Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 157 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're all doing great.
I just got back from another trip and In the last episode you heard about my trip to the desert and today you'll hear about my trip that I took to Hawaii.
So I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with this chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Hawaii is one of our states.
It's a state here in the US, so it's part of our country, but it's far off from the mainland, so it's in the middle of the ocean, but it's a fantastic place to visit.
Many people love traveling to Hawaii, so it's a very popular destination for tourists, and so I went there for six nights And I just got back two nights ago and I'm still a little jet lagged.
When someone is jet lagged, that means that they still haven't adjusted to the new time zone and the new sleeping schedule of where they currently are.
So there's a three-hour time difference between Hawaii and California, where I live.
So it's not that much.
However, it's still enough to kind of throw you off for a few days.
When something throws you off, it kind of confuses you in a way.
So three hours is enough time to get thrown off for a few days.
But I'm sure I'll be back to normal soon.
And I hope you're excited to hear about another trip.
That's two episodes in a row.
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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, let's talk about my trip to Hawaii.
So let me give you some background information.
So the reason why we went to Hawaii is because my dad wanted us to take one last family vacation with my mom.
So my mom has a very serious condition that affects her in a very serious way.
And this was kind of the last time that she would be able to travel.
And it wasn't easy to travel with her and with my kids and my sister's kids, because my sister's family went too.
So it was a challenge, but we wanted to do this last family vacation, and so my dad paid for pretty much everything except for the food, and he bought this trip for all of us to go on specifically to Hawaii, because this is the special spot that my parents have traveled to many times throughout their marriage.
And when I was a kid, I went with them many times, probably five, six times, something like that.
So my parents have always loved this place.
They've always loved Hawaii.
And it was kind of the perfect last vacation that we all wanted to take with my mom together.
So it was definitely a little bit emotional and it wasn't just a normal trip, so to say.
But we of course tried to have a lot of fun and just really enjoy our family, and so it was great that we were able to do this one last time with my mom And, to be perfectly honest, I'm not a beach person.
So, even though I've pretty much always lived close to the beach throughout my whole life, I'm not a beach person.
So I don't really like the sand and getting all sandy.
And I don't usually go in the water unless it's really warm outside.
So I'm not a beach person.
However, Hawaii is special.
It's a place that even I enjoy.
Me being someone who doesn't really like the beach, I still enjoy Hawaii because of how gorgeous it is.
The word gorgeous means really beautiful.
So, Hawaii is gorgeous and it's a place that has a different vibe.
We use the word vibe to talk about the feeling of some environment.
So, it has a different vibe.
It is just really nice to be there.
It feels good when you're in Hawaii.
And I recommend it to all of you, even if you're not beach people.
So, specifically we went to Oahu, and that's the island where the capital is, Honolulu.
There are four major islands and a few minor islands, but people usually go to one of the four major islands and the one we went to is Oahu.
And we spent the first half of our trip on the north side of the island.
And we stayed in this villa, I think you could call it.
It wasn't really big, but it was really nice because...
It had access to a pool and jacuzzi right behind the villa.
And it had access to the beach.
You just needed to walk about.
I don't know, 50 meters or so.
And you were on the beach.
So it was a perfect location for a family vacation.
So we had a lot of fun there.
Our kids played together and it was great.
A great place to stay, and on that side of the island there are some pretty interesting surf spots, and one of the surf spots that you can go to there is actually a One of the most famous surf spots in the world called Bonsai Pipeline.
Some of you might have heard about this before if you know anything about surfing.
And so we went to watch the surfers in a couple different areas and it was fun to watch them ride the waves and And it was just a good environment to see the ocean go in the ocean a little bit, watch the surfers relax.
It was a really relaxing environment.
And our kids were able to go in the water a little bit and see some fish and And one really cool thing was that when we went to the beach on our first full day so our second day there, but the first full day we went to the beach and we had a nice afternoon there.
And right when we were about to leave, we saw whales in the water.
It was awesome.
We actually saw a whale breach.
When a whale breaches, this means that it jumps out of the water.
So I've never seen this before.
This was the first time I've ever seen a whale breach.
And it was right there, pretty close to the beach.
It was amazing to see that.
I'll always remember that view of the ocean and seeing that whale jump up out of the water.
It was awesome.
So Hawaii has some magnificent marine life, the different animals that live in the ocean.
And apparently you can see whales there.
I didn't know that there were many whales in that part of the ocean, but we saw a couple whales.
So that was really cool information. and a perfect way to end that beach day that we had.
And one other thing we did on this side of the island was we took my son and my nephew to ride a pony right by the beach.
A pony is like a miniature horse, a really small horse.
So the kids were super excited to ride this pony, and it was a really cool experience for them.
My son has always wanted to ride a horse, so this was a cool experience to give him riding that pony there by the beach.
So that was really cool for the boys.
And then for the second part of our trip, we drove down to a different part of the island.
The island isn't that big, so you can drive to the different parts of the island pretty quickly.
We went to Kaneohe, which is where my parents' friends live.
So my parents have stayed with those friends I think probably like six different times maybe.
So they have stayed there many times and these friends are extremely nice and they're extremely good hosts.
They really know how to make guests feel comfortable.
So it was a fantastic experience staying with them because they have this really cool house with this really nice backyard and And it was a dream house really for us to stay in with our kids.
And it was just an overall amazing experience to stay there.
And we spent a lot of time just there hanging out with those friends and But we also went to the beach a couple times.
They live about 15 minutes or maybe less from the beach, so it was easy to drive there from where they live.
