Hello everyone.
How's it going?
My name's Andrew and you're listening to Simplified Speech, the QLIPP series for intermediate level learners, which features clear, natural and easy to understand conversations between native speakers.
Today I'm hanging out with Cassie and we're going to catch up about her massive two-month trip across the United States.
She visited some amazing places from the forests of Oregon to the deserts of Arizona.
Sounds like the perfect dream vacation, right?
Well, just wait till you hear about the end of the story.
Cassie tells me about a really crazy event.
I'm not going to spoil it, but you got to listen all the way to the end of this episode guys, because some craziness went down at the end of her trip.
Very, very shocking.
So I want you to hear all of the details.
But before we get started, I have to ask you are you serious about reaching the next level with your English?
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As a Q-Lips member, you will get access to our helpful study guides, including interactive transcripts and quizzes for all of our episodes.
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Okay, without any further ado, let's get started and welcome Cassie to the show.
Here we go.
Enjoy.
Hey there, Cassie.
How's it going?
Hey, Andrew.
Long time no see.
I'm excited to talk about this episode.
Yeah so Cassie, it's been a little while, but if I recall correctly, last time we talked on QLips, you told us a little bit about this big cross-country road trip that you did.
I don't want to say recently because it was the summer of 2025, right?
So a little time has passed.
However, I really wanted to talk to you about that road trip in more detail, because it sounded like
Just like a huge adventure and so much fun.
So here we are finally able to talk about it.
And why don't we jump right in and get started?
Cassie, why don't you do the honors and tell us where the road trip started and where it ended and everything that happened in the middle?
Okay, so I guess first I'll just give a very brief overview of each place we went to, and then we can like, dive into each one a little bit.
Sure.
Sounds good.
As listeners might recall, I took the year off from work last year to be with my son for a year.
And so we decided to do an extended US trip in 2025.
Usually we go for about four weeks, but we decided to go for two months last summer.
And We wanted to hit four major places.
We started on the west coast of the US in Oregon, where my sister lives.
And then we traveled eastward.
So the next destination was in Arizona, where my best friend from high school lives with her husband.
And then we made our way all the way over to Pennsylvania, where my parents live and where I'm from.
And then we traveled down to North Carolina for our beach vacation that I'm pretty sure I've mentioned on this podcast before.
My family does it every summer.
And then we finally caravan back up to Pennsylvania to stay for one more week before flying back to South Korea.
Wow.
Okay.
Quite the trip.
A two-month vacation.
Amazing.
Okay.
So let's start in the West.
And you arrived in Oregon.
Now, Oregon is kind of in my neck of the woods back home in Canada.
I'm from the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest.
Kind of refers to that area Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia, which is my home province.
So I'm a little bit familiar with this part of the world.
But what was your impression of Oregon?
What did it feel like to you?
Well, I've been to Oregon several times because my aunt and my sister have lived out there for quite a few years now.
But I love it.
Oregon is so beautiful and it's got a little bit of everything.
It's got Portland, which is a big urban city, and it's got deserts out towards the east and it's got temperate rainforests and the coast with its beautiful beaches towards the west.
And in the southern part where my sister lives, it's really mountainous and wild.
She lives in a town so it's not quite wild there, but her job is all about maintaining hiking trails.
So she showed me all of her maps and different places that she goes to on a daily basis while we were there.
That's a cool job.
I would love a job like that, I think, maintaining hiking trails.
Probably not so easy.
It's probably a lot of hard work, but that sounds really awesome.
The cool thing about Oregon is that it's got this eclectic vibe because you know it's kind of a backwoodsy place.
But a lot of people from California moved to southern Oregon.
So it's got kind of California-y vibes, but also woodsy vibes.
And it makes for an interesting demographic of people.
Yeah, it is a really unique place.
And yeah, you have this mixture of, like super super liberal and super super conservative, depending on where you are in the state.
And so that makes for a really interesting place.
