kind of a laundry service. Presumably, they have them. I’m sure the locals don’t go get their laundry done at the hotel, if they’re not going to do it themselves.

Jill: No.

But, yeah; so, we’ll be going to Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, so.

And Belize is on the Caribbean, you know.

Mark: Yeah, I’ve heard it’s really nice.

Jill: Beautiful, balmy weather; big barrier reef there; great diving, snorkeling, sport fishing and all sorts of things. In Costa Rica, of course, the rain forest, the cloud forest, lots of surfing, jungle hikes. You know, we’ll see monkeys and snakes and God knows what else.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I’m a little scared to tell you the truth. But, yeah, it should be very interesting.

Mark: That will be fun. I mean, I know it’s, I think’my wife and I used to do more of that kind of traveling before we had kids.

Jill: Yeah, of course.

Mark: And now with kids, we, yeah, kids aren’t so keen on being dragged around everywhere.

Jill: No.

You’ve got to do the cushy kind of stuff, I guess.

Mark: So, especially when they are not that old they really don’t appreciate any of that.

Jill: No.

Mark: But, yeah, it’s fun to go and see and do a whole bunch of different things and really see a lot of wherever you go.

Jill: Be active and be immersed in the culture.

Mark: Yeah.

Even in Hawaii this time I think we’ll try and do a few more things because the kids are a little older.

Jill: Yeah.

Yeah, there’s some nice like waterfall hikes that aren’t too difficult that you can do.

Mark: Exactly.

Go and try and do some hikes and, yeah. In Maui, where we are going to be, there’s one side of the island that’s a lot more lush because it gets a lot more rain and there’s a really windy road to it. But, apparently, there are lots of neat, little pools and falls and hikes and stuff. So, we’ll try to do that, I think.

Jill: Although, you know, kids are always so happy just being by a pool or at the beach, 24/7.

Mark: You know, they’re happiest. You drag them off somewhere, especially if it’s not on the water, then all of a sudden it feels a lot hotter and they’re seeing something they don’t really care about

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: wondering why we just didn’t stay by the pool.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: But, on the other hand, we’re there, too. So, we like to go do a few different things and it will be good. But, your trip sounds like it will be great.

Jill: Yeah, I hope so. It will be. I know it will be. I’m a little worried because we’re not really planning where we are going to stay other than we first arrive there the first four nights. After that, it’s just we’re sort of winging it. We don’t really want to have a schedule we have to stick to. So, we’ll stay in Costa Rica for however long we want and then we’ll move on. We’ve got a general idea of how long we want to spend in each place to see the things we want to see.

But, you know, we could end up wanting to stay one place a day longer or a day less or whatever. So, we’re not booking hotels or anything in advance and this is how Chris always has traveled. He likes that. He likes spontaneity. He’s not big on rigid schedules. He just wants to do what he wants to do, which is fine with me; except for, that I just worry. It’s a busy time of year there. April is the best month. March and April are the best months in Central America for weather; January to April. But, March and April, in particular and then it’s also Easter. And so, I’m just a little bit worried that in some of the more touristy places like Belize, for example, there might not be a lot available.

And I’m just worried that we’ll end up being in some, I don’t know what,

Mark: cockroach infested

Jill: bog infested hammock somewhere. I don’t know.

So, on the beach’ Mark: Yeah, but that’s all part of the journey.

Jill: Well, that’s what he tries to tell me!

Mark: As you’re camping out on the beach in a rain storm because there are no hotel rooms available.

Jill: You know, you look back on it and can laugh; but, at the time, it’s not so funny.

Mark: It’s not funny at all.

Jill: No, no, it’s true. Those make the best memories; the best stories.

But, at the time, you’re just cursing every minute.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, I’m just worried that might happen. But, I guess, you know, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not the end of the world.

Mark: Well, I guess you’ll always find somewhere to sleep, theoretically. At least it’s not cold there.

Jill: That’s right.

That’s what he says. He says, I mean, if there ends up being only a very expensive place that has rooms left then, you know, it’s not like we don’t want to spend that kind of money, but it’s not like we can’t. It’s not like if we had no other option we couldn’t.

Mark: Right.

Jill: By the same token, if there are only crappy places available then, I guess,

Mark: there’s only crappy places available.

Jill: That’s right and you’ve just got to deal with it.

Mark: Yup. Oh well, hopefully, it all goes smoothly. If not, as you say, we’ll be treated to some great stories, I am sure, when you get back.

Jill: Well, it was funny. I was talking to my friend the other night about the trip and I was telling her when we get to Costa Rica what we’re gonna do and go for some hikes in the rain forest and I was so excited about this. It is going to be so beautiful and seeing different, you know, trees and animals and stuff that you would never see here.

I thought it just sounded awesome and I’m so excited and all she could say was you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to go hiking in the rain forest in the jungle. That’s how she feels. That the thought of hiking through forests where there is snakes, tarantulas, whatever,

Mark: who knows what kind of bugs and

Jill: which I hate just as much as the next person; probably more than a lot of people, but, I guess, the positives outweigh that for me.

Mark: Right.

Jill: But, yeah, she just couldn’t believe it. It was just not something she would ever be interested in doing.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, it’s just different strokes.

Mark: Yeah, and I guess it depends.

I think there is probably different levels of rain forest in terms of I don’t know, maybe not. I mean, presumably, rain forest sounds like you’re in the middle of, yeah, the jungle. I always picture the rain forest in Brazil where you’ve got these, you know, the natives.

Jill: Picture the Amazon.

Mark: The natives with the, whatever, piece of bone through their nose and

Jill: Very stereotypical view of the rain forest, I think.

Mark: I just picture that kind of a rain forest being somewhere, yeah, where there’s snakes and, I don’t know what manner of bugs and piranhas and I don?t know what and thinking, ooohhh.

But, probably, like all these things because we have no experience in that environment it just sounds like ah, you know, not just

Jill: .so foreign

Mark: the end of the world. I mean, it’s so foreign. I mean, I think, I would imagine that people there if you told them they could come here and wander through the forest and there’s bears and cougars and whatever, other things, I mean, there’s all kinds of animals in the woods.

Jill: And we go in our forests all the time and don’t think anything of it.

Mark: I think, probably, the worst thing in the rain forest, assuming you’re not bitten by a poisonous snake, which, I’m sure, doesn’t happen that often.

Jill: No.

Mark: Probably, the worst thing will be bugs just like here in the woods. The bugs are a nuisance.

Jill: Mosquitoes and things like that, yeah.

Mark: I mean, we’re used to that here, so.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, it will be neat.

Jill: I mean, it’s become a touristy thing to do now anyway. So, I mean, they have guided tours; there’s trails. It’s not like you’re bushwhacking through the jungle and breaking trail and camping out, you know.

Mark: Although, that would be fun, too.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Pith helmet with your machete.

Jill: No, I’m not into that, but, yeah, I think, you know, generally now, you go as a group with people who know the area, know what they’re doing; there are proper supplies. I think it’s fairly safe.

Mark: And are you going to do this thing I’ve seen this thing they show on TV. They’ve got the platforms up in the treetops with the zip line between the platforms.

Jill: Yeah.

You know, I don’t think so because it’s very expensive.

Mark: Oh, it is aye

Jill: Aye and I don’t it’s not that big of a thrill. I’ve read about it in Costa Rica and I’ve read lots of what people have said and said yeah, it’s definitely not worth the money.

It doesn’t take very long and it’s not one of the most spectacular areas, you know, and Chris has done things so much more exciting than that in places that are so much more I don’t know what the word is, but just that just doesn’t really appeal to him and to me it just doesn’t appeal because I don’t even like heights. So, I don’t want to be dangling from something over a gorge or whatever.

Mark: The zip line part of it doesn’t appeal to me either, but maybe, being up that high up in the tree would be neat, I don’t know.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Supposedly, you see all kinds of different wildlife up there that you wouldn’t normally see, but.

Jill: Yeah and I’ve read things too and maybe that’s true, sometimes you do.

But I’ve read other people who’ve said no, it was a disappointment and I didn’t see anything that special so, who knows.

Mark: And, of course, with any trip there’s always a range of options; a range of things you can do, some more expensive than others, and you have to figure out the ones that are worth doing.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: You know, so much of being in a different place is achieved or, at least, you get a lot or the most out of it just by being there, just by meeting with the locals, eating what they eat, seeing what they do, you know. You don’t have to be doing some kind of super adventure trip, whatever.

You know, just by being there and seeing how people how they live in their part of the world is so interesting.

Jill: An adventure in and of itself.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: Yeah, just being somewhere totally different. It’s a foreign language, different food. Although, Central America, I mean, they eat a lot of chicken and rice, just like in South America. It’s not like it’s food that’s extremely different than we would encounter here.

Mark: Right.

Jill: But, still, yeah, of course, the customs are going to be different, the language, definitely the weather.

