Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, number 16. Hello again and welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast. My name is Dr. Jeff McQuillan from the Center for Educational Development in Los Angeles, California. If this is your first time listening to the ESL podcast, please go to our website at www .eslpod .com to find out more information and to download
our previous podcasts. Before we get started on today's podcast, I wanted to thank all of you who have emailed your ideas and suggestions. We encourage all of our listeners to email us at eslpod at eslpod .com or go to our website where you'll find our email address. We had several people suggest that we put up the script or the text for the first part of our podcasts. And I am happy to say that beginning today we will be putting up the text of the podcast on our
website. Go to our website and click on the link that says scripts and you will find a list of the podcasts that we have scripts for. posted on the site. The most recent podcast, the current podcast, will be on top. We do not have all of the podcast scripts up on our website yet, but we are working on it. So, thank you for your patience and your suggestions. Now let's get started with today's podcast. Today we are going
to talk about taking a trip and traveling. And as usual, after our first section, a monologue section, we will come back and talk about vocabulary. Now let's get started. I think the best summer vacation I've ever taken was when I went out east a few years ago. Two of my friends and I went on a two -week road trip. At the time, I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the Midwest of the United States. Anyway, we started off camping every night, but that got real old real
fast. So we started checking into hotels after about the third day. We were headed for Washington, D .C. first. Checking into the hotel was always a bit of a hassle. I wanted to sleep in a double bed. My friends wanted to get a king to share. Lodging is more expensive at a hotel than in a campground, but it is much, much more comfortable. We went to the major tourist attractions in Washington, D .C. The Capitol, Lincoln's Memorial, the White
House. We then headed north, passing through Boston and headed towards Canada, to Quebec City. When we arrived at the Canadian border, we had to pass through customs and immigration. Customs was easy. We had nothing to declare. Immigration was more of a pain. We were asked the standard questions. How long will you be staying in Canada? What is the nature of your visit? Finally, we were permitted to enter, and we drove on to our
destination. Quebec City is beautiful. Unlike many cities, There are no tourist traps to sidetrack you. We spent two days there, then drove on to Montreal. Of course, we had to pass through customs and immigration again when we re -entered the United States. Our bags were searched in customs, but other than that, we got through fairly easily. A few days later, we were back in Minnesota. Home sweet home. Our topic today was taking a summer vacation. I talked about a vacation that
I took a few years ago. I said that I and my friends went out east. In the United States, to go out east... usually means to go to the eastern coast of the United States. If you say, I'm going out west, that is more general, referring to any part of the western United States, from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. I said that we went on a road trip. A road trip is, as you might have guessed, a trip where you drive somewhere. We sometimes use this term informally.
Let's take a road trip means let's drive somewhere more or less on the spur of the moment. On the spur of the moment means without a lot of planning. I mentioned that camping got real old real fast. That's an informal expression you hear. To get old means to get tiresome, to be boring, to be not very interesting anymore. For example, going to the movies every Friday gets old means going to the movies every Friday is boring if you do
it all the time. Talking to my friend Bob gets old after a while, meaning it gets boring after a while. The expression gets old real fast is a pretty common one. We'll say, for example, that gets old real fast, meaning very quickly.
I said that we were headed. for washington dc i use that expression several times we were headed or we headed to head somewhere means to go somewhere to go in the direction of somewhere someone may say to you where are you headed and you say i'm headed to the dining room i'm hungry or i'm headed to chicago to see my sister You can use it both for long distances and for short distances. I said that checking into the hotel was a bit of a hassle. A hassle is when you have a problem
with something. So we say, for example, it's a real hassle to go through immigration. Meaning, it's a real bother. It always causes some problems. Hassle is also a verb, meaning to cause someone problems. Don't hassle me means don't cause me any problems. The term double bed and king refer to the type of bed that you sleep in. A king size bed is the largest, one of the largest beds you can get. It sleeps two people very comfortably. A California king is even bigger than a regular
king. So technically the biggest bed you can get in a hotel, in the United States anyway, is a California king. A double bed is a smaller bed. Two people can fit if they're very good friends. comfortable sleeping close together. I said that lodging was more expensive in a hotel than in a campground. Lodging is a general term we use to cover any place where you are sleeping or staying overnight or in some temporary situation.
