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Hey everybody, welcome to bonus episode number 107
of the Culips English Podcast. How is it going?
My name is Andrew. I am your host, and I am your
English study buddy. And I'm back here for another
week to help you with your English learning.
If you're new to the bonus episode series,
let me quickly explain what it is. In this series,
I just tell you some stories from my everyday life
as a Canadian guy living abroad in South Korea.
And I hope that by listening to these stories,
you will be able to B.I.G.B. B.I.G.B is our motto
for the series, and it stands for build your
fluency, increase your knowledge of the culture
of English-speaking people, grow your vocabulary,
and become a better communicator. So, if those are
your goals with your English studies, then you're
in the right place. And I think you will enjoy
this series very, very much. Before we get started
with this week's story, I have a few announcements
that I want to make. The first one is about our
small-group conversation classes. If you are a
Culips member, you are welcome to join us for our
small-group conversations that we have each and
every week. This week, we will be talking about
digital modesty, the topic of digital modesty.
And actually, I had a conversation with my co-host
Anna about this in a Chatterbox episode that we
released not too long ago. So, if you haven't
heard that conversation yet, I'm going to put the
link for that episode in the description for this
episode. So, you can check that out and listen to
it and you can get up to date about what digital
modesty is. But essentially, digital modesty is
just the idea of being very, very cautious and
careful about what information we share online.
So that's the topic for this week's small group
discussion class. And we have three of them
happening this week. The first will be happening
on Monday, June 24th at 6 p.m. Ireland time. Now,
that will be hosted by our study guide writer,
Alina. The second class will be happening Tuesday,
June 25th at 7 p.m. Eastern time. So Eastern time
is like the eastern part of North America. That
class will be hosted by Indiana, our other study
guide writer. And then I will also be hosting
a class that will be happening Thursday, June
27th at 8 p.m. Korean time. The classes will be
happening on Zoom. And if you're a Culips member,
then you can join the classes just by logging
into your Culips account and finding the schedule.
You'll also be able to change the schedule so you
can see it displayed in your local time zone. So
that's convenient for you so you don't have to
do the calculation in your head. You can see what
time it is in your time zone. And then you can
also find the information to join the Zoom class.
So, I hope many of you will be participating and
many of you will join my class because I want to
talk with you about this topic. I think that will
be really interesting. So that's the schedule
for this week, everyone. Please join us on Zoom
for these small-group discussions about digital
modesty. The second announcement I want to make is
about Culips membership. If you sign up and become
a Culips member, you will get so many benefits
and bonuses, including interactive transcripts
and helpful study guides for all of our episodes.
In the study guides, you will find explanations
and examples of the key parts of the episode that
we think that you need to know to improve your
English. There's also a comprehension quiz for
testing your understanding and some questions that
you can use for speaking practice or for writing
practice. Maybe you want to write a journal entry
in response to what you've heard on Culips,
something like that. You can do that with the
prompts that are in the study guide. Plus, there's
more. You get access to our member-only series,
the Fluency Files. You can join us for the
weekly small-group conversation classes as well,
like I mentioned earlier. And there's more than
that. The list of benefits and bonuses goes on and
on and on. So, you can find all of the details and
sign up and become a Culips member by visiting our
website, Culips.com, or by following the link that
we'll put in the description for this episode.
Let's get started with this week's story. So, for
this week, I am going to tell you about what I got
up to last weekend, specifically what I got up
to last Sunday. I had just a really wonderful,
relaxing, and adventurous day. You may be
wondering how a day can be both relaxing and
adventurous at the same time, but it was. And I'll
explain how it was in just a moment. But yeah,
my wife and I, we had this just fantastic day
on Sunday, and so I thought I would share with
you what we got up to. And I'll start by asking
you a question. That is, how do you decide what
you're going to do in your free time? How do
you decide what you're going to do in your free
time? Yeah. For my wife and I, usually we get
to spend one day together. Our Monday to Friday
is usually pretty busy, and it's jam-packed with
work and some other stuff that we have going on.