Mark: And just what the country’s like. You just don’t know what a country’s like. You don’t have a feel for it at all until you actually go there.

And just how they live, what their houses are like, what cars they drive, how they dress, how they talk, what they eat, what hours they keep. I mean, it’s just sort of the flavor of a place that you just can’t imagine without going there.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: Like, I’ve never been to South America or Central America or Mexico for that matter. So, I have an image in my mind of what those places are like, but I’m sure it’s a far cry and they are all, obviously, probably quite different from each other. But, I should go. Costa Rica I have a grandmother from Costa Rica.

Jill: That’s right.

Your mom’s mom is Costa Rican.

Mark: Yeah, so I think I have family there, actually.

Jill: Well, yeah, I would imagine. Has your mom ever been?

Mark: I think my mom might have been once, yeah.

Jill: Well, it’s really become quite a popular place.

Mark: Yeah, it has.

Jill: I mean, I have a friend who started going there a few years ago with her family and they ended up buying a couple of places there. It’s become quite lucrative. People are buying up land. My boyfriend’s sister, about five years ago, bought some land there with some other people and it’s just skyrocketed.

Mark: Land or with, in fact, a house on it?

Jill: No, they just bought land and they are going to build on it and then rent it out and go and stay there for a month out of the year and rent it out the rest of the time.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: So, real estate there has really been going up as a lot of foreigners are coming in.

Mark: And how can I ask how you get there? Like, do you have to fly to Miami?

Jill: We are going from Vancouver. We have a fairly direct flight. It goes from Vancouver to Houston and then from Houston right to San Jose the capital of Costa Rica.

Mark: Right.

Jill: The other option from Vancouver is through L.A. So, Vancouver to L.A.

to Costa Rica, but that was going to actually take longer. I can’t remember for what reason, but maybe the layover was longer. There was just something about it that wasn’t as good, so we went the Houston route. So, yeah, it’s a three-hour layover in Houston then you get to Costa Rica. And San Jose there’s two airports there Liberia and San Jose. Most people or the area of Costa Rica that is the most famous for the surf, so where most people would probably want to go, is sort of a little is obviously on the coast and a little further south not in the northern part, so it’s actually a five-hour drive from San Jose.

Mark: From the airport.

Jill: Or you can catch — which we are going to do — another half-hour flight down there for like $75.00 a person to get to the actual

Mark: on Air Costa Rica?

Jill: I don’t know what the airline is. It takes you to, I guess, Tambour, which I’m not sure if that’s the name of a city or more the name of a province, a region. I’m not quite sure. But then that’s sort of where everybody then catches a taxi — another 50 minute taxi ride — to their different hotels and whatnot.

Mark: I’m sure you’ll give us a geography report when you come back.

Jill: Yes. I think it’s quite a production to get there.

Mark: Well, sure.

Jill: It’s going to take a long time.

Mark: From here to Houston is probably four hours.

Jill: Yeah, I think it’s about four hours.

Mark: And then from Houston down there.

Jill: It’s not very far, actually. If it was a direct flight from here to Costa Rica, it would have only been something like eight hours.

Mark: Okay.

Jill: Like it’s seven or eight hours, but because there’s a three and a half hour layover

Mark: it’s still pretty far.

Jill: Yeah, it is. Yeah, it’s like going to Europe or something.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: But, because there’s that layover and then when we get to San Jose we have a layover for an hour and a half, then we get on another flight and then we have to get a taxi.

So, all in all, it’s going to end up being about probably a 14-hour day.

Mark: At least. By the time you, you know, you get up, get to the airport early and everything, by the time you roll into your hotel it’s probably longer, yeah.

Jill: Like 15 hours, yeah.

Mark: You’ll be happy to hit the bed. Hit the sheets.

Jill: Hit the hay, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, well, that will be good.

Jill: The good thing is it’s only a two-hour time difference. It’s two hours ahead.

Mark: That’s nice. That makes a big difference, you know.

Jill: A big difference.

Mark: Even with us going to Hawaii’I don’t know what the time difference is, but it’s two or three hours or whatever it is.

Jill: It’s behind two hours.

Mark: It’s not that big a deal; whereas, if you go to Europe or you go to Asia the time difference really takes it out of you for a few days.

Jill: Yeah, it really does.

Mark: So, it is. It’s kind of nice not to have to worry about that when you are only talking about two-three hours time difference.

Jill: Yeah, yeah and coming home it’s very hard also. You’re so tired coming home and then you’ve got to adjust. But, two hours is really not that big a deal.

Mark: No.

Jill: You know, in one day you’ll be adjusted to their clock and it will be fine.

Mark: Exactly. I think I’ve heard people say it’s basically a day per hour of time difference that it takes you to recover. I think that’s probably fairly accurate.

Jill: Yeah, I agree.

Mark: So, yeah, that is convenient, yeah. I should really get down there some day.

Jill: Well, there’s lots of time. Maybe when the kids are a little bit older and they, you know — teenagers even — so that they would actually sort of appreciate some of the jungle experience.

I mean, to me, personally, to go somewhere like that if you’re just going to go to sit on the beach, which a lot of people do and, I guess, that’s fine for them, but for me personally if I’m going to do that I’m going to go to Hawaii. Why am I going to go to Central America where there’s such a variety in culture, history, language — it’s so different — just to go sit at a resort on a beach. To me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Mark: No.

Jill: If you are going to go somewhere like that to get the cultural experience out of it and to go to the rain forest and to do all of those things.

So, if you’ve got small kids where you are probably not going to be able to do those things and you’re going to spend a whole lot of money to get there.

Mark: Right.

Well, that’s the thing. They don’t appreciate, as you say any of the cultural experiences they don’t appreciate at all, really.

Jill: No, no.

Mark: They know what they know and they know that they like it nice and hot and they like it in the pool and that’s all they need. So, yeah, like you say, to go somewhere exotic is going to be more expensive and more of an ordeal getting there, more difficult when you are there and, you know, yeah, we might enjoy it a little more, although not necessarily if everybody else isn’t enjoying it.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: Yeah.

So, I agree. Probably as we get older we will definitely start to go. You know, we should go to Europe, we should go to Asia, go to Latin America, South America, different places to see things, but not until the kids are old enough to appreciate it as a group.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Because they you know, everybody’s plane ticket costs pretty much the same.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

It’s expensive.

Mark: It’s expensive, yeah, but well worth it. Anyway, I think that’s probably good. Just want to remind everyone again to come visit our website and I know we look forward to hearing a report from Jill on her adventures after she gets back.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark: Hi, everyone and welcome to the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

I am your host, Mark Kaufmann. Today, Jill and I are just going to be talking about winter activities, winter vacations, things we like to do in the wintertime. But, before we get into that, I just would like to remind all of you to get more out of this Podcast by visiting our website at www.thelinguist.com, to take advantage of all the learning tools available at our site.

Mark: Now, Jill, I know recently my family and I were skiing; but, before we get into that, maybe you can talk a bit about something you’ve done recently.

Jill: Okay. I guess, over the Christmas holidays last month, my boyfriend and I went to a small town in central British Columbia about nine hours northeast of Vancouver where they get, usually, quite a lot of snow. His family is from there, so we went there for about six days over the holidays and went snowmobiling and snowshoeing and just sort of hung out and enjoyed the snow. It actually wasn’t very cold. Some days it was above zero and sunny and beautiful. It actually didn’t snow at all while we were there.

There was just a little bit of snow from before, but there was enough that we could do some things and enjoy the snow.

Mark: So, there wasn’t that much snow?

Jill: No, there actually wasn’t. But, you know, we went up again just a couple of weekends ago and they’d had a big snowstorm and it was actually snowing while we were there and there were several, probably two feet — I might be exaggerating, maybe less than that, but quite a lot — of snow; fluffy, powdery, nice snow.

Mark: There’s no question, it doesn’t matter what activity in the snow, when there’s fresh snow it’s that much better.

Jill: For sure.

Mark: You know, you mentioned snowshoeing.

I’ll go locally here, quite often; go up to Cyprus or, which are two local mountains here in the Vancouver area. Some days you go up and, you know, sometimes here because the weather is not that cold, sometimes it’s raining up there or if it’s not raining, the snow is melting and then it freezes at night. And so, very often, when you go up, the conditions can be icy and for snowshoeing, for skiing, for cross country skiing, for any of those activities, if it’s icy, it’s not as good.

Jill: No.

Mark: Whereas, if you go up and if I go up snowshoeing and it’s just snowed, it’s just phenomenal. You know, you are off in the deep snow, there are no tracks from anybody else and it’s really great.

Jill: I mean, this year we’ve had so much snow; we’ve had so much rainfall, which is not unusual for Vancouver in the winter. But, we’ve had colder than normal temperatures, so all of our local mountains and Whistler have so much snow. And so, I think skiing has been exceptional and snowshoeing has been exceptional this year.

