Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 113 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing well.
I just came back from traveling.
I mentioned that in the last podcast, I think.
And I wanted to mention it again because today's episode is actually going to be about my recent trip.
So I'm excited to talk about that.
I went to Catalina Island.
This is an island that is off the coast of California, and so it's not too far from where I live, but it's definitely an adventure getting there because you have to take a boat, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute.
But before we get into the details regarding my trip, I want to remind you that if you're having trouble understanding native speakers, if it's hard for you to understand when people speak fast, then I encourage you to sign up to become a Listening Time member and you'll receive my specialized training to help you start to understand fast English.
You get my listening practice seminars in which we go over the different sound patterns of fast English, the different ways that speech is reduced and is hard to understand.
So if you're having trouble with that and you need help, then make sure to join my membership.
The link is in the episode description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you're a Spanish or a Portuguese speaker, remember that you can get my ebook at my collection of three short mystery stories that I wrote in English and I translated into Spanish and Portuguese.
So if you want to start reading fiction in English, then make sure to check that out.
The links are also in the description.
And of course, you also have the transcript there if you need it.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about my trip to Catalina.
So we went for... How many nights was it?
Four nights in total.
And this was a family trip.
So this was something... that my dad kind of gave all of us as a gift.
He wanted to take a trip together as a family, and so he gave us this trip as kind of a gift to my sister and her family, and to me and my family.
And so we all went together, my sister and her husband and their kid, their young son and my parents, and then me and my wife and my son.
So we all went together.
And this was special because this was the first real trip that we've taken as a family with kids.
So this was something a little bit different from the normal trips that we might take.
And so it was really fun to be able to have our small children with us and travel together and have them play together during this trip.
It was awesome.
And so this was something that allowed us to spend time together, have some quality family time and just enjoy a few days on this island.
So, the way that you get to Catalina is by taking a ferry.
So, a ferry is a boat that you can take usually for short distances.
So we had to take this ferry from the mainland, the coast of California, to the island, and it took about an hour and a half, or a little bit less, each way.
So we all got on this ferry boat And we went and crossed this channel, the area of water between the main coast of California and the islands.
And we went across and went to Catalina.
It was cool to go there by boat.
It was something a little bit unique.
And to be honest, I was happy that we didn't need to fly because I've flown a lot recently.
And I kind of want a break from flying.
So this was much easier.
There was much more space.
The only difficult thing is that it's possible to get seasick.
Getting seasick just means that you feel sick because you're on land, the water, and it's not stable and the boat is moving back and forth.
And so if you get motion sickness, then you probably get seasick if you go on boats.
Thankfully, I didn't get seasick, but normally I do have this problem.
I think my sister felt a little bit seasick when we crossed from the mainland to Catalina, but I felt perfectly fine.
So I was very thankful for that.
So we arrived there and we quickly went to the Airbnb where we were staying and we got settled in.
In English when we say that you get settled in somewhere, this just means that you establish yourself, you get comfortable in some place.
So we settled in there, and that's where we stayed for the next four nights.
So this house was a three-bedroom house, just big enough to fit all of our families.
And it didn't have a whole lot.
It was a pretty simple house.
But it was good because it had these hardwood floors that were great for our kids to play on.
They had some car toys with them.
And they were able to play and have a lot of fun on these hardwood floors, rolling their cars around and doing different things with their toys there.
So even though it was a simple little house, it was perfect for what we needed.
And our children definitely enjoyed it.
So when we got settled in the first day and we went out to explore a little bit, we noticed very quickly that the main city where we were it's called Avalon.
Avalon is the only real city on this island, I think.
So we noticed really quickly that Avalon is very tiny.
In English, the word tiny just means really small.
So Avalon is a really tiny city.
It's very easy to walk across the whole main part of the city in very little time, much less than an hour, probably less than 30 minutes even.
So it's very small.
It's very easy to get around.
And that was good because we were traveling with young children and it can be hard to get around when you have toddlers and they walk really slow or you need to pick them up and carry them and that kind of stuff.
Remember that the word toddler refers to a young child who is no longer a baby.
So usually we call children toddlers around the age of two, once they're walking and maybe saying some words or phrases and they're a little bit past the baby stage.
So our kids are toddlers.
And so it was good that this city was pretty small to be able to get around easily.
And we also didn't bring a stroller for my son.
The word stroller refers to the little cart that you use to push your baby or young child around in.
So we didn't bring a stroller.
So he was either walking or we were carrying him the whole time.
And so we walked around the little city and we spent a lot of time at the little beach that they have there.
It's a very small strip of sand.
There are actually a few strips of sand, so I guess you could say there are a few mini beaches, but they're all very close together and there isn't a lot of space there, so it's not a very impressive beach environment really.
It's more like a harbor environment.
A harbor is a place where there are boats that are parked there, I guess you can say.
They're stationed there and people can spend time in their boats just floating there, or sometimes they take their boats out and go somewhere else, but they keep their boats at this harbor and that's where they station them for long periods of time.
So there's this harbor there, and it's not really like a typical California beach, let's say.
So we were able to do a few activities when we were there.
Like I said, we spent time at the beach, but maybe the most interesting thing that we did was we took a little submarine tour.
It was in this small boat slash submarine type thing.
It doesn't go all the way underwater, but So there's always the part of it that's above water and the other part is underwater.
And so we went into the bottom part.
And what they do on this submarine tour is they take you to different places where there are a lot of fish.
