Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 174 of the QLips English podcast.
How's it going?
Thank you for clicking play and joining me today.
If you're new to our bonus episode series and you don't know what it's all about, let me quickly explain.
My name's Andrew and I am from Canada, but I live abroad in Seoul, South Korea.
And in our bonus episodes, I just tell you some stories from my everyday life that are designed to help you build your English fluency.
We know that when you're learning English, you need to spend a lot of time listening to the language.
And that's what I'm here to help you with today.
Thank you so much for having me.
And one of the cool benefits that you get as a Cubelips member is that you can join our weekly speaking classes.
We have three to four speaking classes each and every week.
And as a member, you're able to join as many as you would like.
And you can just drop in.
So it's not like a commitment thing.
You don't have to RSVP or anything like that.
If you have some time in your schedule to join a class, then come on in and join us.
And if you're busy one week and you can't join, that's okay too.
Just drop in whenever you're available to.
Usually what we do in our classes is we talk about a recent Q-Lips episode.
So the idea is that first you listen to the podcast and then, after you, talk about it with our awesome community and with our teachers as well.
And so we've got all of your bases covered here at Keyloops.
We've got your listening and your speaking, your input and your output, and also just a great community of like-minded people who are also serious about learning English to do it with.
So that is so important as well, having a good community around you when you're learning English.
But recently we just added some new styles of classes to our schedule.
And this week was the first week that we trialed them.
So guys, we're having a different style class each week and we're going to repeat the same schedule each and every month.
So the first week of every month, we're going to have a games class.
The second week will be a grammar class, where we'll learn about a grammar topic and then practice that in detail.
The third will be a video or article discussion class.
And then the final week, we're going to do a throwback classic Q-Lips episode discussion class.
Really excited about that.
And we just had the games class here for the first time happen this week.
And I have to say the feedback has been really great that we've gotten so far from our Q-Lips members.
In fact, on the Discord this morning when I woke up, there were a few cool comments about the games classes that I thought I would share here with you.
So Edithka, one of our awesome members from Hungary and, I think, one of the top three funniest members of our community as well.
She always makes me laugh.
Edithka wrote a great comment.
Today on our Discord, she wrote, Hello, my dear QLips hosts, Alina, Andrew, and Indiana.
I would like to thank you for this new kind of lesson with the games class.
We had fun and at the same time, I felt like we could practice a lot.
They're very great compliments for the other classes.
Thanks again.
So Aditya really enjoyed them.
And then we have some other comments here, too.
I'm just going through our Discord.
May wrote that the games class was really fun and it made her day.
And Gita wrote that it was a great idea for the new class.
It was fun and instructive.
And Jesse as well another really active member on our Discord wrote that she really loved the new class and loved the games.
So thanks for all that great feedback to everyone who left a comment on our Discord.
And guys.
If you're not a Q-Lips member yet and you'd like to join in on the fun, join these new classes as well as our other small group conversation classes as well.
Just visit our website qlipscom, sign up and become a member.
You can do that for an affordable price.
And yeah, we'll see you in the classes.
So my story for you this week is about what I got up to last weekend.
Last weekend, I went on a little trip out of town, an out of town trip.
So maybe I'll call this episode out of town trip.
That sounds like a nice title here now that I've said it.
So let me tell you about that trip.
It was a fun one.
I had a great weekend last weekend.
I went to a place in the southern part of South Korea called Gwangju.
And I have a couple of buddies down there who have been my friends for a while, since I've lived in South Korea.
One of them's from Canada and one of them is from the States.
And they're like my two foreign buddies, my back home buddies that I love. to hang out with.
And often we go running.
One of the friends his name's Jimmy, and I've talked about him a lot here on the podcast because we always run marathons together.
And so he's my running buddy.
And yeah, I went and saw those two friends in Gwangju.
And, of course, I would love to say that I went there just to hang out with them and spend some time with them, but that would be a lie.
I went there because we had to run a marathon together.
So Jimmy and I, we ran a full marathon together Our second one for 2026.