Mark: Yeah, I haven’t skied on the local mountains because I find it tough to go up and wait in line on the weekends. The time to go locally is during the week when there are not as many people but, unfortunately, we have to work.

Jill: We should just have a snow day!

Mark: We definitely should. You know, my daughter, yesterday, had Mountain Day at school.

I thought, maybe we should have Mountain Day at The Linguist.

Jill: I think that’s a great idea.

Mark: We better do it soon.

Jill: But, you know, that’s true. I haven’t been to the local mountains actually for years on a weekend. I went last year once, I think, in the evening for some night skiing and it’s not very busy then if you go at, you know, 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. and you’re there until 10:00 p.m. when the hills close. It’s pretty good then. There is never any lineups and it’s fine then but, otherwise.

I went to Whistler a few weeks ago, which is a world-class resort and very, very busy, but because there’s so many runs’I mean, I don’t know, I’ve only skied Whistler a couple of times, so I don’t know if it’s always this way, but.we never waited in any lineups. There’s just so many runs and the runs are so long that I don’t think there’s the kind of lineups that there are at our local hills where the runs are really short. You know, if you are a good skier or a fast skier, you can get down in ten minutes, five minutes, some of the runs.

Mark: One minute.

Jill: One minute. Whereas at Whistler you can at least go for, you know, fifteen-twenty minutes.

Mark: Yeah, Whistler, they’ve got some long runs there.

Jill: They have great runs, yeah.

Mark: Really long runs, yeah, and it’s just much bigger; many more lifts. The lifts are higher capacity. Like up at the local mountains. I’m not sure how many people the chairlifts hold but, I mean, a lot of them might be triples.

Jill: Yeah, maybe three.

Mark: Maybe three. Whereas, I know at Christmas — or at New Year’s — anyway, after New Year’s I was at Big White. They had a new six-person chair right beside a four-person chair, high-speed chair, so that’s ten people going up every chair. So, I mean, that was really great.

So, there wasn’t much in the way of lineups, even though that’s a busy time of year for ski resorts because all the kids are out of school on holidays and people, in general, are on holiday, so.

Jill: And was the snow up there was there a lot of snow up there, too. Was it a better year than usual?

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: They always get a lot of snow, don’t they?

Mark: They don’t get the volume of snow that we get here on the coast. But, what they tend to get it just accumulates over the course of the winter and into the spring because their temperature is cooler, so they don’t lose any. It doesn’t melt; it doesn’t rain, for the most part.

But, that mountain is also quite rocky, so they need quite a bit of snow before you start to not have problems with rocks. And so, it was great at Christmas. I mean, there was plenty of snow and it was light, fluffy snow because it’s in the interior. A lot of time on the coast here at Whistler, the snow can be a little heavier, but then there’s lots of it.

Jill: Well, that’s right. I’ve seen on TV some of the’you know, they have snow reports on local television stations talking about all the different mountains throughout BC and, of course, our local mountains and Whistler usually have the most snow.

This year’I saw a report, I think maybe a couple of weeks ago, that showed, you know, 280, 320 centimeters of snow at these hills around here, which is a lot of snow.

Mark: Yeah, I think it might be more than that.

Jill: Maybe more now, yeah.

Mark: I know that they said at Whistler, and that was around Christmastime, they had something like 500 centimeters already; like a huge number and we had a few big storms after that, so they’ve got a ton of snow.

Jill: Well, when I was skiing there it was very powdery. You know, there was the odd place that had some ice but, in general, it was soft powder and it was great.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jill: Very good conditions.

Mark: I’m sure. I’d like to go. I haven’t been to Whistler in a long time.

Jill: You know, the hard thing about skiing, I find, is that it’s so expensive. You know, if you go to a good mountain, somewhere list Whistler, by the time you pay the tax on the Day Pass, it’s $80.00 for an adult. And, they don’t have lights on the hill so, you know, the last run is 3:00 p.m. Basically, that’s the last time you can go down. If you don’t get up there until, you know, 10:00 or 11:00, you stop for lunch and all the places are packed for lunch, you know, for maybe four hours of skiing you spend $80.00. It’s quite a lot.

Mark: For sure and, not to mention, your driving up there and back, which is an hour and a half from town here. Yeah, it’s expensive; skiing.

Jill: I don’t know. I’ve never been to Big White.

Mark: It’s similar. It adds up for a family of five; although, my youngest is still free so, really it’s only four of us. She won’t be free much longer.

Jill: No.

Mark: Yeah, it is expensive. What’s great when you’re staying somewhere, especially Big White or at least from ski resorts that I’ve been to, at Big White not only are you staying at the resort, but you’re actually on the hill. The accommodation is more or less on the hill.

So, you wake up in the morning and you put your skis on and you ski down to the bottom of the lift.

Jill: Oh, wow, right from where you’re staying.

Mark: Right from where you stay.

Jill: Oh, that’s great.

Mark: It’s awesome and, you know, you are on the mountain. So, it’s snow everywhere and usually the kids are sleeping in so, that’s fine. I get up and put my skis on and I’m out there right at the start of the day and I get a couple hours skiing in or my wife and I and it’s great. Then, after a couple of hours, you ski back to the place and see how everybody is doing, maybe feed the kids, get them ready and then they come out too.

It’s a real luxury. I had never been to a ski resort like that where the accommodation is so convenient, you know. So, we never go to the chalet for lunch there. You don’t waste time charging around and eating the garbage that they serve and there, it’s great.

Jill: I’ll have to try that place one time, maybe. I’m not such an avid skier. I haven’t skied much over the past really 15 years. When I was a child and until I was about 14 years old, I had a season’s pass every year and really loved skiing and then just sort of lost interest. So, really, I might go skiing or snowboarding once every, you know, two or three years max now.

Mark: Is that right?

Jill: So, you know, I do really enjoy it when I go, but I’m not into it enough that I can justify going and spending all the money on all the new equipment. So, you know, I just go once every few years.

Mark: Yeah, you know, to be honest, that’s about the only time we go skiing is when we go for a week trip. The thought of rounding all the gear up and everybody up and buying tickets for everybody and going up and standing in line on the weekend or driving all the way to Whistler for the day, especially, the kids aren’t that old so, you know, how much skiing are they going to do and if you’re at Whistler you are there for the day.

There’s no sort of going home early or some guys can’t go home and some guys stay skiing. Everybody’s kind of got to do everything, so. There it’s such a long way up to the top that maybe that’s why we haven’t been. But, it’s a great family activity, no question, because everybody can do it together, right?

Jill: Yeah, that’s right and kids seem to get quite good a skiing quite quickly. I mean, maybe not all kids; but, I mean, I see so many just tiny kids on the ski hill and I can’t believe how they are going. It’s unbelievable. I remember learning as a kid. I was so much better than I am now. I think, you know, you don’t have the same fear is probably part of it.

Mark: The biggest thing, I think, is the fear because skiing is not that tough a thing to do.

Jill: No.

Mark: It’s tough to get good at it.

Jill: Yes.

Mark: But, to make your way down the hill

Jill: you can snowplow all the way down the hill.

Mark: You can do it. It’s not that difficult. The kids, at a young age, very soon are able to go down the hill. But, the biggest obstacle to skiing is fear. I know that a lot of people who don’t ski until they are adults, you know, and then they start trying to learn, I think it’s very difficult for them, especially because you are pointing yourself down a hill, a slippery hill, with boards strapped to your feet.

That’s a tough thing to overcome.

Jill: Yeah. I think maybe that’s why well, I mean, some people just don’t do any winter sports at all. But, I think some other people do things like snowshoeing or cross country skiing, so there’s no real speed involved. It’s more for exercise.

Mark: Well, yeah. I mean the snowshoeing is an unbelievable exercise if you really go at it.

Jill: Oh, yeah. You can run or you can be going up hills

Mark: or if you are in the deep snow it’s a lot of work.

Jill: Yeah, when there’s snow up to your hips or something.

Mark: You are chugging up a hill, but then there’s a sense of satisfaction of getting up to the top of the hill.

I mean, it’s essentially like hiking with the added benefit that coming down is much more fun than hiking down because you can actually, you know, either jump in the snow or almost half ski down, in a way. I mean, not really skiing, but

Jill: sliding a little bit.

Mark: It’s just much more fun. It’s really a great feeling to be on a snow-covered hill and charge down.

Jill: I agree.

Mark: It’s much different than hiking.

Jill: And knowing that a warm hot chocolate is waiting for you at the bottom when you get there. I love that.

Mark: I wasn’t really thinking of that, but, yeah.

Jill: That’s part of the reason I like winter sports.

I don’t even know if it’s so much that I enjoy the sports, in particular, but I really enjoy

Mark: it’s the hot chocolate.

Jill: It’s the reward afterwards. That’s definitely a part of it.

Mark: Well, I don’t have the hot chocolate.

Jill: Or coffee or whatever, you know.

Mark: How about getting in the hot tub?