And then usually one day of my weekend, I will
spend doing Culips, making the bonus episode,
and preparing this episode. And then one
day a week, usually Sunday, is our free day,
and we get to go out and do something exciting,
maybe go on a date or an adventure, something like
that together. And so usually what we start asking
each other around Thursday or Friday is like,
"What should we do on Sunday? What do you want to
do on Sunday?" And I don't know. You know, Seoul,
where we live, is a very big city, and obviously
it's a mega city in the world. So, there are so
many different places to explore. There's always
things happening, different cultural events,
different concerts, different just everything
that you can imagine, different restaurants,
different cafes, pop-up stores. This is going on.
That is going on. So, there's always something to
do, but still, sometimes it's difficult to answer
that question, "What do you want to do?" And so,
when my wife and I asked each other that question,
"What should we do this upcoming Sunday?" We had a
little bit of difficulty. We were like, "Hmm. What
should we do exactly?" It's really easy to find
yourself stuck in the same routine, right? You
go to the same neighborhoods, to the same cafes,
the same restaurants, the same shops, and the
same parks, and you can do things over and over
and over again, which can be nice sometimes,
but other times it's nice to keep things fresh
and keep things new. So, what I've been trying
to do is kind of make a mental list when I hear
about something exciting happening or see about
something exciting happening, then I make a little
mental note like, "Oh, that would be cool to
check out," or "That would be good to do." And
one of the things that I noticed that I thought
could be cool to do is that the library here in
Seoul is hosting these outdoor reading events. I
don't know if they're like reading events per se,
because there's not really any activity involved,
but what they've done is set up different reading
areas in different places around downtown Seoul.
And the idea is that you can go and hang out
and lounge in one of these cool outside spaces
and just hang out and do some reading. And so,
I made a little mental note when I saw that. I
think I noticed it on Instagram, perhaps, maybe.
And I thought, "Hey, that would be cool to check
out." So, when my wife and I were discussing,
"Hey, what should we do on the weekend?" Then I
threw that out to her. I was like, "Oh, why don't
we go to City Hall?" Because that's where one of
the big reading spaces is. The way that the Seoul
City Hall is set up is that there's the City Hall
building, and then in front of City Hall, there's
this big square. And sometimes in the winter,
they have an ice-skating rink set out in front
of City Hall. And I've talked about that on Culips
before. And in the summer, it's just a big field,
and they have different cultural activities. But
right now, it's set up with these outdoor sofas,
like these inflatable, not really inflatable,
like beanbag sofas that are all set up outside.
And there's little coffee tables there, and there
are books set up. And the idea is just to promote
reading in the city, I suppose. So, I thought,
"Hey, that could be cool to check out." I threw
out the idea there to my wife, and she said,
"Yeah, let's do it." So, we decided to go and
check out the reading space in front of Seoul City
Hall. And actually, in the old City Hall building,
there is a branch of the Seoul Library as well.
So, it's kind of connected with the Seoul Library.