And our other buddy, he ran the 10K.
So we all participated in the same event.
And we ran together, which was really fun.
So I went down to Gwangju.
I guess it was Friday evening and from Seoul to Gwangju takes maybe just a little bit over two hours on the high speed rail.
So yeah, I just love it.
It's such a blessing in South Korea and some of these other countries in Asia, and maybe in Europe as well, to have this fast, high-speed rail.
It's just so convenient.
And one of my favorite things about living in South Korea is that we have this awesome public transportation infrastructure.
And I guess the high speed rail isn't really public transportation, but it's affordable and it's lightning fast.
And it's just so, so great.
When I visit Canada, I always feel sad for my brothers and sisters back home in Canada.
Because we don't have this infrastructure, this transportation infrastructure back home.
And it would just be so awesome one day if we had it back in Canada.
Whenever I go back home to Canada, there are two things that make me feel like we're primitives living in the Stone Age.
The first thing is that we don't have any high-speed rail because...
That's been a thing for years and years and years.
This is not like brand new technology, right?
It's existed for a long time, but we still don't have it in North America.
It's not just Canada.
Also, the USA doesn't have it.
And for whatever reason, we just can't, as a society, get organized enough to build this.
I know it's super expensive, but we should be able to do it.
I feel like there should be a way to do that.
So that makes me feel like we're living in the Stone Ages back home.
And also this is a little bit of a funny one, but here also, I think, in many Asian countries, there are bidets bidets for after you use the bathroom.
And we don't have those in Canada.
People don't use them.
It's just a simple piece of technology that's cheap and just a life changer.
It's amazing.
So whenever I go back home and we don't have bidets and we don't have high-speed rail, it's like, come on, we gotta get our act together.
So yeah, that's kind of funny, but I love that.
Here in Korea I can just jump on the train and after just a couple of hours I can see my friends.
And so that's what I did.
Jimmy was nice enough to come and pick me up at the train station too.
He's an angel, and that was great.
And so we went back to his place, and we ran the marathon on Saturday morning.
So Friday night, we just went to bed early.
We're old men now in our 40s.
We had just a very simple dinner of chicken and rice, which is you want to make sure that your stomach is in good condition for when you run a marathon.
You don't want to eat anything spicy or greasy the night before, because if you have stomach issues, you're in for a world of pain and trouble while you're running.
So we just had chicken and rice, simple and nice.
What a nice little rhyme there.
And then we went to sleep.
I think we were in bed by 9.30.
So actually perfect.
I was tired after the travel as well.
It was good to have an early turn in, an early night.
And then the next day we did have to wake up pretty early.
The marathon started at 8 am and we had to drive around an hour from Gwangju to a different little city or village.
I'm not sure what it's called.
The name is Posong and this is a place that's pretty close to the ocean.
It's really close to the southern tip of the peninsula.
I didn't actually realize how close we were to the ocean, but yeah, almost down at the southern sea.
And the race started at 8am.
It was around an hour's drive.
And so we're up maybe at 5am to have a simple breakfast, we had some bagels and some coffee.
And then we did the drive and got ready and geared up.
And then we did the marathon.
Now, I'm not going to tell you all of the details of the marathon.
Don't worry.
Really, I knew that I wasn't in good shape to run a personal best or do anything amazing.
I just wanted to enjoy the run.
The scenery in Posong is fantastic.
Absolutely amazing.
It's this gorgeous road in the countryside that you run through.
I can't remember the exact name.
It's called Sequoia something, because there are all these sequoia pines that line the side of the road and you're just running through.
It's mostly countryside.
There are farms and there are mountains and little streams and rivers.
And we had good weather.
It wasn't too, too hot.
I mean, I think at the end of the race, it got up to around 16 or 17 degrees Celsius.
So it was getting a little bit warm towards the end.
But at the start, it wasn't too hot.
And it was sunny, but because there are these sequoia trees that are giving a lot of shade, you're actually able to run in the shade for a lot of the time.
Not all the time, but most of the time there's some shelter from that sunlight, so...
