Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 198 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're all doing great today and that your English learning is going really well.
I hope that you're listening and Thank you. and specifically their listening comprehension.
I love hearing that, so hopefully you're able to say the same thing about this podcast, and I hope that it really has helped you.
And in today's episode I want to tell a couple stories about some things that happened to me in a couple different apartments in Mexico.
So I mentioned some episodes ago that I might start including more stories as topics in this podcast.
So this is another story episode, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
It's pretty entertaining to hear these types of stories, I think so.
That's what we'll talk about today, and I want to remind you that if these episodes, if this podcast, has gotten a little bit easy for you, if you feel comfortable listening to it now and you don't need the transcript, then it's probably time for you to start using my advanced podcast episodes, in which I speak fast, because in this normal podcast i speak slow.
So if you want those advanced episodes, make sure to go down and click on the link below to sign up.
And also please check out my us conversations podcast, in which i have conversations with people from all over the us.
It's a lot of fun, you learn a lot about this country And, of course, it's an amazing way to practice your listening hearing two people speaking at normal speed.
That's a skill that you will need, okay?
You can't avoid that.
You will need to develop that skill at some point.
So why not use my US Conversations podcast to help you do that, okay?
The link to sign up for that is also down below, okay?
Alright, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
All right.
Let me talk about a couple apartment stories.
This first one is pretty crazy, in my opinion.
And that's why the title of this episode is Crazy Apartment Stories.
This first one especially is a little bit crazier.
So this story takes place at my third apartment i think yes, my third apartment that i had in guadalajara, mexico.
In case you don't know, i lived in mexico for about six years.
For more than five of those years, i lived in guadalajara and i lived for less than a year in tijuana.
So this story is about our third apartment in Guadalajara.
I lived there with my wife.
And actually, that's the apartment where we were living in. when we had my son, my first kid.
So we had him I think two months or so before we moved from that apartment.
So there were a couple months where we had him there with us in that apartment and we lived on the first floor.
However, the first floor in many countries, I think, is not really on the ground.
In the US, I think when someone says the first floor, they're usually referring to the floor that is actually on the ground, like you don't have to go up stairs to reach it.
But in other countries, when they say the first floor, it's actually not on the ground, you actually have to go up stairs, so it's more like our second floor.
That's what we would call it here usually.
So we lived on the quote-unquote first floor, but it was actually um above the ground, so it was like the second floor for us, and we lived in the only apartment in that building that had a terrace.
So we had this outside area that we could access.
It was private, it was only for us and it was like on the side of the building, so Our apartment had this terrace.
It was really cool.
There was a lot of space, actually.
And we would sometimes sit out there, drink coffee out there, even eat breakfast out there sometimes or do whatever out there, and it was a good deal.
We liked having that terrace and our neighbors, I think, were a little jealous of us that we had that.
But we had to pay more than the other people in that apartment building.
So we were living there for a certain amount of time.
I think like a year and a half, I think, is how long we lived there for.
And we were planning on moving to Tijuana because at that time My mom had her really bad health condition and I wanted to be as close as possible to my parents.
And they lived in San Diego, which is right on the border with Tijuana.
So I wanted to go live in Tijuana while my mom lived. was still alive in that condition.
So that was our plan.
My wife was not thrilled about that.
When you're not thrilled about something, that means you're not happy about something.
She did not want to live in that city.
But she was willing to make the sacrifice for my family.
So I'm very grateful to her for doing that.
And a couple months before we moved, this was right around the time when we had my son.
Our landlord, meaning the person who owned the apartment we were just renting it.
Of course, the landlord told us that there was a big construction project planned for for the land right next to this apartment building, literally right next to it.
So they were planning on building something right there.
I can't remember what it was.
But they were going to build something.
And so he told us this to warn us about the noise because it was going to be a really noisy project.
Of course they were going to build a building there and it was right there by our terrace and our apartment.
And we said, it doesn't matter because we're going to move in a couple months anyway.
So it's not a big deal.
And they didn't end up starting until we had actually already moved.
So that was good.
So we never had to deal with the noise.
But of course.
Everyone else did after we left.
So he told us about that construction and we moved a couple months later.
We moved to Tijuana and I'll talk about that Tijuana apartment after this.
But let me just fast forward here, meaning let me kind of skip to the future here.
And talk about how when we came back to visit Guadalajara some months later.
I can't remember how many months it was.
But some months after we moved, we came back to Guadalajara.
And we were in our old neighborhood.
And I wanted to walk by our old apartment to just... take a look at it.
And so we were walking over there and I noticed from far away that something was not right.
Like the building looked like something had happened to it.
And I was far away, so I couldn't tell what had happened.
And as we got closer, I was shocked because we saw that our old terrace had completely collapsed to the ground and part of our neighbor's apartment had collapsed as well, like literally fallen to the ground from the second floor.