So that's what we decided to do for our date
day last week. And so, we headed downtown to
Seoul. We rode the subway down there, and we
had lunch first. There was a restaurant that
my wife wanted to check out. And when we
went there, this happens often in Seoul,
people listening from Seoul will probably be
able to connect with me on some level here and
empathize with this statement. But we went to
the restaurant, and it was just a beautiful,
bright, very hot, sunny day. But there were so
many people out and about downtown that when
we went to the restaurant, there was a huge line
to get in. And I'm one of those guys that can't
really wait too long to go into a restaurant. I
was pretty hungry at that point, and I said, "I
can wait like 15 minutes. But if it's going to be
30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, I don't have the
patience just to wait in line to eat lunch." So,
my wife was on the same page as me, and she said,
"OK, we'll come back to this restaurant" that
she wanted to go to another day. Because, yeah, I
just, I can't do it. I can't wait that long to get
into a restaurant. So, we just went to a different
restaurant that was in the neighborhood, in the
vicinity of the one that she originally wanted to
go to. We had a quick lunch, and then we went to
a cafe. And at the cafe, it was really cool. It
was a cafe that my wife had visited before, so she
wanted to take me to show me this cafe. Because it
was a Korean rice-cake cafe. And that kind of rice
cake is called tteok, which is a little bit hard
for me to pronounce. But tteok is the Korean word
for rice cake. And I have to be honest with you
guys, I don't know if you have ever tried Korean
rice cake, but it's very chewy. It's like a heavy,
chewy food. And there's not a whole lot of flavor,
at least to my Western palate. When I first
arrived in Korea, I remember the first time that I
tried rice cake, and I thought, "Hmm, I don't know
what I think about this." It wasn't disgusting
or anything, but I didn't think it was delicious
at the same time. I felt like it was just a
neutral food that had no real special flavor,
and it was just heavy and chewy. And I didn't
really understand its appeal. Well, flash forward
over a decade, now I've been in Korea for a long
time, and I absolutely love tteok. I think it's
delicious. I understand it now. Something clicked
and I was excited to go to the cafe. And they
had many different kinds of tteok there that you
could buy individually. They came in these pretty
little rice-cake balls, and there were different
combinations. Inside the rice cake was sometimes
fruit and sometimes bean. That is a common filling
that is stuffed inside of rice cake here is kind
of sweet bean filling called pat. And yeah, we
chose two different kinds of rice cake because A)
we had just had lunch, so we weren't super hungry.
B) they were quite expensive for one little rice
cake. It was a little bit expensive. And C) we
also ordered a Korean summertime favorite dessert
called pat-bingsu, which is... bingsu is like ice
flakes, I suppose. Ice flakes. And pat is the red
bean, sweet red bean that I told you about before.
So, we had ordered one of those as well, and we
had a nice little coffee time. I believe the rice
cake flavors that we ordered were fig and... I
can't remember. Ah! Ssuk. Ssuk. Which... what is
Ssuk in English? I think it's called mugwort in
English. I think it grows wild. I'm not an expert
about this. Obviously, you can hear in my voice.
But I believe it is a plant that grows, like,
in the forest. It's not really farmed. I think
it's a wild herb, almost. And it's got a very
mellow taste. It's not a super strong taste,
but it's just very mellow. I think that is the
word that I could use to describe it. And again,
that's like a Korean flavor that I didn't
really know about or understand when I first
came to this country. And now I'm like, I think
I was the one that ordered that flavor because
I thought that sounded the best out of all the
different options. It's not as sweet, you know,
like a fruit flavor can be quite sweet. There was
strawberry and some different kinds of berry ones,
and those seemed too sweet to me. So, I went with
the mugwort. And it was really interesting the
way that the rice cake came out and was served to
us. It's like a round little ball, right? And they
gave us this little envelope of string. It looked
almost like dental floss. And the idea is because
Korea is a country where almost everybody shares
their food. If you go to a cafe with your friend
and you order a piece of cake, it would be really,
really strange for just one friend to eat the cake
and not offer to share with the other friend.
Korea is a really communal country in that way.
And people share the food that they order. And so,
these rice-cake balls are supposed to be shared
because it would be weird just not to share them
with each other. And I think many customers at the
cafe would mix and match and order many different
flavors. And then the problem is, how do you like,
share this rice ball if you use it's very pretty.
And I'll upload some photos to our Instagram or if
you're watching on YouTube, I'll put some visuals
behind me so you can see what they look like.
They're very delicate, very beautiful rice-cake
balls. But if you were to just cut into them with
a knife and fork, then they'd get squished, and
they wouldn't be beautiful anymore. And the whole
visual aspect of the presentation would just be
wasted. So, what they do is they give you this
like dental floss string. And I was a little bit
confused, like, is this for after we eat them? Are
we supposed to floss our teeth afterwards? But
what you do is you wrap the string around the
rice cake ball, and then you pull, and it cuts it
perfectly in half without ruining the integrity of
the shape. So, it still maintains its beautiful
form. So, I thought that was a cool experience.
