English Listening - Breakfast, Camping
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Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast. I'm Connor from polyglossa.com, and you're listening to Episode 2 of the Listening Time Podcast. If this is your first time listening to this podcast...

I can assure you that this podcast will be very helpful for you in practicing your listening skills. So this podcast is for people who want to practice their listening, but who still can't understand native speakers when they speak at normal speed or when they speak with other native speakers.

If you can't yet understand native speech like that, then this podcast is perfect for you.

because I talk about different topics in this podcast, but I don't read a script. Okay, so I haven't planned what I'm saying right now. I'm not reading anything. I'm just talking naturally as the words come to my brain. And even though I'm speaking naturally with normal words,

I'm speaking a little more clearly and a little bit more slowly so that you can understand me better. And so this is the format of the podcast. I talk about a couple different topics each time.

in a clear and a little bit slower way, but still natural speech. I'm still speaking with the words and phrases and expressions that I would normally say in real life.

I also have the transcript available attached to every episode. So if you need the transcript to help you understand what I'm saying, you can find the transcript with every episode. So that should also be very helpful for you.

Okay, so in this episode, I'm going to talk about two different topics. I'm going to talk about breakfast, and I'm going to talk about camping.

Two random topics, but two interesting topics. So before we start, remember that if you need more listening practice, you can go to www.polyglossa.com and sign up for our listening practice seminars to practice your listening. The seminars are only $1 each, so make sure to sign up if you want to practice more.

Okay, let's get started. Are your ears ready? You know what time it is. It's listening time. Alright, so first we're going to talk about breakfast. This is actually a really good topic for me. This is one of my favorite topics because breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the day.

We usually have three meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Or maybe in your country there are more than three meals. But in most cultures and most countries, we have some kind of breakfast. It's the first meal of the day. So first, I want to tell you a little bit about the American breakfast, the classic American breakfast.

People see a certain style of American breakfast when they watch American movies and TV shows. And for the most part, this image of the American breakfast is pretty accurate. But what I would say is that we don't eat this type of breakfast every day.

So on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, on weekdays, most Americans don't have time to make a big breakfast, right? We have to get ready. We have to prepare ourselves for our day at work. And we don't have a bunch of time to practice, sorry, to practice, to cook breakfast in the morning.

So, many Americans tend to make a simple breakfast or they might not even cook anything. They might just eat cereal and milk. When I was, let's see, when I was in elementary school, middle school, and sometimes when I was in high school, I would eat cereal for breakfast. I loved cereal.

And it wasn't a bad breakfast. I actually enjoyed this. I'm sure many of you, many of the listening time listeners, probably enjoy cereal as well. It's good. There's a reason why it's so popular among people everywhere in the world. Some of my favorite breakfasts were, let's see...

Honey Nut Cheerios, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Apple Jacks, a lot of different cereals. But yeah, many Americans eat cereal on the weekdays. But on the weekends, we like to eat...

A bigger breakfast. You've probably seen the American breakfast in TV shows or movies where the family sits down and eats eggs and bacon and pancakes and all kinds of things like that. We don't do that every weekend, for sure, but it's definitely something that we do often.

Or we like to go out to restaurants to eat breakfast there.

So maybe we don't want to cook pancakes at home, but we want someone else to cook pancakes for us. So we go out to some breakfast restaurant on Saturdays or Sundays. This is pretty common. I did this a lot when I was growing up with my family or even as an adult. I still do this a lot.

So breakfast in other countries besides America is very different, right? I haven't traveled to many countries, but in the countries where I have traveled to, I've noticed big differences in the type of breakfast that people eat. So in Europe, for example, breakfast is very small.

I was really surprised when I first went to Europe, when I was in Spain and in Portugal, I realized that breakfast is not a big meal there. If you're from Europe, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For many Europeans, breakfast is simply...

piece of bread with some butter or jam toast I should say buttered toast or toast with jam or some kind of sweet bread or something like that plus orange juice or coffee right and that's it

Maybe in France, people might just eat a croissant and a cup of coffee or a small espresso and that's it. For me, as an American, that's tough. That's not easy for me to eat and not eat anything else. I want a little bit more than that.

But I know that some people don't want to eat that much for breakfast. I understand that. And I'm sure some of my listeners and other places around the world understand

have even different styles of breakfasts, not just like American or European, but something else that I just don't know. So I'd be interested to learn about breakfasts all over the world. And me, my typical breakfast is kind of like an American breakfast, a typical American breakfast.

Nowadays, my wife usually cooks me eggs, bacon, and maybe even hash browns or toast or something like that. Hash browns are potatoes that we eat for breakfast. I don't really know how to describe them very well. They're kind of...

fried, or maybe they're not. I don't know. But they taste very good. You've probably seen them before. They're called hash browns. So I sometimes eat that. And usually we also eat some fruit for breakfast. So mango, papaya, apples, something like that. Or maybe yogurt, maybe a little bit of vegetables.

There's different options, but I definitely love my bacon and eggs for breakfast. I love that combination. So that's one of my favorite breakfasts. And then in regards to coffee, coffee is another big part of our breakfast. Not me personally, but Americans in general love

People tend to drink a pretty big cup of coffee in the morning.

You've probably seen that before. They don't normally just drink small espresso shots. People often drink a big mug of coffee. A mug is the type of cup where you put hot drinks in, like tea, coffee, hot chocolate, etc. It's that cup that has the circular handle on it.

This is called a mug. So Americans often drink a mug of coffee. I don't drink coffee in the morning. I like coffee, but it's not part of my morning routine. So for me, it's not that typical.