And they give you the chance to shoot food out of the submarine at these fish.
So you pay a little money to have a certain amount of food.
And then you press this button and it shoots the food out.
And then the fish come and eat the food.
And this is really interesting for kids.
Our sons really loved this.
It was cool for us too actually, to see just hundreds and hundreds of children fish swarming the submarine trying to eat this food.
By the way, in English, if we say that people or animals swarm something, what we're saying is that they go in big numbers around some area and they surround it.
So these fish swarmed the submarine trying to eat all of the food that we were shooting at them.
And these fish know that they're getting food.
They do this submarine tour many times every day.
So these fish are kind of trained to know that they're going to get fed if they see this submarine out.
So the fish already naturally come to the boat, and so they're already there, ready for you to fire the food at them.
In English, we can use the word fire as a verb to mean that you shoot something.
For example, he fired his gun.
So, they're already there ready for you to fire this food.
So, that was fun.
And we also took a bus tour.
We took a tour that took us to some different places around the little city.
And then it took us kind of up the hills around the city so that we could see Avalon from different angles, from up high.
So we were able to see very beautiful views of the city, very beautiful views of the nature around us, beautiful views of the ocean.
It was really nice and the weather was good.
So there were some great photo opportunities on this tour.
And we saw some different historical buildings.
We saw some interesting architecture.
And the tour guide was very nice.
She was a funny lady.
She tried to add a lot of humor to the tour.
And by the way, in the US, it's very common to tip your tour guide.
If you take a tour and there's a guide who is running the tour, it's very common to give a little tip to that person after the tour is over.
I just wanted to mention that because it's an important cultural fact that might be useful for you.
So we had a nice tour guide and the tour was very informative.
And I think we learned what we needed to learn about the island.
And there were some interesting facts that we learned during that tour.
Let me just list a few of them.
So there's only one gas station available for the people that live on this island.
And it is really expensive.
It's the most expensive gas I've ever seen in the US.
So that's not a good thing, of course.
And there are only a couple gas pumps there.
And that's it.
It's pretty interesting that there's only one gas station.
And there's also only one bank on the island.
So there's one bank that everyone banks at.
Of course, there are other ATMs, but in terms of the real bank, there's just one.
By the way, the word ATM refers to these machines where you can go to withdraw and deposit your money.
These are ATMs.
And there's only one grocery store.
Believe it or not, there's only one big store where you can buy all of your food and things like that.
Of course, we went to this grocery store.
We had to buy stuff from there.
So you don't have a lot of options.
You've got one gas station, one bank, one grocery store.
And in total, there are only about 4,000 year-round residents.
When I use the term year-round, I'm saying that these people live there all year.
They don't just come for one month on vacation, for example.
So in terms of year-round residents, there are only about 4,000, maybe a little bit less.
So the tour guide was talking about how that makes it challenging for people who want to have a thriving social life.
In English, when we use the adjective thriving, we're talking about something that is very successful and is doing well.
So if you want to have a thriving social life, this can be very challenging with only 4000 year-round residence.
So that's a very different life than a lot of us are accustomed to.
And a few other notes about Catalina.
Real estate is really expensive.
The term real estate refers to property like houses and apartments and things like that.
So real estate is really expensive.
All of the houses are very expensive compared to houses in other parts of the country, where Most of the houses that we saw there are worth at least a million dollars or much more in many cases.
There are many houses there that are worth multiple millions of dollars, and restaurants are really expensive too.
And one interesting thing is that they don't give free water in many of the restaurants i think most of the restaurants in avalon and that's strange because in the us in general, every restaurant gives you free tap water if you want tap water just means that the water comes from the sink.
So in any normal restaurant, you can get free water.
But here on this island, They don't want to give you water for free.
They want to make you buy bottles of water.
So we noticed that and it's just another way that they can charge more money at these restaurants.
They're very expensive compared to the average restaurant.
And to be honest, the food wasn't that good.
And I think it's understandable because the options are very limited on this island.
They don't have a ton of variety of different things to choose from.
So I think it makes sense that the food isn't that fantastic just for that reason alone.
But it's not that cool to have to pay a ton of money for mediocre food, right?
The word mediocre just means that something is not good.
It's not quality, right?
So nobody likes to pay a lot of money for mediocre food.
But there are some good places, and of course there is some good food that you can get there.
But overall, that's not really its strength.
The food is not really the reason why people go there, I don't think.
Overall, we had a really good time.
It wasn't necessarily the most exciting trip.
We didn't do tons of things.
We just did a few activities, but it was really nice to spend time as a family there.
Like I mentioned before, it was especially cool that we had our sons there together.
This was the most that they've ever played together.
It was really fun to watch them play, roll their cars around and dig in the sand at the beach together and just have a good time together.
That was really precious to see.
We really enjoyed that.
Alright, why don't we stop there for today?
I hope you enjoyed hearing a little bit about my recent trip.
Remember that if you want help understanding native speakers when they speak fast, I encourage you to become a Listening Time family member so you can get my specialized training where I show you a lot of the different sound patterns to help you recognize them more easily when native speakers speak fast.
So you can click on the link in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you're a Spanish or a Portuguese speaker...
Then you can check out my e-book, my collection of three short mystery stories, so you can start reading fiction in English and have the translation there to help you understand everything.
And please share this podcast with anyone else you know who's learning English.
Help this podcast grow.
And please give it a five-star rating and write a review.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
