Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
It is almost the end of the year.
It is almost the end of 2024 and that means it's the time of the year when people start to think back and reflect on what they accomplished this year.
That's what I want to do with you today.
I want to tell you a story.
I want to tell you about the most exciting experience I had this year.
Of course, I want to tell you this to help you improve your listening comprehension and build your English vocabulary.
So if you are interested in those things and learning about what it was that I did that was so fun this year, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we begin, I just want to remind you to look in the description of this podcast episode and all of our previous podcast episodes.
There you will find a list of words and phrases that I use.
That way you can take them, put them into your own language learning system and start learning them yourself.
Of course, on today's episode, I'm going to tell you this story about the most exciting thing I did, but I want to tell you that this is actually part two of the story.
I actually came out with part one a few months ago and I'll leave an iCard for it here.
If you're watching on YouTube, you can click on that.
It was the story of how I went to Dallas, the things that I did in Dallas, Texas and what I would recommend doing and not doing if you go and visit the city.
This exciting event that I did was part of that trip.
We went to Dallas first and then we went and did this particular thing.
So what is it that I am talking about?
I am talking about viewing a solar eclipse.
A solar eclipse is when the moon passes in front of the sun and it blocks out the sunlight.
During that time, it's only for a few minutes, you can actually see the sun's corona.
And that's what I went and did.
In April of this year, there was a solar eclipse.
The eclipse traveled from Mexico and entered the United States at the Texas -Mexico border and that's why I went to Texas to see the eclipse.
If you are new to the show, if you haven't heard our previous podcast episodes, you might not know that I live in Southern California.
I just spent my entire life in Southern California.
But sadly, Southern California was not part of the path of this eclipse.
The path where the moon completely blocks out the sun is called the path of totality.
That means the sun is completely or totally covered by the moon.
Where I am in California was only a partial eclipse.
So the moon did block out some of the sun, but not all of it.
I've actually seen that before here where I am in Southern California a few years ago.
There was another eclipse and it was a partial eclipse that you could see here, but you couldn't see the full thing and I really wanted to see the full thing.
Now, the great part about this eclipse is that it went over Dallas, Texas.
You might not know that Dallas, Texas, the airport in Dallas, Texas is very, very busy.
It's called a hub. A hub is where a lot of different flights come in and come out.
There's a lot of connections that go through Dallas, Texas.
And that was perfect for me because where I live, there is a direct flight to Dallas, Texas.
It was only about two and a half hours to get there.
So it was a relatively short flight.
And my mom and I went from where we are in Southern California to Dallas for a few days.
We spent the weekend in Dallas.
Like I said, you can check out that video to learn more about what we did there.
And then from Dallas, we had a rental car and we decided to drive to Alvarado, Texas.
Now, Alvarado, Texas is probably not a place you are going to go visit.
I would not recommend going and visiting it.
It was a nice enough place, but there's only about 5 ,000 people there.
There were two hotels and a couple of restaurants, fast food type places to eat.
So there wasn't really much there.
Now you might wonder, why did we go to Alvarado, Texas if there's not much to do there?
Well, the reason was I knew that a lot of people were going to view the eclipse.
A lot of people are always interested in seeing an eclipse if it's close by or if it's possible to travel there.
Like I said a few years ago, there was another eclipse that went across part of the United States.
And there were thousands of people who traveled to go see it.
So I knew that in Dallas, there was going to be a lot of people.
And my mom and I didn't really want to compete with people to try to view the eclipse.
We didn't want to go to a really crowded park and have a lot of people there and have to get hours in advance to get a good spot.
Also, Dallas has a lot of tall buildings and we didn't want to get stuck in a spot where we couldn't see the eclipse because of the buildings or some other reason.
So we wanted to get somewhere where it was less crowded.
And also I wanted to go somewhere that of course had a hotel, had a place to eat, which meant Alvarado was a good option.
And the last reason was that Alvarado is slightly south of Dallas and it was in part of the path of totality.
So of course we could see the total eclipse, but it had a few seconds more time than Dallas, Texas did.