And we went to two different beaches pretty close to each other.
Actually, they were kind of right by each other.
And the first day that we went to one of those beaches, it was pretty windy and cloudy.
And the sand kept getting in my son's eyes.
And so it was a little bit frustrating.
It wasn't the best beach day.
However, the next day when we went to that other beach, it was perfect.
The weather was nice and sunny.
It wasn't as windy.
And we spent a long time there.
And my sister and I and my brother-in-law we also went on a hike there up this kind of really big hill.
I guess you could say.
It was really high, so we had to climb up some parts using our hands even, and we reached the part Pretty close to the top of that hill.
And we had amazing views from there.
We could see the really beautiful blue color of the ocean because it wasn't just a typical blue.
It was lighter than the blue ocean. of the ocean here in San Diego.
So it was a really nice view of the ocean.
And we love hiking.
So that was fun to be able to do that.
And one not so good thing that happened on this part of the trip was was that my mom had an emergency situation.
She started kind of choking on food and she's not able to chew and swallow very well.
So she choked unfortunately, and had to go to the emergency room and they had to get the food out of her throat and she stayed overnight at the hospital.
So that was a scary experience and thankfully they were able to get the food out, and so I'm thankful for that.
But that was something that wasn't expected, of course, and it was one of the negatives probably the only big negative thing that happened during this trip.
You never want one of your family members to go to the emergency room when you're traveling.
Of course that's not good, but thankfully they got the food out and it wasn't too serious.
So thank god for that, And that's pretty much it in terms of what we did.
Like I said, we hung out a lot with my parents' friends there and just enjoyed that house, and our kids really enjoyed it.
And in terms of the food that we ate in Hawaii, we ate a lot better than how I thought we would eat.
I didn't think we were going to eat a lot of really great food.
I wasn't planning on making this like a food trip where we try all these amazing food spots.
However, it ended up being a really good food trip.
Actually, Hawaii has some fantastic food.
My wife in particular really enjoyed it.
All the different food that we tried, because Hawaii has a lot of things fruits, flavors that are perfect for my wife.
So she enjoyed the food a lot, and so did I, So some of the things that we ate while we were there were garlic shrimp.
This is something that Hawaii is famous for.
That was the first thing we ate when we were there.
And it was a perfect introduction to the food in Hawaii because it was delicious.
I've never had garlic shrimp before.
So I can't really compare this dish to similar dishes here, but it was really good.
And one of the things that we were most excited about trying was the poke in Hawaii.
We love poke, which is, if you don't know, Kind of like it's raw fish usually.
Typically it's raw tuna or salmon or sometimes a different fish.
But this place that we went to served raw tuna and And it also had like a crab salad with it and rice.
And depending on which one you choose, there might be seaweed.
There were cucumbers in it.
It's almost like a sushi salad.
You could think of it like that.
Or a sushi bowl with rice and different things.
We love poke.
That's actually my wife's favorite food in the world, and hawaii is the poke capital of the world, so we were really excited to try this And we went to the spot.
That is the most famous poke spot, because it was featured on Netflix, I think.
Some Netflix show.
But it was fantastic.
It was really, really good.
So it definitely lived up to its reputation there.
We can use that expression, something that lives up to something else.
This means that it was as good as its reputation suggested that it would be.
Right.
So that was amazing.
I also had barbecue chicken and pork, which Hawaii is pretty famous for.
And that was great as well.
We had acai.
If you're Brazilian, you know what I'm talking about.
Acai is really big in Hawaii.
Also here in California, people love this.
So we tried that and that was also really good.
We had these special donuts that you can get in Hawaii, which are actually...
Portuguese originally which are called malasadas if you're Portuguese, you probably know what I'm talking about and those were also really, really good.
And Hawaii is also famous for shave ice, which is kind of like I guess you could say a snow cone, like it's ice, with a sweet flavor to it.
So it's kind of like ice cream, but it doesn't have the cream base.
Right.
And then uh, we had a lot of good fruit, good tropical fruit like uh, Mango and pineapple, and different types of bananas, like apple bananas and ice cream bananas.
I know for some of you those names sound really strange, but these are different types of bananas.
And Hawaii has a lot of guava fruit.
And a lot of things have guava flavor.
So I really like that because guava is one of my favorite flavors of desserts, drinks and things like that.
And we had other good food as well, but those are some of the things that really stand out.
And so as you can see, we really enjoyed eating in Hawaii.
We tried some great flavors, great new dishes.
So that was great.
I really liked that.
And overall, it was a really good trip for my family.
And, more importantly than anything else, I'm really happy for my dad that he was able to take my mom there one last time, even if it wasn't a really active trip for him, because my mom isn't mobile she's in a wheelchair.
So even though it wasn't like their trips in the past, it's still great that we were all able to go one last time.
And that was my biggest wish with this trip.
I just really wanted my dad to enjoy it and have this last experience with my mom there.
So overall, I'm really thankful that we went on this trip and I'm thankful to my dad that he basically bought this whole trip for us.
So that was really generous of him.
And yeah, that's pretty much it.
I hope you liked hearing about Hawaii and I hope that some of you decide to go there at some point in your life because it's definitely a special place.
I highly recommend it as a travel destination to anyone.
It doesn't matter who you are.
So I hope this episode was good practice for your listening.
And remember that you can join my membership if you want my help understanding native speakers.
If you want my training, my seminars, where I help you understand the different sounds in English, then make sure to sign up for my membership.
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All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