Just amazing.
I wanted just to enjoy the scenery, enjoy the run and try and do my best, of course, but I wasn't concerned about getting a personal best time and I knew that I wasn't capable of that.
My fitness wasn't good enough.
And i joked with my friends like i'm not trying to kill myself here, i'm just trying to go out and if i finish the race i'll be happy.
And so yeah, like i said, our other buddy he was doing the 10k and then jimmy and i were doing the full marathon.
Jimmy and I decided not to run together.
We tried that in Seoul.
And although we are running buddies, I don't think we run well together in a race situation.
I, I'm worried that maybe I annoy Jimmy, because I'm kind of like, as you guys know from listening to Q-Lips, I'm a chatterbox.
I talk a lot.
And when we're doing the marathon, I like to talk and point out everything that we see and chat the whole time.
And I think Jimmy likes to focus and get in the zone.
And so I decided, okay, let's just run our own separate race this time.
I won't bother you by talking your ear off the whole race.
And yeah, we went our own separate ways.
And the race started.
It was great.
It was really fun.
Beautiful scenery.
It was great, like I said, to run through the countryside.
A huge change from doing the Seoul Marathon in March, where you're running through the heart of the city.
This was the complete opposite, running through the heart of the country.
And it was really cute as we passed farms.
Some of the farmers... would be out tending to their garden and tending to their crops.
And they'd wave at us as we ran by.
So I just felt like that was really nice.
I spent most of the race actually with a pack of runners.
There are these people in a race called pacers, and pacers are like really talented runners who are going to try and finish the race at exactly a certain time.
And so if you have a goal time that you want to finish the race in.
Maybe.
It's different for every race, but for this one they had a three hour pacer, a three hour 20 minute pacer, a three hour 30 minute pacer, a four hour pacer and maybe even a four hour and 30 minute pacer.
So those pacers are gonna run at a pretty even time and their goal is to finish at exactly that pace time.
And so I started the race way at the back.
I wasn't, like I said, trying to kill myself by running a fast race.
So I was way at the back and eventually I caught up with a group of runners that were the sub three pack or the three hour pack.
And I thought OK, I'm just going to run with these guys like, this is a pretty good tempo for me, a pretty good pace.
And I've done that a little bit in the past.
I've run with packs like these pace packs, these pace groups, for a little bit, but I've never tried to do it for an entire race.
And I think I joined up with them around the five or six kilometer point.
So to do it from five kilometers all the way to 42 kilometers, I thought that would be really fun.
So as soon as I caught up to that group I thought I'm going to get in this pack and I'm and see what that's like.
And it turned out to be super fun.
I really enjoyed running with the pack.
There must have been 20 or 30 guys in this pack.
And it felt like we were all like one team, one unit.
To be honest, there's not a lot of chatter.
Maybe this is like Korean running culture is nobody's really talking to each other at all.
And I think if this were in Canada now.
I've never run a marathon in Canada, but I feel like if we were in Canada for this marathon, probably people would have been chatting all the time and talking to each other.
But I guess, yeah, that's not really the culture here in Korea.
So nobody really talked to each other very much at all.
And I restrained.
I wanted to talk to everybody and yeah, just chat and be like encouraging to each other and stuff like this.
And yeah, it was very quiet.
It was cool because I didn't have my headphones.
I didn't have any music.
I was just enjoying the scenery and being a part of this pack of dudes running together.
Felt like we were almost like an army unit, like marching together.
I don't know, marching, like fighting this war against the marathon, right?
And so that was really fun.
And it made it a little bit easier, I feel like, running with a group of people.
Like you all have the same mission in mind.
You know that you're all going through the same pain and the same difficulty at the same time.
So that was really fun.
And yeah, it was pretty like uneventful.
The race just... went on and on and on.
We hit the halfway mark and this was an out and back race, an out and back.
So you run, I guess, half marathon distance, 21 kilometers, and then you turn around and then you go back to the start.
So we hit the 21 kilometer mark.
We turned around and went back to the finish line.
