– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 132 of  the Culips English Podcast. My name's Andrew. I'm  

happy to be here with you in 2025. Yeah, it's  2025. Happy new year. I hope you had a great  

time celebrating the new year. I sure did. I had  a little party with my wife, and it was a fun and  

exciting way to ring in the new year. If you're  new here to Culips, let me explain about our bonus  

episode series. I just tell you some stories from  my everyday life as a Canadian living abroad in  

Seoul, South Korea. And I hope that by listening  to these stories, you will be able to build your  

fluency, and increase your cultural knowledge,  grow your vocabulary, and become a clearer and  

better English communicator. And to celebrate the  new year, I have to let you guys know that we are  

having a new year's sale. Signing up and becoming  a yearly Culips member at the start of the year is  

the cheapest option for Culips membership that we  offer all year. And I think it is just a fantastic  

deal, a fantastic discount that we offer. And  I'd really encourage you if you've been thinking  

about becoming a Culips member to sign up and  become a yearly member during our sales period,  

which will last until January the 15th. If you're  a current monthly member, then you can switch over  

to the yearly membership and save big time as  well. As a Culips member, you will be able to  

join our weekly speaking classes. You will get  ad-free audio of all of our lessons. You will get  

helpful study guides and interactive transcripts  for all of our episodes as well. Plus, much,  

much more. You'll get quizzes. You will get our  member only series, the Fluency Files. You will  

be able to join the member only channel of our  Discord server, where you can connect with me very  

easily and ask me any questions about studying  English or learning English that you may have  

and more! There are even more benefits and bonuses  than I can spend time talking about here at the  

start of the episode. So, check out our website,  Culips.com for the full list. And guys, I did a  

little bit of math here. Our yearly membership is  regularly $105, but with the sale applied, then  

it comes down to about $79. And if you break that  down into a monthly fee, then that works out only  

to about $6 and 60 cents a month, which I think is  really quite affordable. I would challenge you to  

find a better value for that, where you get access  to hundreds of interesting lessons and helpful  

study guides and speaking classes and more.  Like it really is just a wonderful value. And  

of course, we really, really appreciate all of our  members for your support. Without our membership  

community, Culips wouldn't exist. We wouldn't be  around. So, if one of your goals is to level up  

your English fluency in 2025, now is the best time  to sign up. So just visit the website Culips.com  

and you can do that. And I can't wait to welcome  you to the Culips member community in 2025. So,  

with that announcement out of the way, it's time  to get started with this episode in earnest. And  

what I'm going to talk about today is my plan for  2025, some of the goals and things that I would  

like to accomplish in this new year. So, let's get  started. Here we go. Enjoy. When I was younger,  

I really, really enjoyed the new year. Throughout  my 20s and thirties, New Year's Day was one of my  

favorite days of the year. And actually, when I'm  thinking about it, that really hasn't changed. I  

love the new year. It's a great time for a fresh  start, for a reset, and for getting our priorities  

in order. I wish I could have the motivation  that I have on January 1st every day of the  

year. I think if that were the case, I would be  just a super, ultra-productive person. And yeah,  

I don't know, for whatever reason, New Year's  Day is a good boost. It's a good push to get us  

moving forward with some of the things that we  want to accomplish in life. So, although that  

hasn't changed for me, I still love January the  1st as being a real motivator. I would say that  

I've scaled down the goals that I have for myself  each year. Maybe as I get older, I'm starting to  

be more realistic with how much I can achieve in  a year. And I think having a narrower focus about  

what I do want to achieve can help me to actually  achieve some things. Before, I just would set so  

many New Year's resolutions that it was hard  to follow through on all of them. So, over the  

last couple of years, I've been narrowing down my  New Year's resolutions to a few key areas where I  

really want to see some improvement and growth.  And so that's what I'm going to share here with  

you today, because I think some of my New Year's  resolutions and perhaps some of your New Year's  

resolutions will actually align and overlap. And  it's great that we have this community here at  

Culips where we all share one similar goal, and  that is to improve with our English. In my case,  

I'm learning Korean as a second language, but I'm  right in there with you. I'm learning a difficult  

second language and I'm studying hard, working  hard. And that's actually what motivates me to  

a great extent here at Culips is my own language  learning journey. I know how difficult it is and  

how much work and effort it takes. And I want to  help you with your language learning journey. So,  

to a great extent, it's weird, but the Korean  language is helping me teach the English language.  

And yeah, this is the flow of inspiration for  Culips. So anyways, I think we have that language  

learning goal in common. And let me just talk  about Korean while I'm on the subject here for a  

moment. That, of course, is one of my major goals  for 2025 is just to keep hammering away at it. I  

think I've talked about this over the last couple  of years here at Culips during the New Year's  

show, and that is my major success with Korean is  just not quitting. And I know that can sound maybe  

not so inspiring, but I really think that when you  are learning a second language, spending time with  

the language and interacting with it daily is so,  so important. Again, this is one of the reasons  

why I'm making this kind of content for you guys  here listening to Culips is that you need to spend  

time with the language. You need to get it in  your head. You need to be exposed to it. And these  

are all the things that you need to do in order to  become fluent. It's a vital step. And without it,  

you can't really achieve any high level of  fluency. So, when I say I'm proud of myself  

for not quitting at Korean, that just means that I  spend time with the language every day. Of course,  

I'm very lucky and blessed that I have a native  speaker wife who I live with, who, of course,  

I can speak with every day. That is really  great. But that's only part of the solution.  