I think I've always enjoyed my trips to Oregon.
I've been there a few times.
But Cassie, what did you guys get up to while you were visiting there?
Well, first my sister moved into a new house.
So I saw her cute little house and she has a big garden that she was just starting to cultivate while we were there.
And she got a new dog, which we got to meet.
His name is Mater.
Mater?
To Mater without the T for anybody who's seen the Cars movie.
Okay.
Okay.
And then we also had a chance to stay in a really cool Airbnb in the middle of pretty much nowhere, a small town.
But the Airbnb was like really luxurious looking on the inside.
And it had this big gate that we had to open in order to get through to this house.
So it was on a big property.
But the cool part was that this is a ready built house, which means it's almost like a giant shipping container.
Like they built that house somewhere else and then transported it into that location.
Kind of like an RV home, but like way more impressive.
And there's no wheels.
Wow.
So it was actually made out of a shipping container, think so, or kind of like it like the materials of a shipping container.
That's kind of what it was, but just super fancy fancified is what i would call it.
Yeah, I think we can call that kind of home a prefab home prefabricated.
So it means it was made like in a factory or a different location and then transported to the land right?
It wasn't built on the lot like most houses are.
So a kind of prefab home.
Cool.
And I would have never guessed it unless my sister told me and I was like, really this?
I can't believe it.
Yeah, there are some nice ones.
From time to time I watch videos of like tiny homes on YouTube because I live in a tiny home myself and I'm interested in how people organize and yeah, can live in a small space really efficiently.
And so, yeah, I've seen some of those homes before and yeah.
It can be pretty shocking.
Like they can be really, really nice.
There's a lot you can do with a little space.
But this one was huge.
It had one, two, three, four bedrooms, I believe.
A huge kitchen.
It had like a garage set up with a foosball table and weights.
And a really giant sectional which is like a giant couch that kind of wraps around the entire living room that you know six people or eight people could probably sit on.
It was a really big pre-made home.
Yeah.
Okay.
A prefab mansion.
Yes, exactly.
Nice.
Okay.
So the first stop was Oregon then.
And then next you went to Phoenix, Phoenix, Arizona.
And I'm going to guess that that is about a, I want to say 20 hour drive.
How long did it take you to get there?
Yeah, we were considering driving, but we had a, how old was he at the time?
10 month old.
And quickly we decided that flying would be better.
Ah, okay.
So maybe about an hour and a half flight.
Yeah, but unfortunately, there were no great direct flights.
So we actually had to fly back to Seattle, Washington and then down to Arizona, which was annoying but it was okay.
Okay.
And you said that you were going to Phoenix to see your best friend from high school.
And that must have been a really nice reunion.
What was that like reconnecting with your high school bestie?
It was great.
Yeah, we talked throughout the year.
And I used to see her whenever I went back to Pennsylvania, because she lived and worked in Philadelphia for a while.
But her and her husband really hate the cold weather.
And they decided to escape it a few years ago by moving to Phoenix, Arizona.
And I was like, OK, we're making it a priority.
We're going to go visit them this summer.
And I'm so happy we did.
We had a great time.
Nice.
What is Phoenix like in the summer?
Because it's pretty warm all year round.
Like you were saying, your friends moved there to avoid the winter.
So it's got this reputation of as being a pretty hot place all the time.
But I imagine it's scorching in the summer.
Yeah, luckily we got there in like the end of May, early June.
So it wasn't too bad yet.
It was still very hot, but it wasn't like 40 degrees Celsius.
It was more like mid high 30s, which was tolerable.
Still pretty hot though.
It's a dry heat, not like that humid, sticky heat of Korea.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, but I was really surprised at how desert like it is.
Like there's not a lot of flora and fauna there, which means I didn't see a lot of wildlife or trees.
You know, palm trees.
Just sand and rocks, right?
Yeah, and it was very much a car city.
So we didn't have a car.