Jill: Perfect.

Mark: Because a lot of the time you start to get cold once you come down because you are working hard and

Jill: sweating going up.

Mark: Then you come down and you kind of get colder and colder, especially the worst is Grouse Mountain because there’s a gondola going up to it.

I was up there once this year and went up and you’re pouring sweat and charge down and still we’re sweating but then there were a lot of people up that day because it was a weekend and you’ve got to wait for the gondola to take you down to the bottom.

Jill: Yeah, sometimes there’s a wait. You’ve got to wait a few

Mark: For sure. It was at least two or three

Jill: gondolas.

Mark: I had to wait and that’s, whatever, 15-20 minutes. I don’t know how often they go, but I was in that lineup for a while. I was starting to get cold. I had a change of clothes in my bag or at least a dry sweatshirt.

So, I think the people there thought I was a little bit strange taking off my wet shirts in line and putting a dry shirt on, but I was a lot more comfortable after that.

Jill: You were stripping in the lineup.

Mark: Basically, yeah, I got a few funny looks.

Jill: Well, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Mark: Well, yeah, I was freezing. As it was, I was cold and by the time I got home, I mean, I went straight to the hot tub, for sure, to warm up. Still, I got snowshoes, I don’t know, three, four, five years ago and I really like them. They’re great.

Jill: Yeah.

I think it’s a good activity, too, if you are into running, you know, in the nicer months, spring months, summer months, because it can be harder to run. I mean in Vancouver here, you can pretty much run all year round; road run, anyway. It just might be rainy. It might not be very nice out, but there’s not usually snow on the ground.

Mark: No, not too often.

Jill: So, you can run all year round. But, I think in the winter it’s nicer, if you are a runner, to actually go up and go snowshoe running rather than maybe being on a slippery, wet road.

Mark: There’s something nice about being out in the snow.

I mean, I love it; especially if the sun is shinning it’s even better. But, even if it’s overcast, it’s just the white blanket everywhere and it’s still and if you are snowshoeing and you can get off the trail, you are in the woods with nobody around.

Jill: It’s amazing.

Mark: I really like it. Maybe it’s because we are always surrounded by no snow down here that it’s just not as nice. Maybe it’s the novelty of being in the snow; but, any excuse to go do something in the snow.

Jill: I think it is a novelty for me, for sure, because I know that I don’t have a desire to live in other parts of Canada where they have a lot of snow for five, six months a year.

You know, it’s cold and they’ve just got a lot of snow all winter long. I’ve never wanted to live somewhere like that. But, I think because we do have it so rarely here in Vancouver, when we get it, it’s fun; it’s different; it’s exciting, you know, and it’s much nicer than the pouring rain, which we get so much of. At least when it’s snowing, sometimes, it’s still quite bright out. The trees are beautiful and, you know, the snow is reflecting and it’s just fun because we’re not used to having it.

Mark: For sure; although, we do have it on the mountains. We always have snow in the wintertime, just about. I mean, we do; sometimes more, sometimes less, but there always is snow up there.

So, it is nice to get up there and enjoy.

Jill: We kind of have the best of both worlds. We can go to the snow if we want or stay away from it if we want.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: It’s not forced on us like it is in so many parts of Canada.

Mark: That’s right.

Especially in the spring when it starts to warm up there can be some beautiful days in the town here where you can, you know, whatever, be outside golfing or playing tennis or doing outdoor activities and there’s still snow on the mountain. You know, you can go up and get some nice

Jill: people are sun tanning up there.

Mark: Sun tanning up there and spring skiing and, yeah, it’s pretty neat.

I remember — I don’t know how long ago it was — when Cyprus Bowl was open on Canada Day because we had so much snow that year, which is July 1st, which is really late.

Jill: Very rare for us to still have snow on the mountains.

Mark: Yeah, so that was, of course, the latest they’d ever been open. And, I think, maybe they had some days where they weren’t open, you know, in that spring and early summer, but they opened Canada Day and it was a free day.

Jill: Wow.

Mark: It’s unreal, really, when you think of it.

Jill: Yeah, it is.

Mark: We still have snow locally Canada Day. Yeah.

I was going to ask you though I’ve never been snowmobiling.

You said you went snowmobiling. What’s that like?

Jill: You know, it’s not really a novelty to me because my dad actually also lives somewhere in a small town east of Vancouver, quite far east, and they get a lot of snow and it’s cold there in the winter. He always had snowmobiles and we would go up there and visit him growing up in the wintertime. So, I’ve always been on them. But, you know, it’s fun. I think I could take it or leave it. You know, I think a lot of guys, you know, like to go on and go really fast and it’s a thrill. It doesn’t do that much for me. I get scared. I don’t want to go that fast.

Mark: Right.

Jill: When I was younger I did. I loved it. My granddad, my dad’s dad, was a crazy man on a snowmobile and we were always scabbing and bruising because he was doing crazy stuff with us and we were being thrown off.

Mark: Is that right?

Jill: Oh, yeah, it was just’so, I think that maybe sort of traumatized me a little bit so that now I’m fairly paranoid.

Mark: Right.

Jill: And, you know, I know my brother had his toes broken.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: So, I know people who have been hurt on snow machines.

So, I now’I like going on, but I prefer not to drive myself and I go on with only somebody I trust a lot and if that person goes too fast, they hear about it.

Mark: Right; yeah.

Jill: It’s fun. It’s nice, you know, if it’s a nice day. At Christmastime we had a gorgeous, clear, sunny day; not a cloud in the sky; wasn’t really cold; it was so beautiful and we went on, you know, probably at least an hour and a half-long ride through the trees and it was really nice. So, you know, it just sort of depends what you are into.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I think most guys who do it have fun.

Mark: Oh, I’m sure it’s fun.

The only, I guess, similar thing I have done is’jet skiing is kind of similar or whatever you call it. A seadoo or whatever you call those things.

Jill: Yeah, on the water.

Mark: I’ve only done that once, mind you. I mean, it was okay; zip around for a while. But, I would think, I mean at least with that, you’d kind of get bored after awhile, unless you start trying to do more and more like crazier and crazier things, which, as you say, ends up with, a lot of times, people getting hurt.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: People do get hurt on snow machines.

Jill: Oh, yeah, they go fast. And I think, you know, it just depends.

My family, my granddad and my grandma, in particular, always had snowmobiles and always had lots of property where they lived and, you know, hundreds and hundreds of acres that was their own private property full of trees and trails and, you know, cabins and so. They had friends that every year, you know, and us, too, when we were up there you’d go on sort of day-long trips and you pack stuff and you build a fire along the way and have marshmallows and hotdogs. So, it’s kind of, you know, it’s like an event rather than just speeding around for an hour. It’s not really about going really fast. It’s more about sort of being out in the.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, I would image that part of it would appeal to me more, too. And, in a way, you can do the same thing on cross country skis for that matter or snowshoeing. Just pack a lunch and off you go.

Jill: It’s just, you know, the lazy man’s way of getting around.

Mark: That’s right, basically.

Jill: It doesn’t take any energy.

Mark: Yeah, that’s right, which wouldn’t appeal to me. I’ve got to get some exercise out of it.

Jill: Why do it if you’re not getting exercise, right?

Mark: Well, that’s right.

Mark: Well, I guess we’ve touched on a lot of different winter sports here today.

The one we haven’t really touched on, of course, is hockey, which, for the most part, tends to be more of an organized sport now. But, getting back to our trip to Big White where they have a big outdoor rink that’s really another big attraction for us going there is the big outdoor rink and every night there’s hockey games; pick up hockey games going. And, you know, you just show up and whoever shows up gets split up into two teams of people of all ages and all abilities and you just have a game. I tell ya, it’s lots of fun. My seven-year-old son, he just loves it, you know, because he plays together with the big guys and he just thinks it’s the best and, of course, everybody’s pretty good.

So, the older guys, you know, if the little guys have the puck, they let them take it for a while and then have a shot or pass it to the little guys and keep them in the game. And, at the same time, the older guys are pretty competitive and trying hard. Oh, yeah, and my dad comes out. I mean, it’s really a lot of fun. It’s sort of the roots of hockey, in a way.

Jill: Canadian tradition.

Mark: Canadian tradition and, really, it’s just fun. You know, sometimes we are up there marveling at’the level of the games is pretty good a lot of the time, obviously, because a lot of people play hockey, you know, or have played as kids.

So, anyway, that’s lots of fun and you do get the people who haven’t played before, you know, the Australian or whoever shows up to try it out and they have fun, too.

Jill: Can they skate, usually?

Mark: Well, not so much, but they kind of run around. Actually, some people take a fair bit of abuse, or their bodies take a fair bit of abuse, as they are trying to play. It’s not that easy to keep your balance and do things with the puck. But, everybody plays together and it’s fun and there’s plenty of hot chocolate there.

Jill: Oh, good. I could join in if I wanted?

