Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey English learners.
This is Connor and you're listening to episode 238 of of the listening time podcast.
Thank you all for listening.
I hope your english learning is going well and that you can see some improvement in your listening after having listened to many of my episodes, and in today's episode i'm gonna talk about a couple camping trips that i took recently.
I know that I have talked about camping on this podcast.
I think specifically, I talked about it at the very beginning of this podcast, in one of the first episodes.
So it's been a really long time and I want to talk about it again.
And I'm sure that I will repeat some topics that I've already talked about throughout the years, because talking about things just once isn't always enough.
So I want to talk about camping again.
And specifically about my two recent camping trips, very short, mini camping trips.
But I took two of them recently and I'll talk about that. and camping in general.
And before we start, I want to remind you to challenge yourself, because with these normal episodes you're practicing your listening.
But I'm speaking slowly.
And the only way to progress past this level is to start using content that is fast, normal speed.
And that's why I have advanced episodes as well in which I speak fast, so that you can actually move past your current level of listening and become more comfortable understanding fast English.
So make sure to check out those advanced episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
The link to sign up is down below.
All right, let me talk about camping.
So let me first talk about my history with camping.
When I was a kid, I went camping every summer.
So every summer of my childhood I went on a camping trip for maybe three or four nights with my family and with a large group of friends of my parents.
My parents had this large friend group, friends that they had known for a long time, many years before I was born, and all of these friends loved camping, and so they had this tradition of of going camping together every single year.
And, of course, when my parents had my sister and me when we were born, we got to tag along and go on these camping trips.
When you tag along, it's like saying that you go with people somewhere.
We might use it when the person is not formally invited, right?
And they just end up going.
So every summer, we went on these camping trips with my parents and their friends.
And thankfully, one of...
My parents' good friends had a son who was my age.
And so we spent that whole time together.
Every time we would go camping, he and I would hang out the whole time.
So that was always really fun for me.
And I always looked forward to spending time with him.
And we always went camping in Southern California.
That's where I'm from.
And we went to different campgrounds in the mountains, in forests, on the coast, like close to the beach.
I remember going camping in some places right along the river.
So we went to some really beautiful places.
And thankfully, Southern California is has everything.
It has all the different types of nature.
It's a great place to go camping, especially because it doesn't get too cold and the weather is nice.
So it's a good place for campers.
And I have many, many memories from our camping days that And honestly, some of my best memories, my greatest memories from childhood are from my camping trips.
I think that those trips were some of the highlights of my childhood.
The highlight of something, like the most important point or the best point of something, some time period, some experience, etc.
So those memories were some of the highlights of my childhood.
And when I went with my family on those trips, as I said, I would always hang out with my friend and we would spend the whole day playing climbing trees.
That was a big thing that we did.
We loved finding trees to climb.
We had so much fun doing that.
Of course, sometimes there was water that we could go in.
We would invent games and explore all around, and we had a lot of fun uh, in nature as boys.
And that was before a lot of our modern technology, that was before we had smartphones and before we had social media, of course, and so we just had a lot of fun out in nature and And, of course, I always loved the night times when we went camping, because there would be a big fire and, of course, we would roast marshmallows and stuff, tell stories and do all kinds of fun stuff at night as well.
And I just have fantastic memories from my days camping in the summers with my family and our friends.
And I would love to give my family similar memories.
I hope that my kids can also make those memories with us at this young age and, of course, when they get older as well.
And so I have started to take my family camping.
And we've already gone twice in just the last month.
And so we went to the same place twice.
Both times.
And these were mini camping trips.
I emphasize the word mini.
We only went for one night each time and then we leave. early the next morning.
So these trips are mini trips and we went to the same place both times.
It's very close to our house and thankfully in the US there are tons and tons of places to go camping.
So the government has these different parks that it overseas, meaning it takes care of them, it's responsible for them.
And a lot of these parks have campgrounds, places where you can camp.
The one we went to these first two times is not the most exciting campground.
It's not really in the wild, in the mountains, no.
It's just in a big regional park close to our house.
But it's still a lot of fun.
You still feel like you're in nature.
And these campgrounds, are generally safe because they're controlled.
We're not going and camping in the middle of nowhere.
We're camping in these government parks.
Like I said, it's not that wild.