We could borrow our friend's car when they were around.
But the first day we got there, they had to work.
And so we wanted to walk to the closest coffee shop just to kill some time.
And oh my gosh, Andrew, trying to walk to the nearest coffee shop was crazy.
We had to pass like... three strip malls that did not have coffee.
And it was just fast food joint after fast food joint after gas station.
And we were the only ones on the sidewalk.
It was so weird.
That is really like a reverse culture shock for us.
I think when we go back to North America because we both live in Korea where everything is compact and going to a coffee shop, I could walk maybe a hundred meters from my front door and there are three or four coffee shops in the vicinity.
Like it's insane.
However, like you said, a lot of cities in North America are designed as car first.
And so if you want to go someplace, you need to jump in your car.
And if you don't have a car, then maybe you have to take public transportation, which can be slow or unreliable.
Or you have to walk and sometimes it feels really uncomfortable when you walk and a little bit dangerous as well, because you're the only one walking.
There's nobody else walking like everybody else is in a car.
So I've been in that situation before as well.
And it is pretty weird, right?
It's so weird.
But we were actually not there to spend much time in Phoenix.
Our main goal was to go see the beautiful landscape in Arizona.
I'm sure listeners know of one famous place, which is the Grand Canyon.
I've always wanted to go, and I'm so excited we went.
We went to the Grand Canyon for one day and we checked out Sedona, which is nearby there, which is full of just an amazing landscape so many beautiful red rocks.
And anybody who's seen an old Western movie, that landscape there that you can imagine in your head.
That's what we saw in real life.
That's amazing.
I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.
And yeah, I want to visit Arizona.
Sedona has like this nice ring to it as well, right?
It really flows off the tongue.
Sedona, Arizona.
I don't know something nice about that right from the very first sound of it.
So yeah.
That's cool that you had a great time there.
Let's continue to the next destination.
You went all the way from Arizona to Pennsylvania, which is quite the distance.
I'm assuming that you flew again.
Yes, that was a direct flight though, luckily.
I think it was five and a half hours to get from Arizona to Pennsylvania.
Okay yeah, I was under the impression, for whatever reason, that you were driving around from place to place, but you were flying around instead, which is much faster.
I think that's a better idea.
We did drive coming up later in the trip.
Okay, okay, good.
We'll get to that in a moment then.
So Pennsylvania, your home state, I'm assuming that you did a lot of catching up with friends and family, that sort of thing.
You mentioned that you did your yearly annual pilgrimage to the beach for your beach vacation as well in the Carolinas.
But what are some other things that you did while you were there?
Well, we stayed with my parents and it was pretty much just a time for them to be able to spend with their grandson their first one.
So there was a lot of bonding going on.
We went strawberry picking with my grandma.
That's something I used to do every summer.
And we just had a wonderful time hanging out on my mom's porch.
It's one of the best places to be in the summertime.
We did some small hikes.
We were there for I forget maybe two weeks before we headed down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina which, as you mentioned and I mentioned, is a place that my family goes every year.
And it takes about eight hours to drive there from our house to the place that we stay along the beach.
And I've done it so many times, countless times, but I have never done it by myself, with my husband and my son.
So we were very nervous to do it, but we did it.
Awesome.
OK, you arrived in one piece and we'll get to the beach here in just a sec, Cassie.
But I want to just back up for one moment to go back to the strawberry picking, because I think that sounds like a really fun activity to do with your grandma, which is so great.
I don't know if you brought your son as well, but that's cool.
Like your grandma has a great grandson.
That's pretty special.
And so where do you go strawberry picking?
Does your grandma have her own strawberry patch in her yard or something?
Or do you go to a you pick strawberry farm?
How do you do that?
So we live in Amish country, which means there's a lot of traditional farms there.
And we go to a specific farm.
Actually, I forget if they're run by Amish or Mennonite.
They're very similar.
But that farm is famous for picking.