The nice part was that Dallas was only about an hour from Alvarado.
So it only took us about an hour to get down to Alvarado and that meant we could of course drive back to the airport relatively quickly when it was time to leave.
On Sunday afternoon my mom and I left Dallas, Texas.
We drove down to Alvarado, we checked into our hotel, and we got ready to see our eclipse.
My mom and I had to find something to sit on to actually enjoy the eclipse because we only flew from California with one small carry -on suitcase.
We didn't bring any blankets, we didn't bring any chairs, so we knew we had to go buy something.
Thankfully right across the street from our hotel was a store called Dollar General.
Thankfully they actually had these fold -up chairs which like the name says is a chair that you can compress and fold up.
It's usually a chair that you sit on outside.
So we were able to buy two fold -up chairs for a relatively low price.
They were only ten dollars each.
We got some snacks and then we were all ready for the next day.
The eclipse was on Monday morning.
That morning we went down to the breakfast area of the hotel and there were a lot of other people there.
There were some families with kids, some couples, some people who were really into looking at the stars and at space and they were all there to view the eclipse.
There were a lot of us.
Sadly when we got up there were a lot of clouds in the sky.
You couldn't see the sky really at all.
You couldn't see the sun.
There was just this really thick layer of clouds.
For that reason there were actually some people who were staying at our hotel who left to go drive somewhere else to try to see if they could find a place that didn't have any clouds.
We thought about doing that but we decided to just stay and see what happened.
Of course we really wanted to see the eclipse.
We would have spent all of this money and traveled all this way to see nothing if the clouds didn't go away.
But on the news there were some people who traveled to go see eclipses.
People that we call eclipse chasers.
People who go from one solar eclipse to the other and plan to go see as many as they possibly can.
And these people said that every time they've gone to a solar eclipse, when there were clouds in the sky, when it was time for the solar eclipse to actually begin, all of a sudden the clouds just disappeared.
That gave us some hope.
Maybe the clouds will disappear and we'll be able to see what we came to see.
We watched the news for as long as we could to try to get any idea about the forecast and then we took our chairs, we took our snacks, and of course our solar glasses and we went outside.
The solar glasses were important because you cannot look directly at the sun.
You need to wear the special glasses that will protect your eyes and that's what we brought with us.
When we went in front of the hotel there was a grassy little bit of land.
There were some flowers, a little bit of grass, and it was an open space.
So we went there, we put our chairs out, and we got ready to sit and watch.
There were actually a lot of people in the parking lot.
There were some people who had really long telescopes and special cameras.
There was a man next to us who was going to take pictures of the eclipse.
That's what he came to do and it was just fun sitting around, waiting, worrying a little bit about the cloud cover, but really hoping that we would be able to see it.
It was still really cloudy when we went out there and when the moon started traveling in front of the sun.
The eclipse process is a little bit long.
It takes a couple of hours.
The moon moves slowly in front of the sun and then of course eventually it blocks it entirely.
When we put on our solar glasses, we could actually see the partial eclipse even though there were still clouds.
It didn't really seem to affect the ability to see the partial eclipse when we put on the solar glasses and then like magic, when it came time for the actual total eclipse, the clouds just disappeared.
I know there's some type of science behind it, but I'll just call it magic for right now because that's what it felt like.
We were so happy. We were so happy that we could actually see the solar eclipse.
So the moon went in front of the sun and the temperature decreased.
The birds started chirping because they thought it was nighttime and sadly because of where we were, we were in a parking lot area around some food places and the hotels, the lights actually turned on.
So the lights that had sensors to turn on at night turned on.
That kind of, I don't want to say ruined the experience, but it wasn't as nice as if we had gone somewhere where it would have been completely black, completely dark.
However, it was still enjoyable.
When the moon completely blocks out the sun, you can actually take your solar glasses off because there's no more sunlight.
Your eyes are not at risk of being damaged because there is no sunshine.
During that time, you can actually see the solar corona that is coming out around the sun.