And I enjoyed hanging out at that cafe for
a little while. As I said, that day was so,
so hot. In fact, this whole last week in Korea
has just been insanely hot. Every day has been
into the... I don't know, I think the other
day was 34 degrees. I heard in some places it
was 35 degrees. So really hot. Thankfully, in my
opinion, it's not too humid yet here in Seoul. So,
I can deal with heat, but the humidity is the real
killer for me. But it hasn't been too too humid.
But it was a really hot day that day that we were
out and about downtown. So just to hang out in the
cafe to enjoy a nice Korean-style dessert. And
this cafe had a nice window where we could look
out and out the windows and just look at the city.
So, it was cool place to hang out for a bit. But
that wasn't our main goal. Our main goal was to
check out City Hall and to do some reading. So,
we walked over to City Hall when we are finished
at the cafe, and we found where the reading area
was set up. And there were many, many, many of
these beanbag sofas set up all through the square
in front of City Hall. But there were no people
there or very, very few people. There were some,
but not very many at all. Just like a handful
of people there. And can you guess the reason
why there weren't so many people there? It goes
back to the weather, like I just said, it was
so hot that day in the 30s at least. And the sun
was beating down just like right down on top of
us. And so, I wanted to like, at least give it a
try. So, I sat down on one of the sofas, but even
just sitting down on it was really hot because the
fabric that the sofa was made out of was like kind
of a plastic, like almost like a tarp, vinyl tarp
kind of material. You can imagine that it has to
be waterproof, right? In case it rains. So that
kind of plasticky material gets really, really
hot in the sun. And so even just sitting down on
the sofa was not very pleasant because it's like,
you know, if you've ever sat on a leather sofa in
the hot weather and the leather gets hot and then
you try and stand up and your skin kind of sticks
to the sofa, it was that kind of feeling. So,
I did sit down and read a couple of pages and my
wife tried as well. But she was like, "This is
not going to work. It's way too hot. We got to get
out of the sun. We're going to die out here." So,
we thought, "OK, let's go into the old City
Hall building and we'll check out the library."
I thought the library would be closed because we
were there on a Sunday, but the library was open,
and we went inside to check out the library.
Interestingly enough, I had never been to that
branch of the library. And when I was walking up
the stairs to get into the old City Hall building,
suddenly I got excited because not too long ago,
a few months ago now, I suppose, but not too, too
long ago, I visited Melbourne. And when I was in
Melbourne, I went to the Melbourne Library, and it
was just an amazing experience. It was one of the
most fantastic libraries I've ever been to in my
life. So beautiful and so cool. Just an all-round
amazing experience, which I've talked about on
Culips before. So, if you want to hear me talk
about that in more detail, you can go check out
that old episode. But I had that same kind of vibe
while I was walking up the stairs to go inside
the Seoul Library in City Hall. However, once I
got inside, I was a little bit disappointed. I
mean, I guess I'm comparing it to one of the
best libraries in the whole world. So that's
unfair of me, but it wasn't as spectacular as I
thought maybe it would be. So, I was a little bit
disappointed with the Seoul Library to tell you
the truth. But I did go to the magazine section,
and I was really impressed with the magazines.
I thought, "Oh, I have to come back here to this
library again to check out the magazines in the
future." Because it was so hot outside, my wife
and I hung out in the magazine section, and they
had like really cool magazines that I have never
seen in Korea before. Magazines about cinema and
architecture and art and photography, these like
niche topics, not like the kind of magazine that
you would just see maybe for sale in a convenience
store or something like that, right? And so, I had
a blast just flipping through the magazines in the
library, especially there were some really
cool architecture magazines. And, you know,
my wife and I, listeners of Culips will know that
we bought an old house and renovated our old house
about a year ago now. And so, we went through
this process of designing our home. And so that
got me a little bit interested in home design and
architecture. And there were some really, really
beautiful houses on display in this one magazine
I was reading. So that was a win for me. That was
a plus. But after a little while, my wife said,
"We got to leave the library now." She wasn't as
interested in the magazines perhaps as I was. So,
we went out into the main City Hall lobby area.