And I saw Jimmy at that point and we waved at each other.
He was still going towards the turnaround point and I was going back towards the finish line.
And later he said, it looks so cool to see you in the group of runners.
Like your pack looked really cool.
So I was happy about that.
Like I said, There were maybe 20 or 30 of us in the pack.
But by the end of the race, almost all of the runners had fallen off and fell behind.
Some of them went ahead as well.
Maybe two guys went ahead and the rest fell behind.
And so there were only...
Three of us at the very end of the race, still in the sub three pack, the pacer.
And originally we had two pacers, two leaders.
One of the pacers fell behind.
So I don't know what happened to him, but we only had one pacer left at the end.
And then there was another guy who was a little bit younger than me.
And then me.
And we all finished within maybe 10 seconds of each other.
And yeah, it was a little bit hard.
To be honest, I was feeling pretty tired on the way back.
The last five kilometers of that race, I was like, oh, I don't want to run anymore.
But I got it done.
I think being in the pack really helped and it was fun.
At the very, very end of the race, we were really close to the three hour mark.
I thought that maybe we would get sub three under three hours and maybe we would be just a little bit above.
And so for the final, like 400 or 500 meters or so, then I started talking to the guys.
It was quiet the whole way, almost entirely quiet the whole way until the end.
But then finally I was like, okay, I think I can talk now.
So I was like, come on boys, let's go.
Of course I was talking to them in Korean, but essentially that sentiment like come on, let's go, let's go.
We can finish.
And so we all gave it, the three of us together, we all gave it a good sprint right at the very end.
And I think I ended up finishing in about two hours and 58 minutes.
So just under that three hour time.
And afterwards, I congratulated the pacer.
I shook his hand.
I said, thank you.
Like you did a beautiful job pacing this race.
He brought us in right at the three hour mark, essentially.
And then the other guy was really happy as well.
The other guy that finished with us because that was his first sub three finish finish in the marathon.
And that's a special milestone for a lot of marathoners is doing that.
So he was really happy and it was great to see him so pumped to finish his first sub three.
And I'm glad that he said he said thanks for cheering him on at the end.
So I'm glad I was able to do that.
And it was great to see him get that cool result.
So that was the race.
Jimmy also finished with a good result and our other buddy finished with a great time in his 10K as well.
After the race, I felt terrible, like the worst I've ever felt after a race, and I don't even know why.
Because
I felt like until that final five kilometers, I was totally fine physically.
And then I did start to feel a little bit tired for the final 5K.
But it was more like I was just tired of running.
It's not like I was physically exhausted or couldn't physically do it.
I was just bored.
I was like, I want to do something else now.
I don't want to run like just too much running.
So.
I felt fine while I was running physically.
But then as soon as I finished, I got really, really tired.
I felt like I had zero blood sugar or something like really low blood sugar kind of feeling faint almost.
And yeah, so it was funny.
I thought okay, I got to go get my finishers package, because when you finish the race, the race organizers always give you like a bag with some, some sweets and maybe a drink and something that you would want to consume after you finish doing a marathon right,
So immediately after I finished, I actually just crashed out.
There was a grassy field.
We finished in a stadium with like a track and a soccer field in the middle.
So I crashed out and lied down on the soccer field.
And guys here, crash out just means kind of collapse, right?
You're like, oh, you got no energy.
You fall down to the ground, you crash out.
So I crashed out on the field and took like a 10 minute rest and then got enough energy to go and grab my finishers package.
And in my mind I was like oh, I hope there's a Coca-Cola or some sweet sugary drink that will just get my blood sugar up.
And can you guess what was inside the finisher's package?
Remember the region, this Bosong region.
Did I mention this earlier?
I can't remember, but it's famous for green tea.
There are all these green tea plantations and farms.
So of course they give you a green tea in the finisher's package.
They want to promote the local specialty.
And it was delicious green tea, but green tea is like the exact opposite of what I needed in that moment.
So I was like, oh no, why green tea?
Anyways, the green tea was refreshing at least, but not what I needed in the moment.