And lastly, the time of breakfast. People eat breakfast at different times in different countries. I know that in some countries breakfast might be earlier. In some countries breakfast might be later. I don't really know when the typical time

breakfast begins for Americans, but I think it depends on people's schedule. If people work early, then they eat breakfast early. If they start work late, then they might eat breakfast later. I think that's how it usually is, and I think that's how it is in many places probably.

But yeah, breakfast is often said to be the most important meal of the day. I don't know if this is true or not. And I've heard many people say that we don't need breakfast. A lot of people like to fast in the morning and not eat until later. To fast means to not eat food.

And people who do that will probably tell you that breakfast is not very important. So I don't know. I don't have an opinion about that, but I like breakfast. So let's move on to our second subject for today, which is camping. This is another subject that I really like because I really like camping. Simple as that.

I'm American, of course, so I'm going to speak to you from an American perspective. Camping is a great pastime in the U.S.,

Pastime is kind of like an activity, entertainment, hobby, something like that. Camping is definitely a popular thing in the U.S. I think most Americans have probably been camping at least once in their life. That might not be an accurate statistic, but in my opinion, I think at least once.

half of Americans have been camping once in their life. When I was younger, I went camping with my family and some family friends every summer. So starting from the time when I was probably one or two years old until the time when I was around 16 or 17,

We went camping every year, I think, practically every year. And we would usually go in June, July, or August when the weather was really nice. And we went to many different campsites, I should say. A campsite is just a place where people can camp.

Usually you have to pay money, but it's not a ton of money. You can usually afford it. It's not too expensive. So we went to many campsites when I was younger, and some of the campsites were more crowded, and they had more people, and some campsites were more remote campsites.

When something is remote, that means that there aren't many people there, right? It's a little less crowded. It's a little farther away from society. Remote really means that it's kind of far away from the rest of society. So I've camped in remote places and in places closer to the city.

But regardless of where I went, I always liked it and I still like it. But I don't go very often anymore, unfortunately. In other countries, camping is not a very big thing. I know this. I've talked to students from many places and in many countries, camping is simply not an activity that the population enjoys.

For example, in Mexico, very few people go camping. This is not a very popular activity, and I think many Mexicans would feel unsafe going camping, right? They don't want to be far away from civilization, far away from their city. That would strike a little fear in them, probably. Not all Mexicans, but some of them.

So I looked at Google Maps recently and I was looking for campsites in Mexico around a pretty popular city. And I could barely find two or three campsites within two hours driving from this really big city.

And I was really surprised because in the US, if you Google campsites on Google Maps, you'll see campsites everywhere, everywhere, right? There are so many options for Americans to go camping. So it was a surprise for me to see this on Google Maps in Mexico.

So camping is much more popular in the U.S. than it is in many other countries. I know it's also popular, I think, in many Asian countries and maybe in Northern Europe, but I'm not sure where else camping is popular. In terms of my experience or my love for camping,

I would say that the reason why I like camping so much is the spirit of camping. That's what I'll call it, the spirit of camping, right? What I'm talking about is the act of leaving civilization, leaving the city and going into nature and surviving and being part

there without a lot of appliances and tools and electronics and everyday things. Just being there with your tent and your fire and of course a few tools and just enjoying the atmosphere, enjoying the environment. For me this is a really fantastic feeling.

It's relaxing and it's fun. I think this is actually really fun. I like doing activities when I camp. For example, I love going hiking when I camp. I love going fishing, for example. These are activities that you can enjoy in nature, in the peace and quiet. They're really fun, in my opinion.

Maybe some of you might think that fishing or hiking is boring, but for me, I don't know. They're really fun activities and I especially like doing them because I'm in nature.

I think that's the main component of the spirit of camping is being in nature, right? We don't often spend time in nature because most of us live in cities. So when we get the opportunity to go into nature, right?

It's really nice. It's something different, right? I think that this is the reason why I like camping so much.

I'm not a great camper. I'm not very good at building a fire or pitching the tent. When you pitch a tent, this means that you put the tent up. You put it together. So I'm not good at pitching the tent or building the fire or doing a lot of other stuff, but I'm happy to help.

the other people accomplish these tasks, right? I really should learn to build fires and pitch tents better, because I want to have this skill. But I've just never paid too much attention to this. I'm always the one helping, not the one leading the effort.

But yeah, I really like sitting around the campfire at night as well. This is probably the funnest part of the camping trip.

is when it's dark and you're with your friends or family and you're sitting around the campfire and you're roasting marshmallows. If you roast marshmallows, this means that you put a marshmallow on a stick or a skewer, as we call it,

and you hold it over the fire until it cooks. It turns a little brown, and then you eat it. Or you can combine it with chocolate and graham crackers to make s'mores. You might have heard the word s'mores before.

It can be a flavor of ice cream or donut or other things like that. But really, a s'more means the combination of marshmallow, chocolate, and graham crackers. This is a s'more. I love roasting marshmallows, and I love making s'mores. This is one of the best parts of the camping trip for me.

And of course, sometimes we tell stories around the campfire or we play music even. Sometimes people bring their guitar or another instrument and we have a music session there around the campfire. So there are many things that you can do when you're camping.

And these activities are all part of the camping spirit for me. So that's why I like camping. And I hope you do too. Or if you don't, I hope you try camping sometime just to see what it's like, just to have the experience of

And who knows? Maybe you'll like it. So we're about done for today. We're done talking about breakfast and camping. Hopefully these were topics that were interesting for you. I know they're interesting for me. I like breakfast and I like camping.

So in the next episode, I'll choose two or three other topics and we'll talk about them as well. Remember that you can always access the transcript to each episode. So make sure you check the notes and find the link to the transcript there and that will help you understand the episode.

And, of course, remember to sign up for our listening practice seminars at polyglossa.com if you need more practice with your listening. They're only $1. So, thank you for listening to today's episode, and I hope you come back for episode 3 of the Listening Time Podcast.

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