We were also able to see some planets that were right next to the sun.
Like I said, it wasn't completely dark where we were, so we weren't able to see as many things as if we had gone somewhere else, but it was still pretty exciting.
We were still able to see the solar corona.
Unfortunately, I forgot a very important thing.
If you have watched our previous YouTube videos or if you're watching on YouTube right now, you can see that I wear glasses and these glasses are for distance.
I am not able to see all of the details of things that are far away.
Unfortunately, during the eclipse, I forgot my glasses.
I brought my sunglasses, I brought my solar eclipse glasses, but I left these glasses in the hotel room.
Therefore, I did not get to see all of the full details of the corona, but I still was able to see, I would say most of it.
It might have been a little bit more blurry than if I had brought my glasses.
If I could go back in time, that is one thing I wish I could change.
I wish I had brought my actual glasses, but you can't go back in time, so I just have to kind of live with it.
I will say that it was still really beautiful.
I really enjoyed that experience.
I wish the solar eclipse would last for more time.
I wish that that path of totality and that the actual totality where the moon blocks the sun, I wish that part was a long period of time.
Unfortunately, it's only a few minutes, so you get a few minutes to be able to see the corona, to see the stars and the planets during the daytime and really experience all of that.
But after a few minutes, the moon stopped blocking all of the sun and a little tiny sliver of sunlight came through.
It was really, really small at first, but the shocking part for me, the surprising thing for me, was how powerful it was.
As soon as the back edge of the moon moved so you could see a little tiny bit of sunlight, it was blinding.
It was very painful, and immediately we put our solar glasses back on.
My mom and I stayed for a little bit longer just to see the moon continue on its path, to see gradually more and more of the sun come out and see how the temperature changed and how the light changed as the sun became more and more exposed.
But eventually, we also went back inside and went back to our hotel room.
Now those chairs that we bought, we did not take with us.
We were not going to pay for those chairs to be put on the airplane.
The charge that the airplane would charge us would be more than what we paid for for those chairs.
So we actually ended up giving those chairs to the employee at the hotel.
And all we really kept with us was the memories.
We have the photos, the videos that we took, and of course the memories of that whole experience.
We stayed in Alvarado for the night and then in the morning we got up very very early.
We drove to the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.
We returned our rental car and we got on a flight to come back to California.
And that is my story.
That is the story of the most exciting experience that I had this year.
I actually didn't travel anywhere else this year.
That was the only place I traveled to and it was a really great experience.
I would recommend that you try to see a total eclipse if you're able to.
If there's a total eclipse that's somewhere near where you are, try to go and see one.
Of course I know it can get very expensive.
Thankfully we were able to book our plane tickets and our hotels very early in advance.
I don't actually remember how I heard of the coming solar eclipse but I found out about it about nine months before the actual eclipse.
So we booked all of our stuff about nine months in advance and it wasn't that expensive.
The accommodations in Dallas were expensive because Dallas is an expensive city but the hotel in Alvarado was very inexpensive and we were able to get a rental car and flights for not that much money.
However one of my co -workers decided to buy an airplane ticket to Dallas just two days before the eclipse and it cost him for just one plane ticket going one direction.
$900 US dollars for two and a half hours is extremely expensive.
That was definitely not something I would have been able to afford.
So I am very thankful that I bought my tickets in advance and I would recommend if you have to travel to see an eclipse, definitely book everything that you can as early as possible.
The next solar eclipse that I know of is in August of 2026 and it travels across a lot of Europe.
I believe it starts somewhere around Iceland and then travels south until it ends up in Spain and that's where I will be.
I definitely enjoyed seeing this eclipse.
It was really exciting to see a total eclipse and I want to see another one.
So in August of 2026, I will be in Iceland and maybe you'll be there as well.
If you're watching on the solar eclipse, if you want to see one and maybe if you're traveling to see one in August of 2026.
Also tell me if you liked this episode in general.
If you like this type of format, there's a lot more stories we could do, a lot more types of episodes that I could do like this, but I don't know unless you tell me.
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