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: No.

Mark: Actually, my daughters came and played; not in the game, but with their friends and they just played with the.

Jill: watched

Mark: No. They would skate with the puck and they had sticks for them and they liked it. There were four or five girls and they were playing because the skating, on its own, you can only do that so long. But when you are playing a game, you can get into it more and keep at it longer.

Mark: Otherwise, I think that probably covers the topic of

Jill: winter sports.

Mark: For those of you who live in countries where there is no winter or no snow, then I recommend you come to Canada.

Jill: Come to Vancouver.

Mark: Come to Vancouver, yeah.

Jill: Not just to anywhere in Canada.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: BC.

Mark: Come to Vancouver, BC, if you want to have fun; British Columbia. Otherwise, we’ll catch up with you next time on EnglishLingQ.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve, how are you?

Steve: I’m fine, thank you.

Jill: Good.

Steve: We are ‘who are we?

We are EnglishLingQ.com, which we spell English E N G L I S H Lingq L I N G Q, EnglishLingq.com and we hope that we are providing an interesting Podcast on English at different levels and, today, it’s kind of like an intermediate level on subjects of interest to people and, in particular, to members of The Linguist, thelinguist.com, which is our English learning website. Jill, what have you got for us today?

Jill: So, in our previous Podcasts, we have been talking about useful phrases and words from some of our content; some of our easy content; some of our more difficult content. Today, we are actually going to talk about a writing submission that one of our long-time members submitted.

On The Linguist you can submit writing and we correct it for you and send it back. So, Tony is a member from Taiwan.

Steve: Tony has been with us for a long time.

Jill: Yeah, for two and a half years.

Steve: Wow!

Jill: One of our first members and definitely the longest-running member that we’ve ever had on The Linguist. He is very keen. He is a very hard worker

Steve: and he has improved a lot.

Jill: He’s improved; it’s amazing how much he’s improved since he first started. He has saved, you know, 12,000 words and phrases. He’s learned about 7,000 of them, so that means he’s, you know, reviewed them enough times, tested them, so they’ve become known words.

Steve: These are all the statistics that we generate in The Linguist System, so that the learners can keep track of their progress, which, I think, for many people, certainly for me, that would be quite motivating just to see that all my efforts are actually because sometimes you feel gees, I’ve been at it and, you know, sometimes you feel you are speaking well and then you are in a situation where you’re kind of stumbling and not able to say what you want to say.

Jill: You feel like you are not progressing and you get discouraged, but. Yes, so we have all these statistics. You know, just in the past year, he?s listened for over 200 hours.

Steve: Wow.

Jill: So, he’s worked very hard and it’s paid off.

He’s made a lot of progress. So, we’re going to talk about one of his writing submissions today and just some of the useful phrases in it, maybe some of the mistakes he made and then, also, a little bit his submission is about having a tooth pulled, so we may also speak a little bit about experiences that we’ve had.

Steve: You know, we should say, too, that we are very happy to get requests from our learners. We are only too happy to respond to specific requests. Obviously, in this modern world of Podcasting, we don’t know who we’re talking to out there, but we are particularly interested in looking after our learners.

So, when we get a request like this from Tony, ‘Please talk about my writing submission’, we are just only too happy to do it. Jill: Right; exactly. So, as I said, Tony submitted some writing about having his teeth pulled and how it was not a very pleasant experience. So, we’ll just talk about some of the phrases.

Steve: Alright. Which phrases, in particular, did you find?

Jill: Well, you know, he started out saying ‘last Friday’, which is correct. I thought it was sort of important to bring up because a lot of people don’t know how to express something that happened last week. They will say ‘since last Friday’ or ‘since Friday’ or ‘before Friday’ or ‘some days ago’.

They have, sometimes, a hard time figuring out how to say that so, I just thought that was useful; ‘last Friday’ meaning this past Friday, one that has already passed. Then, he went on to say ‘This was not my first time of being pulled teeth’, which is not correct. Steve: Right.

Jill: And, basically, our correction, we replaced it with ‘This was not my first time having a tooth pulled. ‘ Steve: Right.

It’s interesting, ‘first time’ to have something done. He could have said ‘This was not my first time to have a teeth pulled.’ ‘My first time having a tooth pulled’ or ‘to have a tooth pulled’. Jill: That’s right.

Steve: If he had said ‘This is not my first time pulling teeth’ that would suggest that he was the dentist. Jill: He’s the dentist. He’s the one pulling the teeth.

Steve: Right.

I wouldn’t want to be the patient if it was the first time that he’s pulling teeth.

Jill: Exactly. Then, he goes on to say ‘is probably a horrible one in my pulling teeth history’. So, our correction was ‘is probably the most horrible one in my dental history’. So, we corrected it. A lot of people have problems with that, ‘the most’. Steve: The other thing that’s there is both those phrases are very sort of Chinese-inspired. Tony’s native language is Chinese.

I’m not sure whether it’s Taiwanese or Mandarin, but I know he speaks both. But, you know, he says ‘a horrible one in my pulling teeth history’. In English we have to say ‘in my history of having my teeth pulled’. You can’t have ‘my pulling teeth history’, but in Chinese you can. Jill: Right.

Steve: It’s a very efficient way. I mean, Chinese, in that sense, to my mind, is more efficient than English, but we just don’t say it.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, very often, I know Chinese people will say, you know, ‘my on top of the hill house’. No; ‘my house, which is on top of the hill’. We have to use a separate phrase or a separate clause there.

Jill: Lots of added words in there. And, again, ‘the most’, which means, you know, you are comparing it to any other occurrence. Steve: Right; a very good point. He said ‘but is probably a horrible one in my pulling teeth history’. Yeah, we would normally say ‘the most horrible one’ Jill: emphasizing that it’s the worst. It’s worse than any other dental experience that he’s had. Then, he goes on to say ‘The doctor spent about double times struggling pulling my giant tooth.’ So, we changed it to ‘spent about twice the usual amount of time’. Steve: You know, it’s very difficult. I mean, ‘double time’.

Double time, normally, to me, suggests someone I go back to when I had football practice in high school and I had to run double time. That means we had to make twice as many, you know, steps within the same amount of time. Double time

Jill: And, we use that, too, again?

Steve: Or for overtime we talk about double overtime. No.

Jill: double overtime, but not double time. But, yeah, I have that in some exercise classes that I do. It’s the same thing. You know, you’re doing something single time and then they’ll say do it double time, so you do it quicker. But, we don’t use it in the sense that.

Steve: But, I would say, it’s a very honest mistake.

It points out that we are always best to use, where we can, phrases that we have seen before and because we don’t say double time in that sense, which is not something that Tony would know. But, yeah, sometimes I find we have to try, very often, try to use a few more words. Don’t try to shorten everything up. Because you’re shortening it up into a phrase it may, in fact, not be a phrase that works.

Jill: Right, right.

Steve: So, the correct phrase is ‘twice the usual amount of time’. The doctor spent twice the usual amount of time. Or, he could have said, the doctor spent twice as much time as normal or twice as much time as usual.

So, there’s always more than one way to translate these things. There’s also more than one way to be wrong, of course.

Jill: Of course.

Jill: Tony goes on to say ‘I felt my jaw seemed to be’. And, you know, of course, we changed it to ‘My jaw felt like it was being’. Steve: This is a very important structure and I have mentioned it to Tony before. ‘Seemed as if’; ‘felt as if’; ‘I felt my jaw seem to be torn off.’ No.

‘I felt as if my jaw’ I don’t know what other translation’? My jaw felt like it was being torn off? or ‘I felt as if my jaw was being torn off? or ‘It seemed as if my jaw was being torn off’.

The ‘felt’ Jill: or ‘It seemed like my jaw’ Steve: ‘It seemed like’, but you can’t have the ‘felt’ and the ‘seemed’. That’s overkill. You don’t need them both. So, what I would suggest to Tony or others is, save the word ‘feel’ or ‘felt’, ‘felt like’ or whatever, and save the word ‘seem’ or ‘seemed’ and see what kinds of example sentences you generate in the Review Section of The Linguist. Those are very useful structures; ‘felt like’, ‘seemed as if’, you know, ‘felt as if’ and so, you’ve really got to get to where you can use them because you need to use them all the time.

To me, that’s a more important structure than ‘double time’ or ‘twice the usual amount of time’; that’s fine. But, this one here, Tony should get right.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Steve: If I were correcting I would put an unhappy picture there

Jill: to emphasize.

Steve: Emphasize; not good, not good.

Jill: Then, Tony goes on to say there was a ‘big hurt in my jaw’. So, there can’t be a hurt. You can have a pain. You can be hurt.

Steve: Right.

Sometimes the word ‘hurt’ is used as a noun when we are talking about emotional hurt, you know.

Jill: Right.

I felt hurt. Somebody hurt my feelings.