So we get up early and we go so we can get a good patch.
And there were tons of other people there, but most of them were Amish or Mennonite.
So they were all in their homemade clothing, and the women wore bonnets and dresses down to their ankles.
And the men all had beards and their traditional costumes. hats.
And there were children of all ages that were all there to pick together.
And then there were a couple sprinkling of you know, everyday people like me and my husband and my grandma.
But we were very much the minority.
The non-Amish, non-Mennonites.
Yes.
But you bring your own bowls.
And then when you get there, you weigh the bowl empty, and And then you go out to the fields and they give you two flags.
You stick the flag at one side of the patch and you pick along as far as you want to go, until you fill your buckets.
And then you put your second flag at the place where you stopped, so that they know how far along the row that you picked.
Oh, interesting.
Okay, that's cool.
Yep.
And then you go back to the farmhouse and you put your now filled baskets onto the scale and they measure the difference and however much the difference is, that's how much you pay per pound.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Very unique way of doing things, but I guess that sounds practical.
And Cassie.
Maybe we should explain just here for listeners who don't know about Amish and Mennonites.
And yeah, it's kind of funny.
I never thought about it, but you grew up in that kind of...
Mennonite Amish area of the United States.
So maybe we could do a whole episode about this in the future.
Maybe you could even introduce us to somebody that we could maybe connect with and interview somehow.
But this is a kind of sect, or maybe we could say like sub-genre of the Christian religion.
And Mennonites and Amish, they're very similar.
And they... live a very traditional, almost like old fashioned style lifestyle, right?
With not a lot of technology and just a very like back to the farm kind of traditional lifestyle.
So for listeners who don't know, that's what that kind of religion is.
Exactly.
So the Amish?
They don't have phones, not just cell phones, phones like landlines, unless they're in the barn so that they can communicate with their outside businesses.
And they don't have cars.
They use horse and buggy.
The Mennonites do have cars, but they must be black.
And there's a lot of other traditional rules.
But it's a really unique area where I'm from having that mix of the modern world and the past.
You know.
Interestingly enough, I don't know if I've told you this Cassie, and I don't know if this is true or not but on my father's side, apparently my grandma, I called her my nana, but my nana said that somewhere on my father's side of the family we are actually Pennsylvania Dutch.
And we like go back to that area and that kind of Mennonite Amish community.
Yeah.
I don't know, maybe I have some heritage in my genetics from that area of the world.
I'm not sure if that's true or not, but that's the rumor that I've heard before on my father's side of the family.
That means you might have like a great grandfather who left the family farm.
Yeah, exactly.
If I had enough of this, no more cart and buggy for me.
I want a car.
Yeah, something like that.
Interesting.
Okay, well, let's move on.
So after Pennsylvania you did the road trip by yourself, with your husband and with your son and you went to the beach.
It was about an eight hour drive was a little bit nerve wracking but you made it in one piece with no accidents were speeding tickets or anything right.
Yeah, we were great.
There were a lot of kids' songs to listen to to keep my son occupied, but we made it.
And the two weeks at the beach were great.
They were like every other year.
We had an amazing time, but there was nothing really big to highlight.
I think, to end our episode, the biggest things that happened were at the end of our trip, when we were back in Pennsylvania.
Okay, what happened?
So we had an amazing trip, Andrew, and we were down to our last week together.
And we were all feeling a little sad, a little happy, a little bittersweet.
It was an amazing trip, but it was coming to an end.
And we were sitting down to dinner one night with me, my husband, my son, my mom and my stepfather.
And he'd made this really delicious looking meal.
And it was raining.
And thundering, but it wasn't too bad.
You know, it was like a typical thunderstorm.
And as soon as we sat down to our meal and picked up our utensils, there was a huge boom.
Oh no.
What happened?
And a giant lightning strike.
Okay.
And then, in a split second Andrew, a tree comes crashing through the front window of my parents' house.