And we noticed that on the fifth floor of the
building, it said something like the Skywalk, like
the City Hall Skywalk. It was called something
like that. I may be incorrect with the name,
but it was something similar to Skywalk. So, we
said, "Hey, why don't we go check that out?" So,
we walked up the stairs to get to the fifth floor.
And we were so pleasantly surprised that you could
just walk out onto the rooftop of City Hall, and
it was completely open to the public. And there
was like practically nobody up there. I think not
very many people know that you can do this. And in
fact, I had no idea that you could do this. But
it's like this beautifully landscaped garden up
on the top of City Hall. And there's a beautiful
view, like 360-degree view of downtown Seoul. And
you can see the Blue House and the old palace.
You can see Seoul Tower, one of the landmarks
of Seoul. That's on Namsan, one of the landmarks
of Seoul. Another landmark of Seoul. So that was
really cool, the view. So, we walked around on the
rooftop. But at this point of the day, my wife was
starting to get that look like I'm exhausted. You
know when you look at somebody and it's just like,
it's so hot outside, and we've been walking around
for a while. And I just looked at her and I was
like, "You're getting pretty tired, right? Like,
do we need to go home?" But she didn't really want
to go home. But at the same time, it was tough
to walk around in the heat. So, as we were just
looking at the view from the rooftop, we noticed
that there was this... I don't know how to explain
it in English. But let me try my best to. There
are these areas in Korea that are like platforms,
almost like decks. They're about, I don't
know, less than half a meter off the ground,
maybe like 50, 40, 50 centimeters off the ground.
And they're, they're quite big. They're like,
several meters long, and they're made for sitting
on. So, Korea has this like long history of floor
sitting culture, I think, and many Korean
people like sitting on the floor. And so,
they have these kind of platforms, almost like
a deck that you can sit on outside. And maybe
you could have a picnic up there, or you could
take a nap on one. I personally love them. I
think they're really amazing. And so, we noticed
one of these, like, I'll just call them decks,
OK, these deck tables. It's like a sitting table,
it's like a platform that you can sit on. So, we
noticed one of these up there on the fifth floor
of the City Hall building, and it was covered with
an umbrella, and there was a lot of shade on the
platform. And so, we took off our shoes, because
you must take off your shoes when you go up on one
of these so that it can stay nice and clean. We
took off our shoes and we just sat in the shade
on the platform. And then we both lied down and
next thing you know, it... like 30 minutes passed
and I woke up because I completely fell asleep.
It was so relaxing and quiet and calm there on the
rooftop of the building. And my wife, I think also
took a nap. And so, yeah, 20, 30 minutes later, we
woke up and we were both like, "Whoa, how long did
we sleep?" Like, "What time is it?" And we woke up
and that look of exhaustion in my wife's face was
totally gone. She's like, "Oh, that power nap did
it! I'm feeling good again." And so, we decided
to keep going on our adventure. So, we exited from
City Hall and as we were walking out of City Hall,
we noticed that that reading area in front of
City Hall wasn't the only place the library had
set up. There were other areas around the city
that were set up with chairs and facilities for
doing some outside reading. And so, we noticed
that one was pretty close to the Cheonggyecheon,
which... The Cheonggyecheon is this stream that
runs through the center of downtown Seoul and it's
really great. As far as I know, back in the day,
it used to be a highway that ran through the city,
but maybe in like the early 2000s, and I'm not
sure about my dates here, so Korean listeners,
please correct me if I'm wrong, but around the
early 2000s, the highway was destroyed, and they
renovated the area by taking this old stream. I
guess historically it was a stream that had run
through the center of Seoul, but they renovated
it and refreshed it. And now it's like a landmark
in the city. It's a place where many people go to
have a stroll and to just like when you're in it,
it's kind of lower than street level. So, when
you're walking along the stream, you don't really
feel like you're in the big city and it's just a
wonderful, beautiful area. I'll put some pictures
on the Instagram and on the YouTube so you guys
can see, because I don't think my words are
doing it justice. So, we noticed that there was a
reading area set up there as well. And to walk to
the Cheonggyecheon from the City Hall is not very
far. It's only like a 10-minute or less walk. So,
we walked over there, and we noticed that they
had all of these little chairs set up and reading
areas set up. And best of all, they were set up
so that you could sit right beside the stream,
and you could actually dunk your feet in the
stream and just enjoy the cool water of the stream
while reading your book at the same time. And
there were like umbrellas set up to block you from
the stream*. And some people were sitting under
one of the bridges that crosses over the stream to
get some shade. And anyways, by this time in the
afternoon, it was getting close to like 4:30-5:00.