After the race was all said and done, we had to move from the stadium where we finished to where Jimmy and I parked the car, which was around a kilometer or a kilometer and a half away which, when you start the race, it's perfect because you can jog from your car to the stadium and you get a nice little warmup in.
But after the race, when I had to move from the stadium back to the car, it was terrible because, like I said, I was really like weak and I felt low on blood sugar.
Plus, I had really, really sore feet.
This is a little bit disgusting.
I'm sorry to go into detail with you about this, but I think you need to hear this English.
You need to hear the real everyday English, right?
So let me talk about this issue too.
During the sole marathon, I wore a pair of running shoes that were just a slight bit too small for me.
And so when I was running that marathon this was back in March, the sole marathon my big toes were rubbing against the side of the shoe just a little bit too much.
And as a result of that, my big toenails turned completely black.
So when I took my shoes off after the Soul Marathon in March, I was shocked.
I was like, oh my gosh, what happened?
And I looked at my shoe afterwards and I honestly had two holes in the shoe from where my toes were rubbing up against the side of the shoes.
So that was crazy.
It wasn't that painful when I was running.
I barely noticed it while I was running.
But then after, when I looked at my shoe, I was like, That's crazy.
I wore holes through my shoe where my toes were on both sides.
And guys, it's not like I didn't have good toenail maintenance or anything like that.
Don't get this idea, okay?
Everything was very well manicured.
And, yeah, so I had these holes in my shoes.
I had to throw the shoes out.
The shoes were kaput.
And then I had black toenails, like pitch black, looks gross, disgusting.
I'm not going to show you an image or anything like that.
So don't get your hopes up.
Just really, really gross.
And I thought that my toenails would probably fall out.
I thought I'm going to lose these for the first time in my life.
I've heard of runners having this issue before.
They didn't fall off though.
Thankfully, my toenails are still on.
They're still okay.
However, they're still black.
This is from March until now.
I'm recording this at the start of May.
So they're still black.
And then doing this other marathon didn't help at all.
There was a lot of uphill and downhill in the course.
And this time I had properly fitting shoes, but there was still some rubbing and some tension.
And so after the race uh, I was just like I said, I crashed out on the field and I took my shoes off and took my socks off.
And my friends were like, Oh my God, Andrew, what's going on with your toes?
Like, I'm like, I know they're totally black.
It's disgusting, but that's the run in life.
That's what happens sometimes as a marathoner.
So I felt pretty weak.
And honestly, at that point, I think it was just like a blood sugar thing.
It wasn't like I said, a muscle issue or anything like that.
It was mostly just a blood sugar thing felt pretty weak.
And And my toes were really sore again.
My toenails, like this is the weirdest thing to have happen.
Just the two of them, just the big ones.
The rest of my body was fine, but my toenails were sore.
And usually after I finish a race, I bring a change of shoes.
I slip into like some sandal kind of things.
Here in Korea, we call them samseong, like three-line sandals.
They're kind of like cheap Adidas ripoffs.
And usually I wear those, but...
This is another crazy story.
Recently, I was out in my garden and just puttering around in the yard.
And after I took I was wearing the Samsung, the slippers, the slides I guess is the best English word to call them the slides.
I was wearing the slides and I left them on the deck to come inside to my house.
And the place where I put them was in direct sunlight.
And I just didn't think anything about it.
But then the next day when I went to wear them again, they totally shrunk in the sun.
They like shrunk down to, I don't know, like.
50% of their original size.
Now they fit my wife perfectly.
She wears them, but they don't fit me.
So I couldn't bring my slides with me to slip into after the marathon.
So I had to bring these other kind of like sandal things that I have to wear those so I could take my running shoes off.
But they're closed toed.
So it kind of sucked because my painful toenails were rubbing against the side of those shoes.
And I had to walk about a kilometer and a half.
And I felt really lightheaded and weak.
And I was like, Jimmy, I don't know if I can do it.
You might have to go and pick me up with the car.
But we couldn't even do that because the marathon was still happening.
