Chapter 1: What stories does Andrew share about his winter trip to Canada?
Hello and welcome to the Q-Lips English Podcast. This is bonus episode number 169, and I am your host and your study buddy, Andrew. What I do here in the bonus episode series is I tell you some stories from my everyday life as a Canadian living abroad in Seoul, South Korea, And I hope that by listening to these stories, you will be able to improve your English fluency.
That's what we're all about here at Q-Lips, is helping you hit and achieve your goals with English. So if that's what you want to do, then you're in the right place. And I hope you'll enjoy my stories and find them useful for building your English skills. So guys, in today's episode, I'm going to tell you two short stories about... spending some time in Canada.
I just went back to Canada last month for a week in the dead of winter. And I'll tell you just about some of the highlights from that trip, some of the things that were memorable and fun to me. So we'll get into that and I'll tell you those stories here in just a sec.
But before I do, I wanna let you know that there is an interactive transcript and a vocabulary glossary available for this episode for free for everyone. And you can get it just by following the link that's in the description. Plus, if you're a Q-Lips member, then you'll also get a comprehension quiz so you can test and see how much you were able to understand after listening to the story.
So if you'd like to get that, you do have to be a Q-Lips member, but you can sign up and find all of the information about becoming a member on our website, Q-Lips.com. And when you sign up, you don't just get the comprehension quizzes. You get so, so much more. All of our best tools and materials to help you hit your fluency goals faster than ever.
So that includes transcripts and study guides to all of our episodes. It includes our bonus series, which is member only called the fluency files. It includes our weekly speaking classes, which are just so much fun and a joy to take part in. And I think you will really enjoy them as well. So yeah. go to our website, QLips.com, read about all the details.
And if you think it's a good fit for you, you can sign up and become a member for an affordable price. And of course, a huge thank you to all our members out there for your support, guys. We really couldn't do QLips without you. So thank you so much. Okay. And with that announcement out of the way, it's time to get started with my stories here for today.
And as I mentioned, I have two of them and fittingly, perhaps these are like really classic Canadian stories. I think, uh, winter stories, because of course I visited Canada in January in the dead of winter, like I said, and that's a great expression to know in the dead of winter just means in the middle of winter.
So in the dead of winter, we also say in the dead of the night, in the middle of the night, I think those are the only two times we use it though. I don't think I would say in the dead of summer or in the dead of spring. That sounds a little strange to me, but in the dead of winter, in the dead of the night, you can imagine it's like those times when it almost seems dead outside, right?
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Chapter 2: What classic winter activities does Andrew mention in his Canadian hometown?
Now a Zamboni is this cool machine that if you're a Canadian, you will know this word Zamboni, but maybe...
other parts of the world you don't know what a zamboni is so let me explain it's a vehicle or a machine that goes over the surface of an ice arena to make sure that the ice is really smooth so what it actually does is it puts hot water onto the ice and it kind of melts the ice and makes it uniform and level and then the ice refreezes and it's all really smooth so for events like
ice hockey, figure skating, these kinds of ice sports, we need a Zamboni to make sure that the ice is nice and flat and level and smooth. And so this outdoor pond even had a Zamboni. So the ice was in perfect condition. And yeah, I guess because I was there early in the morning, I kind of beat the rush and
Yeah, it was just so, so fun to get on my skates and go out there and hold my ice hockey stick. And just like I mentioned earlier, we were above the clouds. So it was a bluebird day is what the people in Kelowna call it.
I'm not sure if this is an expression that's spread everywhere in the English speaking world, but maybe some local regional slang, a bluebird day, just meaning that the sky is totally blue, right? So. Really cool to be outside skating around. On one side, I could look at the village. On the other side is just forest and these snow-covered trees, so that was really cool.
Unfortunately, I didn't have an ice hockey puck with me, but I did have my ice hockey stick, and I hadn't been skating in a long, long time. I did go ice skating here in Seoul at the City Hall. There's a little ice rink that opens in front of City Hall in the wintertime,
And my wife and I went there a couple of years ago now probably to go skating, but I wouldn't really call that real skating because the skates that you get to rent there are just these terrible quality plastic skates. And there are so many people on the rink and the ice quality is not so great. So yeah, it was fun. It's a cool thing to do.
And if you're ever in Seoul in the winter, I recommend going to City Hall and skating. Definitely super fun. However, it's not real ice skating. So to get on my brother's ice hockey skates, he has these good high quality ice hockey skates that he lent me to have the stick and just to get out there on the open ice and really give her like really try and skate fast and just, uh,
have fun out there. That was awesome. I hadn't done that in forever. And it's just an incredible feeling just really going fast and then doing a stop and spraying all the ice up and skating backwards and doing some sharp turns. It was fun. So I probably was skating out there for about an hour or so. So that was really awesome.
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Chapter 3: What unexpected weather challenges did Andrew face during his trip?
Hats off to the American teams. They both played really well and the better teams won. I think they won fair and square, but sucks to lose. And so, yeah, just been a very, very difficult, maybe the worst year of being an ice hockey fan that I can ever remember. So yeah, the game itself wasn't so good, but the atmosphere in the arena was really cool.
And there are two things that I want to tell you about quickly before I wrap it up here, which make an ice hockey game so fun to see. And if you ever do go to Canada and it's the ice hockey season, I highly, highly, highly recommend going to see a game. whether it's the NHL, the professional level or the WHL or a junior level game as well. You'll have the same kind of fun atmosphere.
And I think it's a really nice way to experience Canadian culture. So I would really encourage you, even if you don't know anything about ice hockey, you could go and experience it and have a fun time. It's a really cool cultural activity to do, I think, as well. And there are two things that you'll see at almost every major or major junior game.
And that is, first of all, during the intermission, which is the break time that they take in hockey, they play for 20 minutes. A 20-minute section is called a period. And then they take an intermission for 15 minutes, just a break to clean the ice, to zamboni the ice, and to give the players some rest time as well. So during the intermission, they always have
little kids come onto the ice and play they have like a little kid game and the kids are i don't know five six years old probably around that age and it's so funny and so cute because these kids can barely ice skate and they have no idea how to play the game So there's no structure or organization to them playing.
And usually in ice hockey, you have five players versus five players, but they always have like 15 kids versus 15 kids. It's just chaos out there. And you see all these kids skating together in this big pack chasing after the puck. And often they don't even know which way to go. So they're shooting the puck in the wrong direction or shooting it in their own net by mistake. It's just so funny.
and cute, and I would say it's about 100 times more entertaining than the actual hockey game itself. Like, I think if they just played this on TV, I would tune in to watch. It's super, super awesome and very cute and very funny. So that's great entertainment. during one of the intermissions. They always have those little kids playing.
And then another thing that's really fun about an ice hockey game is something called the 50-50, the 50-50. A 50-50 is a kind of lottery. You can buy a 50-50 ticket and the tickets are always pretty cheap. You can buy like maybe, I don't know, 20 tickets for $10 or something like that. And it's not going to be
break the bank, you can buy a bunch of tickets for a cheap price and you have to buy your tickets usually before the end of the second intermission. And then they do a draw and they find who the winner is. And if you win.
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