So, although it was still hot, the sun wasn't as
strong. So, we were like, "This is perfect! This
is much better than the City Hall place." And
so, they had these, they didn't have the sofas,
the beanbag sofas, like in front of City Hall.
They just had these chair backs, essentially,
that were made out of Styrofoam. So, you could
sit on one of these chairs, you just put it on the
floor. The chair had no legs, but the way that the
Cheonggyecheon is set up is it's tiered. So, you
can just think of like a stadium where you would
watch sports and they have different tiers where
you can sit, right? Almost like gigantic steps.
And so, the shore of the stream is tiered, and
we put our chair back on the lowest tier. And so
that means that we could sit on one of the steps
and then put our feet in the water. And we must've
hung out there for over an hour. We both brought
our books with us, and I finished up reading "The
Three-Body Problem." I think I mentioned watching
the Netflix series. And after I finished watching
the Netflix series, I wanted to read the book. So,
I ran out and I grabbed the book. Finally, I
finished the book. I have to say my review, now
that I've read both the book and seen the TV show,
the book is better, as always. Why is it always
the case? It's almost always the case that the
book is better, right? Than the movie or than the
TV show. But yeah, anyways, I read my book there
and just enjoyed a lovely afternoon in the sun
with my feet in the water, staying cool that way.
And my wife was reading her book too. I actually
have no idea what book she was reading, but I'm
sure it was a good one. So, it was just a great
way to spend the afternoon and stay cool at the
same time and do some reading at the same time.
And if you live in Seoul or you're planning to
visit Seoul sometime in the future, then I highly
recommend bringing a book with you and checking
out one of these reading zones that you can find
in front of City Hall or by the Cheonggyecheon
or there are some other ones as well throughout
Seoul, because I think it's just a cool initiative
to encourage people to spend some time outside and
to do some reading as well. So, everyone, I
think that will bring me to the end of this
week's story, all about my special date day with
my beautiful wife on Sunday, doing some reading
outside. Because you've made it to the end of this
episode, I should give you this week's completion
code. So, let's make the completion code for this
episode: "Outside." Outside, O-U-T-S-I-D-E. So,
if you leave a comment with the word "Outside" or
an example sentence using the word "Outside" on
one of our social media areas, like on Instagram
or Discord or on YouTube, then I will know, and
you will signal to other Culips listeners as well
that you made it to the end of this episode. So,
everyone, please take care this week. If you have
any questions or comments about this episode, let
me know. You can contact me on our Discord server,
and we'll leave a link in the description for this
episode so you can easily join our Discord server.
If you haven't joined us there yet, what are you
waiting for? Come on over to our Discord. It's an
awesome place. I hang out there every day and many
members of our community do as well. So, it's just
a really cool place where you can hang out with
other Culips listeners, practice your English,
and make some new friends as well. So come on
over and join us on the Discord. OK, everybody,
that's it for me for this week. Please take care.
Happy English studying up ahead. And I hope to
see you in our small-group conversation class
this week. But if I don't, then I'll talk to you
on the next Culips episode. Until then, bye-bye.
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