So typically lodging includes campgrounds It includes a trailer park where you might have a trailer where you sleep. It includes a hotel. It includes a bed and breakfast. All of these would be considered lodging. I said that we went to Washington DC and saw the major tourist attractions. A tourist attraction is anything that Someone visiting that place would want to see a museum, a memorial, a historical site. All of these are
tourist attractions. Here in Southern California, in Los Angeles, people go to see Hollywood, the Hollywood Boulevard, Disneyland, Santa Monica Beach. All of these are tourist attractions. I live about two miles from Santa Monica Beach and there are always a lot of tourists there. I said as we went through customs that it was
easy because we had nothing to declare. To declare something when you go through customs means that you have something you are bringing in that requires usually that you get permission or that you pay a tax. So if you are coming to the United States and you are bringing $10 ,000 worth of jewelry,
you should visit me. Well, I'm kidding. If you're bringing in a large amount of... merchandise of something that is valuable you often have to pay a tax on that when you go to another country and that is called making a declaration when you declare something you put down on your customs form and tell the customs officer that's the person working at the customs booth you tell the customs officer you have something to declare I said also that immigration was more of a pain.
This is an expression, a colloquial and informal expression, meaning it's similar to hassle. To say something is a pain means that it bothers you, it causes you problems. It's actually an expression, a polite expression. that comes from the expression a pain in the neck or a pain in the butt. These are terms that we use a lot. Nowadays, more informally, we simply say it's a pain. And people understand you mean it's a
pain in the neck. It's a problem. When we went through immigration, I said we were asked the standard questions. This expression, the standard something, the standard questions, the standard menu, the standard routine, means the normal, the regular, what you would normally expect. One of the standard questions you are asked at immigration is how long will you be staying in this country? You are also typically asked what the nature of your visit is. The nature here
means the reason. Why are you here? Is it for business or is it for pleasure, for relaxing? The nature of something means also the most important quality of something. We may say, for example, The nature of jogging is that you get tired, meaning an essential part of jogging is after a while you get tired. I mentioned that there were no tourist traps to sidetrack us in Quebec City. A tourist trap is a type of tourist attraction that is designed mostly to Take your money, but
not necessarily be very entertaining. A tourist trap would be any place that someone goes that isn't very enjoyable, but that costs a lot of money. To sidetrack means literally to get off the track. Track means the path, the road that you're on. So to be sidetracked means to be pushed off or directed away from where you were going. To sidetrack someone means to get them talking about or interested in a different topic than
the one they were interested in before. It's usually used as something of a negative thing. I don't want to get sidetracked. means I want to focus on the most important thing and not things that are less important. So sidetrack, by definition, is always a negative thing. I said that when we went through customs returning to the United States, that our bags were searched.
To search, of course, means to look in. And that's the expression we use particularly when you go through customs or if you are stopped by the police, they search your car or they can search your bags, they can search your house. Finally, I said that when we returned to Minnesota, I used the expression, home sweet home. This is a very old... but common expression in the United States, referring to the place where you live, your home, physical home, but also the home city,
your home state. Home sweet home is an expression that you will sometimes see on little plaques, little signs in someone's house. It's just a nice expression that means, I'm glad to be home. It's nice to be here. Sweet, home, sweet. We normally think of sweet as like candy, but sweet can also mean very nice. She's a sweet girl. She's a sweet, or he's a sweet person, means they're very nice. They're very polite. And that's more the expression here. Home sweet home means
it's very nice to be here. That's going to do it for today's ESL podcast. As usual, we encourage you to email us your ideas and suggestions. Remember that our scripts are now available online beginning with this podcast, podcast number 16. We'll also get the other scripts up as the week and the month progresses. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time on ESL Podcast. ESL Podcast is produced by the Center for Educational Development in Los Angeles, California.