Oh, my God.
I kid you not.
A tree, a huge tree.
And.
It fell completely on top of the front side of the house, destroying the porch and the roof.
If it would have been maybe two feet taller, we would have died.
Oh my gosh.
It was insane.
That's wild.
So it actually hit the house and then like came through the roof into your dining room?
Yeah, it came.
It crashed onto the roof and then one branch crashed through into the living room and then the glass shattered inwards.
But it did not reach the dining room, which is pretty spectacular because our house is not very big.
You guys must have just absolutely freaked out.
That would be so scary.
It was insane, Andrew.
My first thought was like motherly instincts.
Ah, my baby.
And then my second thought was a fire could start.
We need to get out of here.
Sure, sure.
Wow, that's so scary.
Yeah, so we couldn't exit through the front door because there was a giant tree.
So we had to pick our way across the broken glass down to the basement stairs.
And that's actually where we were staying.
Our bedroom is down in the basement, our guest room.
And so, in the dark, we were just frantically gathering extra clothes and rain jackets and our passports, right just in case there was a fire.
Um, and then quickly, we made it outside in the pouring down rain and um, very thankfully, my grandmother lives five minutes from my parents house, so we uh, We made our way over there and we ended up staying in her house for the last few days of our trip.
But it was insane.
Yeah, that is insane.
So the tree fell then because it was hit by lightning, not because of wind from the thunderstorm.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So it turns out that before that summer, there was a drought and the earth was really, really dry.
And then the entire time that we were gone at the beach for two weeks, there was just intense rainstorm after rainstorm.
And because of that drought followed by massive rain, the ground just couldn't handle it.
It couldn't absorb it all, and the roots of all the trees in the area have loosened, and so, um ever since That summer, trees have been falling down all across the area.
So even though that tree hit our house, there were several trees down along the road inside of our town as well.
Okay.
So it wasn't just an isolated incident, but there were trees falling down all over the city.
It sounds like.
Yeah.
Well, town, not a city.
Town.
Okay.
Wow.
Anyways, that is quite the ordeal.
And I assume it would be a massive headache for your folks to have to go through and fix that afterwards to repair the house and remove the tree and clean everything up.
Oh, what a headache that must be.
It was a struggle for them, but they were very fortunate.
Our town is really small, so all of the neighbors are really close.
And after that happened a whole bunch of the neighbors in our area gathered together and gave some money to my parents and they offered their support and they came out to help with the cleaning of the yard and stuff like that.
It was amazing.
And it was a rough time for a while, but my parents were officially able to move back in right before Christmas.
So it was kind of like a Christmas present for them to be able to feel like they were back to normal footing after so many months of turmoil.
Yeah, well, that's that's crazy.
But thankfully, nobody was hurt.
I guess at the end of the day, that's the good thing.
And yeah, they're back in their home now.
So that's good.
That is a pretty amazing way to finish the trip, though.
Definitely going out with a bang or a boom, a boom yeah wow, okay.
Well, we're glad everybody is okay and cassie, it sounds like you had just a really great time back home and yeah, thank you so much for telling us all about that amazing whirlwind american trip.
That was a great story, so thank you so much.
Yeah, anytime.
And that brings us to the end of this episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
I have to tell you, after we finished recording, Cassie actually showed me some of the photos of the damage to her parents' house and I was completely blown away.
When she was telling the story I pictured a small branch kind of breaking through the window a little bit, but the reality was much scarier.
The damage was huge and the tree was massive.
I think Cassie and her family were really, really lucky to make it out in one piece.
We're going to share those photos on our Discord server so you can see them for yourself.
And we'll also post some of the beautiful pictures from Cassie's hiking trip in Arizona as well, just to lighten the mood a little bit.
So make sure to join us on Discord to check those out.
Okay, that's it for today.
I'll be back soon with another brand new Q-Lips episode and I'll talk to you then.
Goodbye.