Like there was major damage to the apartment building.
All of the cars were gone.
There was tape over the entrance like that police tape where you're not supposed to pass.
And the construction project next door was not active.
And it was clear that something went very wrong.
And at that time, we had no idea what had happened.
We were just shocked to see our former terrace completely collapsed and our neighbor's apartment collapsed.
And what's funny is that my barber that I used to go to to get my haircuts was located right on the other side that building project that they had been doing, and I decided to get a haircut while I was there in Guadalajara, so I went in.
I caught up with my old barber I always liked talking to him and I asked him what in the world happened to our apartment building and And he told us that the construction that was happening went wrong.
Something happened like they drilled in an area where they weren't supposed to drill or something.
And he told us that he was working at the time.
He was cutting someone's hair.
And suddenly he felt this rumble and heard this rumbling noise.
And he ran out and he saw that that terrace that was part of our apartment and part of our neighbor's apartment had collapsed to the ground because of what this construction crew had done.
And I was shocked.
And after that I just talked about this with my wife, how We had our son there and we spent a lot of time there on that terrace.
And we very well could have been on that terrace when it collapsed.
And even like our neighbor's apartment, I think the bedroom collapsed.
Thankfully, they weren't in there.
But after that we were just super thankful that we weren't in that apartment and that our son wasn't there, because who knows what would have happened.
Imagine how traumatic that would have been for us to suddenly feel the ground rumbling and then it collapses under us or something like that.
And also another really bad thing That is part of what happened is that they didn't allow anyone to enter that apartment building for a long time afterwards, like the people had to evacuate, meaning they had to leave.
Immediately, of course.
So everyone had to leave immediately.
They had to get their vehicles out of there, I think.
I'm not sure what happened, but our old neighbor told us this when we ran into him one day.
He told us that they had to get out immediately and they wouldn't allow anyone outside to go back inside and get all of their stuff.
And I think it was like that for a couple months, actually.
And when we ran into that old neighbor he was telling us that they still couldn't enter, like he was still waiting to go in and get his stuff from the apartment.
So imagine if you had really important things in there and you left them in there when you evacuated.
Well, you wouldn't see those things for a couple months afterwards.
So that would have been terrible for me if I had really important items in there that I needed or whatever.
So after all that, my wife and I were just super thankful that we weren't living there.
Even my wife, who did not want to move to Tijuana, she was even thankful that she had to move and get out of that apartment, because I hate to think what could have happened if we were still living there when that happened.
So that's the first crazy story.
Let me talk about my apartment in Tijuana now.
This story maybe isn't quite as crazy, but I wanted to include it.
So we moved to TJ.
We call Tijuana TJ here in San Diego.
We moved to TJ back in 2021, and we moved into an old apartment building.
It was not a good apartment building.
There were problems with it.
It was old, but it was in a prime location, meaning a very good location where many people want to live.
So we sacrificed a little bit in terms of the quality of the building so that we could live in that location.
So we lived there for like seven months in total.
And my wife hated living in Tijuana.
She was not happy there.
I didn't like it either, but I was happy that I was living by my family, because they lived just on the other side of the border.
So I was able to see them all the time.
And let me just say that I'm not here to talk bad about Tijuana.
I love going to Tijuana.
I go there all the time.
But it's just not the place where I want to live.
So if you live in Tijuana, just know that I'm not talking bad about your city, okay?
I love going there.
There are a lot of great things there, okay?
But Guadalajara was home for my wife.
That's where her family was.
It was even home for me because I had lived there for years.
So it was... was just not easy to live in Tijuana for us.
And so let me actually get into the story.
One morning, it was about 6.30, if I remember correctly, 6.30 a.m., so pretty early.
I was on the couch in the common area doing some work And my wife and my son were asleep in the bedroom.
And I was just there working.
Things were pretty quiet.
And suddenly I hear someone outside our door.
And he sounds pretty frantic.
Like his movements were really fast and a little bit anxious maybe.
And then he starts trying to force our door open.
He's turning our doorknob, pushing the door in, boom, boom, boom.
He's trying to get into the apartment.
I was just stunned.
I did not expect for that to happen.
When you're stunned, it means that you're super surprised or shocked.
It's like you don't even know what to do.
I was not expecting this.
I had never had an experience like that in my entire life, so i was completely stunned.
I guess you could say i was unprepared, and i regret that now because i want to be prepared In those situations and prepared to defend my family.
But I was just stunned there, almost not realizing what was happening, as this person was trying to break into our apartment and my wife was sleeping in the other room and my baby son was in there.
I didn't have a weapon.
I had nothing there with me besides my computer, which isn't really a weapon.
And he tried multiple times to get the door open.
And I remember thinking like, is this guy going to get in?