There were still people running the race and finishing.
So I just had to toughen up.
And I think that walk from the stadium to the car was more difficult than the race itself.
Now, like I said, Jimmy's an angel.
He picked me up at the train station on the Friday evening.
And he was also nice enough to drive to the nearest convenience store.
He's like, Andrew, just you wait here.
I'm going to go get us some Coca-Cola and that'll make you feel better.
So I just relaxed in the car, with the air conditioning turned up, and Jimmy ran into the store got me a Coca-Cola and a cup with ice beautiful.
I drank that and I almost immediately bounced back.
I was like, Oh, I'm online.
Okay, I'm back.
I felt totally fine after that.
So thanks to Jimmy for the coke.
It was great.
So that was the race guys.
And then after the race, this was really fun to I'll quickly tell you the last half of this story.
After the race, in the evening, we went to our other buddy's new home, the guy that ran the 10K.
And yeah, he just moved into a new place and he invited us over to check out his home.
He's married and he has a kid.
But he said Boys, we're having a boys night because I convinced my wife to take the baby over to my mother-in-law's place.
And so we have the place to ourselves.
We'll have a nice boys night after the race.
So we went to his place.
He showed us around his new apartment.
It was a beautiful place.
New apartment.
And he lives on the top floor of this building, like the penthouse, I guess you would call it.
And so he has a nice big deck up there with beautiful mountain views.
And it was great.
We had we did a real boys night.
We had steak and beers after the run.
And it was just fun to hang out together and to talk.
And yeah, we were all pretty exhausted.
I think after a day of running, So we decided to start early and early.
That's my motto of being in my 40s, I think.
Whenever I have to do some kind of social event, I would rather start early and then finish early.
I used to enjoy eating dinner early.
7 or 8pm.
And then enjoy the evening afterwards.
Now I'm like, let's eat dinner at 5pm.
And let's be in bed by midnight.
Boring, but true.
And so that was our motto.
All of us were like, yeah, let's start early and end early.
So we got to our friend's place, maybe around 5 p.m.
We probably ate dinner not too long after that.
We had a couple of drinks and just some laughs and reflected on the race and talked about everything under the sun.
It's always good to get together.
Especially with my friends from Canada, who I don't talk to as much.
Now that I live in Korea, I mostly hang out with Korean people, right?
So when I hang out with another Canadian, it's always fun.
We can talk about domestic politics.
And Jimmy.
He's from the States, as I mentioned, but he grew up really really close to the Canadian border.
So he's pretty much Canadian.
He knows a lot about Canada, more than most American people would, just because he was able to travel to Canada and watch Canadian TV and this kind of thing, being so close to the border when he grew up.
Yeah, we had a great time.
All in all, it was a super fun weekend.
The next morning I woke up and I took the train back to Seoul.
Again, the bullet train, a couple of hours.
I think I was home by 1.30 or 2 in the afternoon.
So that was awesome and just a great way to wrap up the weekend.
Well everyone, thank you for listening to my story about that out-of-town trip that I took last weekend.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Now don't forget to check out the vocabulary glossary.
That's where I'm going to break down some of the slang, the idioms, the phrasal verbs, the important vocabulary that you heard me use here today.
I'm going to explain those and give you some example sentences in that vocabulary glossary.
Plus, there's an interactive transcript, which is a great tool too.
You can click on any word and hear the audio from that point.
Just a great study resource works well on your phone or your computer.
And I highly recommend checking it out.
It's free for everyone.
Click the link in the description to get those awesome resources.
And yeah, come and visit us over on our Discord server as well.
At the start of the episode I read you some comments from our awesome members who are over on the Discord server.
But there's always room for one more.
We'd love to have you join us and to practice your English and to join our great community of highly motivated English learners just like yourself.
So don't be shy.
Come on over.
Join in on the fun.
Be active with your English and let's reach your English goals together as a community.
Alright, I think it's time for me to sign off.
Guys, thank you for listening all the way to the end.
Have a great week up ahead here, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
Until then, buh-bye.