There aren't all of these dangerous animals around us.
You can hear coyotes at night, but I can hear coyotes here at my own house too.
They come into our backyard here.
So that's not very different from my normal day-to-day experience.
We have coyotes all over our neighborhood.
And there are restrooms at these government campgrounds.
Usually showers as well.
So usually you can take a shower if you want.
And there are other people camping near you.
Sometimes you're right next to other people.
And that's not the best, because you want a little more privacy and you don't want to hear the noise of other people.
But sometimes these campgrounds can fill up, as we say, and they are completely occupied by visitors.
And so you have to camp pretty close to other people.
And there are many RVs, these big vehicles where you can sleep in them and take them camping.
Many people camp in RVs in the U.S.
And so that's like a different style of camping.
I always camp in tents, but RVs are cool as well.
There's water there that you have access to.
Wherever your site is, you probably have water nearby.
There are fire pits where you can make a fire.
The infrastructure is great.
You have everything that you need.
And so you just have to bring your own stuff to sleep in and, of course, food and sleeping bags and all of that.
And so we didn't do a ton of things when we went camping.
We did the basic things like setting up and cooking and eating and all of that.
We didn't have a lot of time to go on walks or whatever, because we were there for less than 24 hours.
But all of the other things that you do, like setting up and all of that, It's actually quite fun.
If you know what you're doing, it can feel exciting that you're setting up your temporary home.
So when we got there both times, the first thing that we did was set up the tent that we have, and we have a pretty big tent.
It can fit my family comfortably.
If we added Two more people, maybe it would be too crowded.
But for our family size right now, it's perfectly adequate and it's comfortable.
And we have one of those instant tense that you can set up really quickly.
So that's awesome, because the older tense that people used to use and they still use nowadays if people don't want to use instant tense.
Those other tents can take so long to set up.
It's really frustrating to set those things up.
So I'm very thankful for these instant tents that are super easy to set up.
So we set up the tent.
We also set up the canopy that gives us some shade, like something to block the sun.
We also set that up.
We set up our sleeping bags and the mats.
I guess we don't really have mats like those gym mats.
We actually have these pads that you can blow air into.
So it's like a mini air mattress, but very small, and we put them under our sleeping bags and so you don't feel the hard ground or rocks underneath you.
So we set up our sleeping bags and those inflatable pads to put underneath our sleeping bags, and of course we set up our chairs and and we bring our own firewood, and so I had to chop a little bit of firewood.
When you chop something, this means that you cut it into smaller pieces, so you can chop onions, for example, or you can chop firewood.
So the first time I had to chop more of the firewood to get some smaller pieces And of course we started the fire and needed to have all of the tinder, kindling and fuel.
Those are technical words for starting a fire.
The tinder is like the thing that helps you just start the fire, the initial flame.
So people use different things for tinder.
And you need to make sure that, once your Tinder catches fire, that you have kindling, which is like the stuff that you put, so that the fire starts to spread a little bit more and catch onto other things.
So a lot of times this is like small sticks and other things like that.
And then the fuel in this case is the firewood.
So I lit the fire and started the fire so that we could cook our food and just enjoy the campfire.
And it's pretty easy to tend to this fire, meaning to take care of it to make sure it doesn't go out.
It's really easy to do this and it's easy to keep it going.
There's not much work involved.
Of course, you have to add more pieces of firewood as the other pieces start to disintegrate, meaning they uh break up into small pieces and they aren't wood anymore at that point.
So uh, keeping the fire going is pretty easy.
And, of course, we cooked over this fire.
This is one of my favorite parts of camping.
I love cooking over the open flame.
So we didn't bring pots or pans or anything like that.
We use skewers, these long sticks, and we roasted hot dogs.
So we put them on the sticks, the skewers, as we call them, and we also roasted meatballs right over the fire.
It's really fun to cook like this.
And then, of course, afterwards we roasted marshmallows.
That's essential.
You have to roast marshmallows when you go camping.
And the first time we went, I also roasted some other things just to experiment a little bit.
But marshmallows are great.
The big essential that you should always roast.
They're delicious and you can make s'mores with them.
S'mores are these like dessert sandwiches, with these sweet ingredients graham crackers, chocolate and roasted marshmallows.
So of course that was one of my favorite parts of these trips.
