Have you ever had one of those weeks where it felt like a month passed just within the span of seven days?
I had one of those weeks happen to me last week.
And today I'm going to share some of those stories with you.
My name is Andrew. Welcome to the Q -Lips English podcast. How's it going?
Thank you for clicking play and joining me for this English lesson today.
In the Q -Lips bonus episodes, I just share some stories from my everyday life.
I'm a Canadian English teacher, but I live abroad in Seoul, South Korea.
And I hope that by spending time with me and listening to English today, you will be able to build your English fluency and become a clearer and better communicator.
That's what I'm here to help you achieve.
So if you're down with that, if that sounds good to you, then you're in the right place.
And I think you'll enjoy this episode.
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So amazing. Thank you so much. Okay.
So I have three big things that happened to me last week that I really want to tell you about, but I know myself, guys, I know myself and I like to talk on and on and on.
It just seems to be one of those things that I'm really good at doing is long form conversation instead of keeping things short and brief.
So because I know myself so well, I'm just going to share two stories here with you today.
and then the third story and it's kind of the cherry on top i'm gonna save the cherry on top the best for last if you will and i'll tell you that story next week so you're gonna have to tune in to hear the best story that happened to me recently next week but i got some interesting stories here for you as well i had a great week maybe one of the best weeks so far this year and probably will be one of the best weeks of the year looking back in retrospect as well so So two stories.
Okay, I'm going to start off with my birthday.
I celebrated my birthday and then I also celebrated my anniversary.
So it was a two party week, believe it or not.
Usually in my life, it's a zero party week, but I had two parties this week, two celebrations.
So let's get to those stories right now.
Here we go. Enjoy. enjoy.
The first big event that happened to me last week was my birthday.
Yeah, it was my birthday on Monday, my 41st birthday on May the 12th.
Can you believe it?
I can't believe it.
I don't know if this is just something that will happen to me until I die, but it seems like every year I'm I'm like, oh my gosh, how am I this old?
It really doesn't feel inside like I'm 41.
Perhaps on the outside, it's starting to look like I'm in my 40s.
I think that's probably just inevitable.
But yeah, I don't know.
I don't feel 41. And I know that people when they're in their 70s and 80s, I think they say the same thing, right?
They never feel their age.
So although I don't feel 41, I am in fact 41.
I had an amazing birthday on Monday.
I have to give a shout out to my wife because she really always goes above and beyond and makes sure that my day is special and yeah, she did it this year as well.
So having a Monday birthday and having a 41st birthday kind of mean that nothing super special happens.
I mean, last year when I turned 40, we had a big celebration and yeah, my wife really, really, really went above and beyond, because I think that's a milestone, right?
When you turn 40, it's kind of the clear boundary between being a young adult and being middle -aged and being a middle -aged adult.
So last year, we kind of went all out for my birthday, but this year, 41st birthday, it's nothing special.
It was just pretty chill and mellow.
We just kept it low -key, but it it was still special nonetheless, and I'll tell you all about it.
And I guess I should say as well, thanks to all of the people on the Q -Lips Discord server who sent me a happy birthday message.
I really appreciate it, guys.
And thanks, I think, especially to Alina and to Edith for remembering about my birthday.
Thanks guys, very much appreciated.
So anyways, Monday I woke up to a delicious birthday breakfast. Here in South Korea, it's the tradition to eat seaweed soup on your birthday.
And because my wife is Korean and because I live in Korea, we follow this tradition.
I really enjoy it. To the uninitiated and people who have never tried it, I think seaweed soup sounds pretty slimy and gross.
And I have to say it is a little bit slimy, but it's definitely not gross.
It's really delicious.
And it's one of my favorite things about aging in Korea is that every year on my birthday, I do get to eat seaweed soup.
So my wife prepared this wonderful breakfast with seaweed soup with a Korean dish called bulgogi, which is a beef dish, rice, salad, some side dishes, various side dishes, you name it.
It was there. And my mother -in -law also came She made the trip from her home to our home, which is quite a long distance.
It's around an hour and 20 to an hour and 30 minutes on Monday morning in rush hour to come and eat with us and to wish me happy birthday.
So that was really, really kind of her and sweet of her to do as well.
So we celebrated with a birthday breakfast on Monday morning and then a little bit later in the evening after work was done, my wife and I met up again and we went just to a local pub in our neighborhood for a birthday beer.
My wife asked me, Andrew, what do you want to do?
Do you want to have a fancy dinner?
Do you want to have a barbecue?
And I said, no, you know, I don't need need to go out for dinner.
Let's save some money.
But maybe after dinner, we can meet and just have a birthday beer.
And here in Korea, if you go to a pub and you do drink a beer, it's customary to order a side dish as well, kind of drinking snack.
So we ordered some French fries and some dried fish and snacked on those.