Steve: Well, hurt my feelings, but it was ‘I think we sometimes use it as a noun; maybe not, okay. Jill: Yeah.

Steve: But, at any rate, ‘it hurt’ the verb. It hurt, okay, or there was great pain.

Jill: Exactly. There wasn’t a big hurt. You can’t say that.

Steve: No.

Jill: Then, he goes on to say ‘Over the past week, I could not eat anything but drink some milk or eat some cereal only.

So, we changed it to ‘Over the past week, I could not eat anything except milk and cereal. ‘ Steve: Right.

I don’t like to disagree with our Correctors, but one of the things that I think is very important is consistency. So, even in the correction, we say ‘I could not eat anything except milk’. Well, we don’t eat milk.

Jill: No.

Steve: We drink milk.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, we should really, then, use a few more words and that was partly what was wrong with Tony, here. ‘I could not eat anything but drink’. In a way, he’s a little better; he’s trying.

Jill: He’s trying to do that, yeah.

Steve: I could not eat anything. Stop. ‘I could only drink milk.’ But, of course, it’s not that he could not eat anything. ‘I could not eat everything’, really. Jill: Yeah.

Steve: I could only drink milk and eat some cereal. And, he should probably mention that it’s a very loose cereal. Or, maybe not; cereal is pretty soft.

Jill: Well, once the milk gets in there it softens it up quite a lot.

Steve: Yeah. And that’s one of those structures where, I mean, we can’t sit here very quickly and come up with the best way of doing it.

But, very often, when you are stuck like that use more words.

Jill: Use more words, exactly. Make it into two sentences.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Often, people are afraid of that. They are trying to get all their thoughts into one sentence and sometimes, you know, it’s fine. Just put a period and then continue on with a new sentence.

Steve: You know, I think in writing, short sentences are key. And, the second thing is make sure the meaning is clear. If the meaning is not totally clear to you, if there is any ambiguity, right, — ‘ambiguity’ means uncertain meaning, if there is any ambiguity or uncertainty, if it’s not clear to you writing it, it for sure won’t be clear to the person reading it.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, it’s always worthwhile to use extra words, make a stop, start a new sentence, make sure it’s clear.

Jill: And, you know, a lot of people have that problem. I see it in writing submissions all the time; you know, using a lot of run-on sentences, as we call them. So, you know, they have this thought and it just goes on and on and on in one sentence and then they’re confused and it’s impossible to follow as the reader and now you don’t even know what they’re talking about anymore. And so, better to have, you know, a few more sentences, but shorter sentences.

Steve: Right.

So, the two last points that I think are quite important in this — one is the idea of consistency. I couldn’t eat anything but drink milk. No, that doesn’t work. You’ve got ‘If I couldn’t eat anything except cereal, I could also drink milk. If you are talking about ‘eat’, then talk about things that you eat. Jill: food.

Steve: Well, food that you eat; that’s right. If it’s something that you drink, you have to introduce a separate verb to deal with the drinking situation.

Jill: Or, you could say, I could not eat or drink anything except milk.

Steve: That’s right. Or, I couldn’t consume anything or whatever. But, if you are using the word ‘eat’ it implies that you are chewing it.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: We drink liquids. So, one issue here is to be consistent and the other one is to make sure that what you have to say is clear. Don’t be afraid to make more short sentences.

Jill: And a couple more important phrases here. Again, he goes on to say ‘I went to see the dentist who checked the hurt of my mouth.’ So, we corrected it and said ‘to check the condition of my mouth’. You could say ‘to check the pain in my mouth’ I think would be more accurate. Steve: That’s what I would have put. Yeah, I think, because Tony is trying to say that he went to the doctor because his mouth was sore.

So, he asked the doctor to check out why his mouth was sore; to check what was causing the pain in his mouth.

Jill: Right.

Then, he said ‘The doctor told me that my hurt recovered very well.’ So, that ‘my jaw’ recovered very well; that, you know, you could say ‘my cut’ Steve: I would not have said ‘my jaw’ just that I had recovered very well. I mean, what we are talking specifically about is the tooth, the roots of the teeth, the gums’ it’s just that Tony’s recovered. Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: But, yeah, certainly, I don’t envy Tony and I wouldn’t want to have been him in that situation.

Jill: No.

At the end of his writing submission, actually, he does go on to say, or within it he says, that the dentist had to try many times. It wouldn’t come out, so he had to keep pulling it and so I’m sure that was horrible. And, at the end, Tony goes on to say that the dentist said another wisdom tooth is coming in crookedly or not properly and it’s going to need to be pulled as well. And so, it was, you know, not the news that Tony wanted to hear after that experience.

Steve: My advice to Tony: get another dentist.

Jill: Exactly! Get another dentist.

Steve: Get another dentist.

The other thing that I would like to ask Tony is, as an experiment when he goes to have his next wisdom tooth pulled, see if he can listen to The Linguist English Content while he’s having his teeth pulled.

Jill: Maybe it will distract him from the pain.

Steve: This is part of our experiment. It’s possible that having your teeth pulled stimulates certain neurons in your brain and that might be beneficial for language learning. We can run a little experiment.

Jill: A new experiment.

Steve: Okay. Poor Tony; that wasn’t a very pleasant experience, but it was an interesting article. Okay, I think that probably we’ve covered it.

Jill: I think so.

Steve: So, yeah, let’s just say EnglishLingQ.com, that’s us. We have a variety of type of content.

We have easy stories, we have ordinary conversation; some are easy, some are difficult. We hope people enjoy them. We welcome any feedback. If people are members of The Linguist, we would be happy to respond to any requests. If you want us to talk about a particular item in The Linguist Library that you are studying or if you want us to look at some writing samples that you have submitted for correction, we are only too happy to do that. Okay. Thank you.

Jill: See you next time.

Steve: Bye, bye.

Jill: Bye, bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

A lot of people do not realize that entrepreneurs play a big role in our society.

When you put the total number of entrepreneurs together, they count as the biggest financial contributors to our nation’s wealth. If only politicians would give grants to finance small business start-ups, the economy’s growth could be hastened.

Knowing the obvious financial rewards and the important role to society of business owners, many individuals aspire to be entrepreneurs.

The fact remains, however, that several business start-ups fail and never take-off from the ground because of one thing: the lack of adequate and sufficient knowledge on how to start a profitable business. In this article, I will attempt to give practical strategies on how to run a successful business start-up.

First: find opportunities in your own backyard. Look at the demand side by observing your neighborhood. It is good to assess the close-to-home demand for starters. Aside from familiarity with the area, familiarity with the customer will be an enormous advantage.

Your neighborhood is not strictly your home address. It can be any area that you may be familiar with. It can be the university vicinity. After all, a student spends more time in school vis-à-vis his home.

Familiarity with the demand in the area will reveal these business opportunities.

To cite an example: You are into baking cakes. Why not check if there is an opportunity to supply your local diners with your baked products? Find out if the neighborhood needs another supplier of baked goods. If there is no such demand in your familiar area, look for another area where your supply has its demand.

Statements like these indicate a desire for something that is not yet available in the area. This approach is based on one’s familiarity with the demand.

Secondly, choose an opportunity that brings out the best in you. Do not choose an opportunity purely because of its income potential. Income is a natural consequence of the entrepreneur’s passion as expressed in the enterprise set-up.

Nevertheless, before choosing the opportunity, spend sometime defining your personal vision, mission, and values. This is a key foundation of great entrepreneurs. They know what they want for themselves, (personal vision,) they know what they live for-this is a “personal mission,” they know what they live by-these are their “personal values.” These three items constitute the foundation of passion.

Equally important is doing a personal assessment. What are you good at? What are you not good at? In other words, you must know thyself. Great entrepreneurs know themselves very well.

Only when these are satisfactorily answered can you decide when opportunities are to be seized. It is noteworthy, however, that when opportunity-seeking is made, it is not pre-screened by personal wants and capabilities.

Do not screen out opportunities just because you do not have the capability to do it. Seek and identify the opportunities that are present/available in your area. Thereafter, screen them against your personal vision, mission, and values. These screened opportunities are those that you can be passionate about. You will be passionate about it because it will serve as a vehicle for you to achieve your personal vision, mission and values.

After having decided which opportunity to pursue, seize it! Seize it very quickly since the windows of opportunity are open, but can close just as fast. Keep in mind that you are not the only person who is looking for opportunities to seize. Remember that there are others who have eyes, ears, and other senses to identify opportunities. Entrepreneurs seize with swiftness of the wind.

Lastly, use your personal assessment to guide you in determining how this opportunity can be seized quickly. If you have the capabilities to do it by yourself, then do not wait any further. Implement it at once. Do not be BIG right away. Start small, relative to your resources and capabilities. When your business model works, there will be plenty of people willing to lend money to you. Implement at once!

People who wait for some body else to successfully operate the business before proceeding on their own are not entrepreneurs, they are investors and are not necessarily entrepreneurs.