And I had just started thinking, formulating my thoughts uh, but fortunately he couldn't do it and he ran out of the building.
I heard him run out uh, the front door of the apartment building.
We were on the first floor there, actually on the ground, and so i could hear him exit the building And I thought that maybe he was going to run to the other side, because we had big windows on the other side of our apartment.
And anyone could go to the other side of our building and come up to our windows on the other side.
So.
I thought he was coming around to the other side and was going to try to come in through the windows because, like I said, he easily could have just walked up to our windows.
And so all he needed to do was break them and come in.
So I ran into the bedroom, woke up my wife at, told her that someone was trying to break into the house, and we just kind of got mentally prepared.
We didn't really want to go to the front door, because the person had just left the front door and I didn't know if he was still there or if he was coming around.
The outside.
So we couldn't really do much in terms of like preparing Physically, but we were just preparing mentally.
We were trying to listen, to see where he was, and it all just happened really fast and again we had no weapon.
We didn't really have anything besides our own Fists to defend ourselves.
Your fists are your hands when you squeeze them into a ball to punch someone.
That's your fist.
So we didn't have anything to defend ourselves.
And thankfully, the guy just didn't do anything after that.
He didn't come and try to break in through our windows.
And he didn't come back and try to come in and break the door down.
So thankfully...
Nothing happened, but I was preparing for the worst.
I was convinced that he was going to try to come into our apartment in whatever way possible.
And afterwards I was thinking about how just scary that was, especially because he tried to break in at a time where it was pretty obvious that we were home.
And I think that when people break into other people's houses or apartments in the middle of the day, like when people are out working, that's a little different, because the person maybe thinks that the people that live there are not home and they just want to go in and steal stuff.
But when you enter into an apartment or a house, when you know that the people are home, that's something else.
At that point, your intentions are different.
You're not just expecting to go in and steal some stuff.
Like he was trying to push our door down, knowing that we were in there.
So that is a scary idea.
Like he was going in prepared to like fight me or kill me or I don't know what.
So I thank God that nothing happened.
And that was the last straw, as we say in English, meaning that was the last negative thing that happened that forced us to move back to Guadalajara.
This was really tough because my parents were...
San Diego and I didn't want to leave them, but I had to look out for my family first, my wife and my son, and I remember we were talking to my father-in-law about what had happened and And he told us these people might be targeting you because Connor's a foreigner.
They might think he has money.
And he kind of scared us like that.
Like, oh, these people might come back.
This person might come back and try this again.
Maybe they have seen me go in and out of this building again.
And it kind of made us nervous.
And we decided to just leave.
I think we were there for a couple weeks more or something.
But we had already planned on moving back to Guadalajara because my wife was just miserable and I had to look out for her first.
But when that happened, it was like, all right, let's just move.
And we moved back really quickly.
And when we moved back to Guadalajara it was kind of like wow, we went through this terrible experience in Tijuana of almost having our apartment broken into when we were home with our son there.
But because we were living in that apartment in Tijuana and we hadn't stayed in our apartment in Guadalajara, we avoided that horrible event of the terrace collapsing at our apartment in Guadalajara.
So it gave us, I think, a greater perspective on everything, because there were times when we were discouraged in Tijuana, like we really wanted to be back in Guadalajara.
We were just having a hard time there.
Like I said, especially my wife.
And it was easy to just think that, oh, man, we just had terrible luck there in Tijuana.
We had to move there.
We didn't want to be there.
We almost got our apartment broken into.
Then we had to move back.
But in hindsight, meaning when we look back on that event now, we realize that we were really fortunate to have made that decision to move back to TJ despite the issues there, because we were safe from that terrace collapsing.
So at the end of the day I'm really thankful that I got out of that apartment, even if I had to live in a place where we didn't really want to live and have that other bad event happen.
At the end of the day, That means that we weren't there in that Guadalajara apartment when that issue happened, when the terrace collapsed.
So I'm thankful for that.
So that's my way of tying these two events together.
Hopefully you enjoyed hearing these stories.
Hopefully they were interesting. for you.
And maybe I'll talk about some more stories in future episodes, if you like this format, because it's fun to tell stories.
I like talking about things that happened in the past and And I hope that this was good practice for your listening.
And please check out my advanced podcast episodes so that you can try listening to me speaking at normal speed.
Give it a try and see how much you can understand.
And really, that's the next step for you.
You should move past content that is slow and start to use content that is normal speed.
That's fast.
So check that out the link is down below and also check out my us conversations podcast so that you can practice with conversations that i have with other native speakers.
This will be really helpful for you to practice with those types of situations where you're in a group of people and you need to understand when other people are talking to each other.
So The link to sign up for that is also down below.
And please give this podcast a five-star rating if you haven't done so already, and write a review, if you can.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