We enjoyed a birthday beer.
And that's where we had our little party as well.
My wife prepared a very small cake.
I think I've mentioned on Q -Lips before that she doesn't really like cake, but I love it.
I love birthday cake.
So she got me a small little carrot cake that she sourced out from a local bakery here and it was delicious.
It was amazing. And And she also gave me a very heartfelt card, handwritten card. And she wanted to buy me this present that she couldn't find anywhere.
She wanted to buy me an LP, because you guys know that I'm really into music.
I love music. There's this Japanese ambient musician who I'm a really big fan of.
His name is Hiroshi Yoshimura.
And he just came out.
Well, actually, he's passed away a long time ago.
but his estate just released one of his older albums onto vinyl so this is really cool because he was really active i think in the 80s and maybe a little bit into the 90s as well and so most of his music was released as a cd and unfortunately he's one of those musicians who wasn't really deeply deeply appreciated in his time i don't want to say he was an unknown or not well respected when he was alive.
And when I say that phrase in his time, it means when he was most active and when he was alive.
So I think in his time, he wasn't really super well known.
But then after his passing, now he has gained a lot of popularity.
And I heard that this newest release of his even charted on the Billboard charts.
So that's pretty amazing.
The Billboard music charts in the USA, say, that just goes to show that he's quite popular in this ambient New Age category genre of music.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I'm a big fan of his music and it seems like his album releases coincide and line up with my birthday because my wife has given me one of his albums several times as a birthday present in the past. And so she wanted to give me his newest album here for this birthday, but she couldn't find it.
It doesn't really exist in Korea.
For whatever reason, you can find this album in Canada, you can get it in the States, you can order it online, you can get it in Japan, but it doesn't exist in Korea.
She said that she searched high and low and called many different record stores, and it just doesn't really exist. Nobody's selling it here yet in Korea.
And I'm not sure exactly why that is, but she didn't want to order it online because the shipping is just unbelievably expensive.
To get this record shipped from the USA to Korea is more expensive than the record costs itself.
And she called one local record store that said they don't have it yet, but it will be coming in later this month.
So because she wasn't able to prepare the record for my birthday as a present, she did something that was really cool and really fun.
And I think if you are ever throwing a birthday party for someone or giving someone a gift in the future, I recommend that you do this.
I don't know if they'll sell these things in your country, but here in Korea, there's a store that's similar to like a dollar store.
You can go there and there are thousands and thousands of different items from household goods to stationery, even to clothes and foods and snacks and they got it all at this shop.
And they had these little scratch cards.
If you're watching the YouTube video version of this episode, I'm going to show you here on the screen what it looks like.
If you're just listening to the audio only podcast version, that's okay.
I'll try my best to paint a picture for you with my words.
But she gave me this little card. It's the same size as a bank card or a credit card. Think of it like that.
And on one side, it's got a couple of bunnies having a tea party.
Okay, kind of silly.
And on the other side, it's like a scratch ticket, like a lottery scratch ticket.
So of course, I've scratched it off.
But when she gave it to me, it had the gray kind of surface material that you must scratch off to to reveal something underneath.
And so I was like, oh, this is exciting.
What's underneath on this card?
So I scratched it off and then she wrote Hiroshi Yoshimura LP voucher for me.
So when the LP, the record finally comes into Korea, I'm supposed to give her this card and she will buy it for me and that will be my birthday present.
So pretty fun. I thought that that was a really fun idea.
I really, really enjoyed it.
And I want to recommend these kind of scratch cards to you.
If you're giving a birthday gift in the future, you could write all sorts of fun things on here and then give them to your friends and enjoy watching them scratch it off.
I don't know why that's so fun, but it just really is kind of fun to scratch away.
Maybe that's why those scratch lottery cards are so addictive too, right?
Anyways, yeah, Yeah, that was pretty much my birthday.
And that was the first big event of last week.
The other big event of last week was my wedding anniversary.
It was my fourth wedding anniversary on May the 15th.
And I can't believe it.
Time flies. It seems like I just got married yesterday and now it's already been four years.
And I have to say that each day and every day is better than the last with my wife.
It's been a great four years and many, many more to come, I hope as well.
But yeah, we had a little party to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary.
And so I had two parties this week, my birthday party and my wedding anniversary.
My wedding anniversary also happens to fall on my best friend Luke's birthday.
And if you're a regular Q -Lips listener, you'll know about Luke.
I've talked about him a lot on Q -Lips before.
So a happy birthday as well to my buddy Luke.
And yeah, my wedding anniversary, just a very celebratory week here.
And so usually what my wife and I do every year on our wedding anniversary is we go back to the park where we were married and we take a photo together.
And so we have three so far in our collection.
I guess we have our wedding photo and then first, second, and third wedding anniversaries.
And then now we need to take our fourth year wedding anniversary photo.