Real entrepreneurs do not wait for somebody else to start moving. Real entrepreneurs are pioneering-they are “entrepioneers. “

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Finding Out Your Child Has a Disability: It’s Not the end of the World.

Finding out that a child has been born with a disability, or that a previously healthy child has suffered an injury or disease that causes a disability can be the most traumatic experience in a parent’s life. Shock is usually the first thing people experience. It can temporarily paralyze you, preventing you from taking action, or even making rational decisions.In this difficult first period it is always wise to take the counsel of professionals and family members with experience or others whom you trust, while always maintaining the right to make the final decision yourselves.

After coming to grips with the shock of their situation, many parents come to feel that their expectations have been dashed, that they are failures as parents or that their family has been destroyed. Uncertainty, blame or jealousy may arise. Parents may worry about hundreds of questions that have few immediate answers which can lead to an unbalanced and overly bleak view of the opportunities, potential, and joy that can be found in raising a child with a disability.

These emotions however are normal; part of a “mourning” process that many parents of children with disabilities go through.If you have these feelings, remember that you are not the only ones who feel this way, and that you will get over them. You can adjust more quickly by obtaining accurate information, sharing your feelings openly with others, seeking professional counseling, and, most importantly, having open discussions with all members of your immediate family. With time, love, and support, any negative emotions you feel can be replaced by positive ones leading to productive actions that will benefit your child.

It is not the end of the world, and many families have become stronger, more loving, and more closely knit because of a disability in the family. The disability gave them the opportunity to work together to help out their loved one, and the entire family shares in the gains that are made by the child.Many of the negatives that parents imagine that go along with having a child who has a disability simply do not occur. While you will have to make some sacrifices, you will still have time for your friends, family, and hobbies. After awhile, many of the activities you once viewed as sacrifices will come to be seen as part of every life, rather than an exceptional burden.

Developing a positive attitude is very important, and although children with disabilities will inevitably become aware of their limitations, they should always be encouraged to take on new challenges. This is sometimes difficult as children with physical limitations may be reluctant to participate in physical activities out of fear of failure. Despite these fears, both the child’s and the parent’s perspective should be “have fun, and do your best.”

Some parents of children with disabilities are unable to have their special child live at home with them, but the vast majority is able to successfully manage within the home. If you are finding you cannot cope, there are alternatives available that will allow you to maintain a loving relationship with your child while maximizing appropriate care.

The most important factor in a family’s success is the motivation to succeed. If a child realizes that his parents always encourage success and will not be satisfied with anything less than his best effort, he will be motivated to succeed.Never settling for failure becomes part of his character, and his self-esteem will be enhanced and maintained.

There is a wide range of disabilities that affect children but the constant emphasis on always trying your best, reinforced in an atmosphere of warmth and support, will help any child with a disability triumph over the challenge that he will face. Instilling this confidence will help him have faith in himself and work on his own behalf throughout the course of his entire life.

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This morning I’m meeting with Bill Stewart who is the President of the YMCA here in Vancouver.

Very nice of you to spend the time to chat with us.

Always a pleasure.

Now, some people are very familiar with the Y, because it is a world-wide organization, but some newcomers to Vancouver may not know what sorts of activities the Y is involved in. Perhaps you could explain some of these.

Sure I’d be happy to. First of all, I guess, I’d talk a little bit about the Y on a worldwide basis.

The Y is in about 130 some countries in the world and it is the largest volunteer membership organization in the world. Its office of the world alliance is in Geneva, Switzerland. Every Y, though, is a very independent organization governed by volunteers at a board of directors level who hire someone like me to be the administrator. So that’s basically how structurally we are organized.

One question, and I’m going to jump in here from time to time, of course YMCA does mean Young Men’s Christian Association. Now are the services or is membership in any way limited by religion?

No, not in Canada and in most countries in the world it wouldn’t be limited to religion.

But I would say that for people coming from other parts of the world they might find that the Y is aimed more at the Christian population rather than indigenous population of that country. Those would be the cases where the Christian population would be the very minority, so one percent or two percent. So, for instance, if you take the YMCA in Malaysia, which is in a Muslim secular country, the Y is the minority and although it serves everyone in terms of religion it can only have members that are Christian.

What’s the situation here in Vancouver?

In Vancouver basically we embrace all religions of the world. We don’t make any demands on people of their religion.

All we ask people to do is believe in our core values, and operate by our guiding principles which are basically the same foundations as every major religion in the world.

So you have members who are Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, atheist, whatever.

Absolutely.

And one of your main projects recently has been the new Y in Surrey, I believe.

Yes, we have been working on the Y in Surrey for about 6 years now. We are in construction at the present time. We expect to be able to open about mid-September. It’s the first YMCA that has been built in British Columbia in the last 23 years.

From the point of view of someone who has, say, recently immigrated to Canada, what can the Y mean to a family or an individual who has come here, and doesn’t know many people, and is interested to get to know people in this society?

Well, that’s a good question. I think that one of the first things that you have to say about a Y is that a Y is a lifetime experience. So what we would ideally like and we have, are people that join as children, and are still with us when they are grandfathers and grandmothers. In fact, we have one woman that’s over at our South Slope YMCA by Langara and 49th that is ninety-some years old and she continues to swim twice a week and compete in swim races across the province.

And each time she does, of course she wins because there’s no one in her age category!

How old is she again?

She is ninety-two or ninety-three years old! And we have little kids that start in Y’s in our day camps and our camp programs and our membership programs. I think the services that we really offer are that people are able to participate with other people, with similar interests in terms of healthy lifestyles, getting involved in various things we do, and can do that as a family or an individual and can do it over a lifetime.

Typically one thinks of the Y as a place to work out in a gym, or swim or play basketball. Is it just that kind of thing or what are some of the other aspects?

Well, we do a lot of that for sure. But we in fact teach English language, we engage in programs that are international development kind of things in terms of partnerships with other Y’s around the world. We do programs that are designed for employment. One project that we run right now is called YIP which is a youth internship program that is for kids primarily that have dropped out of school and their stories are quite dramatic. We deal with kids right across the province and up into the Yukon. The design is that we help teach them a little bit about what is expected of them when they get a job with an employer. So there’s kind of an attitude-shaping going on for 3 weeks to 4 weeks. And then basically we place them with the Civil Service.

It’s a combination program or a funded program with the federal government Civil Service and they in fact find mentors (we collectively find them mentors) and then they are matched up with a mentor and are able to work with the mentor for an average 8 months to 9 months. For many of these young people it’s the very first time that they have been able to get a little bit of a toe-hold on what employment is all about. And it’s a great thing for the mentors because it’s the very first time in many cases they’ve had to take on the role of a coach and as a bit of a guidance person, role model to young people.

And what we have found is that there has been some tremendous success stories come out of this where kids are then up for actual employment and receive employment offers in the federal service.

That’s certainly an interesting program. I also understand that you provide daycare?

We provide daycare. We are the largest provider of childcare in the province of British Columbia with about 43 centres throughout the Lower Mainland. And they run a range from full-time, under 5 care for children, to out of school care, before school, noon hour care and after school care. And we have some special programs that are also operating in relationship to young women that are finishing school as they’ve been giving birth, so their children are in childcare and they’re finishing up high school. So we’ve got a couple of programs like that, as well.

And do you also run summer camps for children?

We are the largest provider of children’s summer camp programs. We’ve got 3 centres, one is about 94 years old and that is Camp Elphinstone, well known in this part of the world, and actually around the world because about 25 percent of the people that come to that camp are from all over the world. And we have Camp Howdy, which is a little over 50 years old, and we have Camp Deca, which is up in the Caribou country about 6 or 7 hours from here.

So that would be a good opportunity for children who live in Vancouver, and sometimes people who, particularly in the case of recent immigrants, don’t know much about the province they haven’t been out to see much of B.C.,so one could recommend that kids from that background should take advantage and get out and see the rest of the province?

It’s an excellent thing from a couple of points of view; one is just to make a connections with other children, other youth. It’s a great spot to learn about Canadian society and group living. And it’s a great thing in the sense that you can go as a camper and eventually become a leader and from a leader you can become a paid counsellor. So there is quite a range of experiences that people can engage in.

The other great thing is that there are people there from all over the world and even from the lower mainland from all different ethnic and racial backgrounds, so it’s very a mixed affair. That would be one of the important things that we try to do in our English language for instance. We tend to try to have people with a variety of backgrounds as opposed to singular backgrounds.

Do you find, I know in some schools in the Lower Mainland, it can be a problem if there are a lot of students from one particular language group that they will collect together and speak their language? It really doesn’t help them with their English in the long run. What’s been the experience at these camps, do people mix better?

Do people all tend to mix across different language groups or do you still get these little cliques forming?