It's always really fun and satisfying to make a fire, cook over the fire, and all of that.
So we started the fire when the sun was still up, but then the sun eventually went down.
And then it's even better having a fire at night in the dark.
This is what we think of when we think of the camping experience sitting around a campfire at night telling stories talking laughing, just looking at the fire.
I love this.
It's very simple.
It's not like you're doing a lot of different things and a lot of stimulating things, but it's just a fun experience to be around the fire with your family or your friends talking.
It's great.
And then once it was time for bed, we had to brush our teeth and get ready for bed.
And of course, sleeping in a tent, in a sleeping bag, on the ground is less comfortable than sleeping in your bed at home.
That's a given.
That's obvious.
But it's still cool to do so, in my opinion.
I think it's cool to sleep in a tent and hear the sounds of nature all around you and see the night sky.
We left the top cover of our tent open off.
There's still a screen net that keeps bugs out and stuff, but it is like open in the sense that you can see the night sky And that's always really cool.
And then in the morning, you smell the fresh morning air.
You feel the chilly morning air because it gets a little bit cold, of course.
But I think it's a really fun experience to sleep in a tent in nature like that.
It's great.
And in the morning, we don't make another fire and cook again.
We just eat sandwiches and pack up and go.
We just want to get back home.
If it's a one-night trip like that, it's a really...
Simple, fast, easy trip, and it's enough for us.
We are there for less than 24 hours, but it's fun and we get to experience this together with our kids.
It's great.
So, like I said, I hope that my kids have really great memories from their early childhood and throughout their childhood and adolescence memories of doing things with their parents, like camping, and Hopefully in the future I can take my kids to go fishing and do other things outdoors.
I hope that they have great memories of these types of things, just like I do.
And I want them to have a love for nature and a love of the outdoors like I do as well.
Many adults who I know never want to camp.
They would never consider doing this.
It's not interesting for them because they never developed a love for this type of activity.
They never went to as kids.
In my experience, the people that grew up going camping from time to time are the people that actually like to camp.
It's something that you start to like at an early age when you do it.
So I hope that my kids will like camping as well.
And it's a good activity for anyone to do, in my opinion, simply because it's a change of routine.
I think it's great to break your routine sometimes and do something that's really different.
So that you can get out of your comfort zone and experience new things.
That's always good for us.
It's good for our brain.
It's good for our mood.
It can be really fun and make you feel satisfied and happy.
It's a rewarding thing to do something challenging that's really different.
This is great, in my opinion.
I think that it's also really beneficial to kind of disconnect from your everyday life and your normal sources of entertainment and try to have fun without those things.
I think that it's really good to just sit around a campfire talking to other people, telling stories, looking at the stars.
That's something that we don't do often.
We don't spend enough time with our loved ones just talking, just sitting around and enjoying each other's company without distractions, without watching something or reading something on your phone or whatever.
It's nice to be able to do this, especially in nature.
Just sit around a campfire, enjoy the outdoors, talk to your family and your friends.
This is great, and it's also great to appreciate the outdoors and have a love of of nature, and a lot of people haven't really experienced much in terms of nature.
And so they just stay home and are always, uh, around civilization and in buildings.
And I think it can do you a lot of good to get out of that for a short period of time.
It can be beneficial for you to remove yourself from that environment and be in a natural environment.
So these are all simple things.
These things might not sound super exciting, but I'm telling you, these simple things can really have a positive impact on you, on your business family, your kids.
This is a great activity.
I highly recommend that you try this if you can.
I don't know where you live and if there are safe places to camp around you, but if you can, this is a great activity to do, especially if you have kids.
All right, I hope that you enjoyed this episode.
And again, I want to challenge you.
If you're only listening to slow content like these normal episodes, you want to start to think about using faster content that's more challenging, so that you can advance and progress to the next level in your listening.
You need to start to use content in which the person speaks at normal speed.
You could use other types of videos or podcasts, or you could just use my advanced episodes, since you're already accustomed to my voice.
And of course, I provide the transcript for each episode.
So it's a lot more comfortable than just using normal content made for native speakers which, of course, you want to use eventually.
But my advanced episodes can help you reach that level of comfort where you can just start to listen to whatever and do so comfortably.
So if you want those advanced episodes, you can click on the link below to check those out.
All right.
Thank you all so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