But we weren't able to do that yet this year.
Our wedding anniversary fell on a weekday this year.
So of course, it was a little bit difficult to go and do that because of work.
But after the workday, my wife and I met up and we had a very romantic dinner.
It's kind of funny because my wife's coworkers were asking her like, oh, where are you going to go for your anniversary dinner?
Are you going to go to a fancy restaurant?
And my wife said, no, we're just going to go and eat lamb skewers.
This is a kind of Chinese food here in Korea, lamb skewers.
They often sell them at Chinese restaurants and it's a kind of barbecue with lamb meat.
You get these sticks of lamb and you put them on the barbecue and the barbecue will roll back and forth automatically, perfectly grilling the lamb meat.
And yeah, it's maybe not the most romantic place for an anniversary dinner, but my wife wife and I were craving lamb skewers and it was really delicious.
And actually the restaurant that we went to was pretty nice.
It had a big open window that we were sitting beside and it sort of looked out onto this nice stream and park.
So we had this beautiful meal of delicious, perfectly grilled lamb meat.
So good. And just a nice hangout and chat with my wife and celebrating our four years of wedded bliss together.
And also I was super surprised because my wife prepared a gift for me.
I had just gotten a gift and had this amazing birthday just three days earlier.
But then she also prepared another gift for me.
And she gave me again, a beautiful handwritten card. And also she got me some new running clothes.
She bought me a new running shirt and some new running shorts as well.
So I'm all dripped out as the kids these days say drip, meaning like your style or fashion or clothes looking cool.
So I've got these really hip, cool looking running clothes now, thanks to my wife on our anniversary.
And usually on our anniversary, we don't exchange gifts at all.
So I was, like I said, really surprised that she did this for me.
I think maybe she feels a little guilty about not being able to buy the record for my birthday present.
Not that it matters at all.
I don't really care about getting a gift I'm just happy to spend time with her but yeah I was shocked and so thankfully because usually we don't exchange gifts on our wedding anniversary so thankfully I actually bought her a little small bouquet of flowers this really cute lovely beautiful bouquet of flowers I asked the florist to prepare something that was wild flower -esque and she prepared this lovely yellow yellow bouquet of some nice looking wildflowers.
I don't really know too much about flowers, but it looked nice.
So thankfully I prepared flowers.
Of course, it's kind of the least I could do.
And I also wrote her a card, a little handwritten card as well.
So thankfully I wasn't empty handed.
I think if I had just assumed like in previous years, I shouldn't prepare a gift for her, then I would have been in big trouble.
Maybe I would have been in hot water as we say.
And that's a good expression to know if you don't know that expression.
To be in hot water means to be in trouble, especially maybe with your wife.
If you do something bad, you can say you're in hot water.
So I would have been in hot water, but thankfully I prepared the flowers and the card and we had just a nice, lovely dinner together celebrating our wedding anniversary.
And so our anniversary, like I mentioned, was on Thursday.
so we couldn't take that photo of us back in the park where we got married, so we were planning to do that on the weekend, this last weekend here.
However, we couldn't do that.
We had to change our plans completely.
That was the third major event that happened to us this week.
But as I mentioned at the top of the episode, that story's a little bit longer, and I've already been babbling on and on here now for quite a while, so I think I'm going to save that third and final story that happened to me this last week for next week's episode.
So it will be a to be continued, okay?
You'll have to come back again next week to hear the thrilling conclusion, and I promise it's happy news, to this story next week.
So come back to bonus episode number 147 to hear that story.
But for now, I think this is a good place to wrap things up, so congratulations on making it all the way to the end you put in some time and effort learning english with me today and that's what you need to do to improve your fluency and reach your english goals you need to put in some time put in some effort and spend time with the language get it into your head so good job you accomplished that goal here today with me before i let you go i need to tell you this week's completion code and you can write a comment on our youtube instagram or Discord community with this week's completion code.
And that will signal to me and all the other Q -Lips listeners out there that you finished this episode.
And it's also a good way to be active with your English and to practice making a sentence.
You can make your own example sentence using the completion code.
And this week, I'm going to go with the completion code scratch, scratch, S -C -R -A -T -C -H, scratch. scratch and that's because my wife gave me that cool scratch ticket present that I'm so obsessed about.
So go, go, go. And I look forward to reading your example sentences with that completion code scratch. Let's continue this conversation over on our discord server.
If you have any questions or comments, that's the best place to leave them.
And I'll make sure to answer you as soon as possible.
The link to join the server is in the description for this episode.
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Remember that as a QLips member, you will get a comprehension quiz for this episode, plus amazing other benefits and bonuses designed to help you improve your English faster and better than ever.
Okay, guys, that's it for me for now, but I'll be back soon with another brand new episode.
Until then, take care.
Bye -bye.