No, by and large, they would mix. We would have multi-language skills in relationship to the counsellors that are on site. But the language of the camp is English and basically the people that come from around the world to engage in our camp also come to learn English as a part of that experience. That’s our intention. I guess the other thing I should mention is that we have members from all over the world in terms of their origins in our membership, and again the language of the membership is English. Although we do try to have the capability as much as we can, that some of our instructors and service staff have multi-language capabilities.

I’ve often thought it would be an interesting project to have, almost like, an English Language Camp. Again, for people that are struggling with English here in Vancouver, where we would take them out of Vancouver to some of the regional centres in British Columbia for a period of time where they would get to experience what life is like elsewhere. I guess there’s no such activity on right now?

None that I’m aware of. That would be an interesting idea. Some Y’s do sponsor family camps. We have not been able to do those particular camps because our camps are pretty full as they are. We would struggle a little bit to find the space. But yes, there are those kinds of programs, I know, elsewhere and I think they’d probably be very valuable.

In what way do the facilities and services offered by the Y differ from, let’s say, what a community centre offers?

Well, I think in some respects there is a difference in the sense that we’re a volunteer organization, that is volunteer driven. While the community centres can have volunteers, our volunteers are based upon the structure of the organization. We start there; that’s our fundamental belief that volunteers and staff form the partnerships that deliver services. So that’s one difference. The other difference is around the whole area of belonging. Membership; do you belong to something with basically a value-base that we invite people to participate in. So that’s a difference. Again, we are not publicly-funded, we have to make it on our own.

So we ask people to participate with us in a philanthropic way too. We attempt to make sure that no one is ever turned away or denied a YMCA experience for a lack of funds. So people, for instance, that have come to our country that are new immigrants, if they wish to belong to the Y but don’t have the funds for them or their family, the Y will provide scholarships or ways in which they can in fact engage in those membership programs.

Do you have people from the different ethnic communities volunteering at the Y?

Oh yes.

What would be some of the activities that the volunteers would do at the Y?

Well in terms of range of activities, we’ve got people that volunteer to do conversation clubs in English language.

We’ve got people that volunteer to do T-ball, sports programs, basketball. We’ve got people that do karate, counselling, training programs. Quite a variety of coaches.

You do run slo-pitch softball and that kind of thing as well?

Yes, we do, very large programs.

I’ve always felt that a great place for particularly a younger adult immigrant to get to know Canadians is to participate in slo-pitch because it’s really not that difficult to play, and it’s not very competitive and it’s just a great social event!

A great social time! Yes. We do. We operate that particular program for adults out of our South Slope Y. For children we do that mainly in Surrey and Langley.

You keep coming back to the values of the Y. I wonder if you could maybe expand a little bit on some of the core values of the Y?

First of all, the Y has been around in Canada for over 150 years now. It’s been in our city here for about 115 years. It’s been based upon some core values of responsibility, respect, honesty and caring. Those are the kinds of core values that we espouse, and which we try to build into our programs. And when you start there as your framework and then ask yourself the question, how are we making sure that those particular values are in our programs, you start to re-define how you deliver things and what action you might take in response to given situations. So those have been our guiding posts.

And from an organizational basis we have always believed in belonging as a very important thing that people have to have opportunities to belong to something, to believe in something. We believe in leadership, taking leadership, providing leadership opportunities, so the development of leadership skills is a big thing for us. Whether it’s campers in training or counsellors in training, or leaders in training, or whether you’re a volunteer that’s just receiving some training in terms of being able to apply your particular expertise to someone else or with someone else. Those would be important things for us. We are also an organization that believes in serving. There’s a service ethic in our mentality; to serve people. It’s not just from a customer service point of view, but from a service point of view. The other one would be renewal.

We are always an organization that has to be involved in renewing itself. From a business point of view, if you wanted to look at it in business terms, we are a very large social-marketing organization because if the market or need is not apparent in the community and we’re trying to serve something that doesn’t exist, we won’t be there very long. Because we have to be defined by the needs and then if you do that over time you can take a look at all of the things that the Y has created. It’s an amazing story of firsts. We have created more things than any other organization probably in the world because of that defining.

Most people don’t know that basketball was started in YMCA schools, volleyball was started in YMCA schools, modern weightlifting was started in YMCA schools, table tennis was brought to China by YMCA’s. There’s an incredible list of stories.

Very interesting, and I think when you talk about belonging it brings up the word community in my mind and I think it’s also about community-building, bringing people together.

That’s right. We have a very strong belief that people should engage in building community themselves. Everybody’s got a responsibility to take some leadership, to get involved and that we should do for ourselves. Community is not built by other people providing services, community is built by people getting involved to deliver services.

I think that’s an excellent model of a community: people building it themselves rather than waiting for someone to give it to them. And I think that’s a good note to end our discussion on, so thank you very much.

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As the Nasdaq did fall, and our tech stocks did crumble, I was one of many, who took that corporate tumble.

While partisans and peers awaited brighter fiscal days, On a new and noble effort did I soon turn my gaze.

Inspired by a linguist who brought teaching to the net, And showed this lad, computers had, merits still untapped.

With my focus now on teaching, across the globe from A to Z, Unlike Agamemnon’s fate, this Net will set you free!

A great success I’ve seen, though just a year it’s been, That a day’s good works, May offer infinite perks, And come in colours much brighter than green.

This may sound a dear too sentimental and perhaps a bit silly, but whenever I see the seasons changing I’m reminded of changes in my own life.

Not the little changes, like whether or not to closely shave my head leaving an army-styled cut for the warming spring and summer months, but the grand, important changes; the changes like those that have affected my life to this day, and the changes that may affect the course of my life for the rest of my life.

It was nine Springs ago that I entered University and four Springs following that when I left.

I gleefully tumbled down Burnaby mountain – an appropriate place (I thought) for an institute of higher learning – with a degree in French Literature under one arm and a pocketful of dreams under the other. What couldn’t a fellow do in this world with unlimited hope, unbounded self-confidence, great family support and a degree in French Literature? I was ready to take on the world: English and French-speaking alike, and the only decision I would need to suffer was choosing for whom I would work, and to whom I would deny my bilingual talents.

With my casual bangs falling about my forehead and into my eyes, I would treat myself to a celebratory haircut. Why not, indeed? The seasons were changing, the summer was fast approaching and the world seemed as bright as my dreams!

Four months on and following my mountain top epiphany, autumn approached and I found myself not wanting to be found. If others did happen to find me however, they would find me there, on the sofa, lounging in my pyjamas at 11:00 am watching “Divorce Court” or “The People’s Court” or watching Brad trying to court Ashley out of her fortune so that he might have better access to her estate’s tennis court. I had, it seemed, greatly overestimated the world’s demand for a bilingual French literature major.

For four straight months I was cordially turned down for work of every possible kind, and turned down, not in one, but in two languages: “No, thank you, Mr. Quinette” and “Non, merci, M. Quinette.”

Either way it was told to me, it proved me wrong on far too many counts. My unlimited hopes did have limits, my unbounded self-confidence clearly had well-defined boundaries, and my degree, such as the one I had struggled to earn, was not worth nearly as much as I had believed. How fortunate I was that my trust in my family’s support was not misplaced. They took me in – my mother and father – their crestfallen, crushed and sullen, French-speaking son.

To my grand disadvantage, it was the second peak of the internet age. The first peak being the one that captivated the 1990s and promised indulgent spenders they would be purchasing everything, from groceries to family pets, over the internet. This second peak was wise and more temperate.

It was a time when your worth was calculated by your knowledge of C+ and C++. I was, to be sure, well aware of such things. I had seen such symbols many times at university, most often found at the bottom of my essays on Voltaire or some such author, with a comment beside it in red pen telling me that my ideas “lacked form and insight.” Once again, I was on the sour side of change.

Authors I had worked so hard to understand were now of no consequence. Marcel Proust was all but forgotten, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had been sent his walking papers and the dear father of “The Divine Comedy,” Honore de Balzac, was summarily supplanted by various bits, bytes and binary code forms.

Like the language of Latin, my love of languages and literature was dead as far as human capital assets were concerned. Densely antiseptic and blithely Caucasian computer chatter was surely to be my future, if a future was what I intended to have.

But just as sure as seasons change so do capital markets! Months past, Autumn brought Winter, then Winter loosened her grip and gave-way to the first signs of Spring . I was dead right about computers being an essential part of this forthcoming economy, but dead wrong about the death of languages. As computers began to connect the world together, English became the language to connect the people found behind the monitors. Even the IT professionals had to admit that not everything could be so well expressed in mere zeros and ones.

And now, as this Spring proceeds toward Summer and further warms the world, this change I do now adore! I’m living and working a beautifully synthesized life while helping the world to learn languages by making the most of the internet. Finding myself on the better side of change, I shall be quite happy to make myself forever contented with immutable constancy. Be happy with what you have, and change not for the mere sake of changing – by these words I steadfastly stand.

Or perhaps I may allow just one small change – this sure-to-be-sweltering summer – and shave my head completely bald.