I think maybe many of you out there, you're  thinking, well, if I had a partner that was  

a native speaker, I could get fluent in English  so quickly. I can tell you that's not really the  

case because you find yourself just talking about  the same things day in, day out. And yeah, it's  

not great. I mean, it's not bad. It's definitely  an advantage. Don't get me wrong. But at the same  

time, it's not that miracle cure all that we might  expect it to be. So, I try to do lots of different  

reading with Korean, watch different TV shows in  the language, listen to podcasts and, of course,  

speak as much as possible with other people when  I get the opportunity as well. But for 2025 here,  

going into the future, I'm just going to resolve  and double down to spend a lot of time with Korean  

every day and not really to stress too much about  anything else other than spending time with the  

language. I don't have a goal of like, I must read  15 novels or I must watch 20 movies in Korean or  

anything like that. I find for me at this point,  those kinds of goals just stress me out because  

my life does go through some very, very busy  times and sometimes that are less busy. And I  

find that setting a marker like that is really,  really difficult for me. So instead of having  

these goals where I must read X amount of novels  in Korean or spend X amount of hours studying,  

instead, I'm just going to make a conscious  effort to interact with the language every  

day. And to as much as I can replace English  with Korean. So, if I feel really, really lazy,  

maybe I want to watch some English YouTube. Well,  can I just switch it over to Korean YouTube and  

spend some time vegging out and watching a Korean  video instead of an English video? Sometimes this  

is not so easy because it requires effort  and I want to relax, right? I don't want to  

spend mental energy when I'm trying to relax,  but I think these are some of the steps that  

you really need to do to make Korean or for  me, in my case, Korean and for you, English,  

more of a part of your lifestyle and to make those  big jumps in your fluency by incorporating, adding  

the language into your regular routine each day.  So, I'm going to keep hammering away at that. I've  

set myself a long-term goal with Korean. I'm 40  years old right now at the time of this recording.  

And I figure that by the time I'm 50 years old,  I would like to stop studying Korean actively and  

move on to another language. I think either French  or Japanese is where my heart is and where I would  

like to spend some time with. So, I'm going to  spend my 40s really spending time with Korean,  

actively studying. And I figure after 10 years,  if I haven't, if I haven't hit the fluency level  

that I want to, then I probably never will. And  I can start spending a little bit of extra time  

with another language. Who knows? But that's  my kind of long-term goal with Korean. So, I'm  

just going to keep hammering away at Korean. And  that's one of my main goals for 2025. Speaking of  

hammering away. Let me talk about the other area  of my life where I'm very interested in improving,  

and that is running. If you're a regular listener  of Culips, you'll know that I enjoy running. It's  

my main form of exercise and it's one of my  hobbies. And I run maybe a marathon or two  

marathons a year over the last couple of years.  That has been the case, at least. And usually,  

a couple of smaller races as well, maybe a half  marathon or a 10K. And so, I enjoy running for  

exercise and for the competitive nature of it,  competing mostly against myself. But as a very  

competitive person, sometimes during a race,  passing other runners as well feels very good.  

It's really motivating for me. And at the 2024  Seoul Marathon, I was finally able to beat my  

longtime goal of completing a marathon in under  three hours. And for 2025, I want to bring that  

time down just a little bit to two hours and 55  minutes. So, completing a marathon as a sub 2:55,  

I think that's my goal for 2025. I'll have to  bring my time down just by about a minute and  

a half. So, I don't think that's unrealistic.  Of course, as a 40-year-old guy, I'm past my  

athletic prime, unfortunately. And so, I think  there's a limit to how fast I can go, but I want  

to find where is that limit. I want to try and do  my best. And again, it's one of these things where  

the more time you can invest into it, the bigger  results you can get. I think running and language  

learning are similar in that regard. But time is  always the issue. And how can I find those extra  

hours? There's a YouTuber that I enjoy. He makes  running content and his username is Ran to Japan,  

I believe. And he's a really funny guy. He's from  the UK, but he actually moved to Japan to run in  

Japan and learn from Japanese runners because they  have a really amazing running culture in Japan  

with lots and lots of really fast runners. And so,  he's this funny young guy and he moved to Japan to  

start running and he documents his journey there.  And one of his slogans for running is work harder,  

not smarter. And I think what his point is there  is that you can learn about all of these different  

running techniques and running strategies and  you can use new technology to help you. But at  

the end of the day, there's no replacement for  putting in time and putting in effort. And so,  

his slogan for running and he's an extremely  fast runner. He is almost at the elite level,  

just like a little bit outside of the ultra-elite,  like Olympic level for marathoning almost. So,  

he's very high-level runner and his slogan there,  work harder, not smarter, I think is kind of a  

good one. It's a joke, of course. He's not saying  to be stupid out there, but I think the key point  

is true in that if you want to see improvement  with your running, you need to run a lot,  

just like language learning. If you want to  see improvement with your language learning,  

with your English learning, in my case, Korean  learning, we need to spend a lot of time. There's  

no replacement for putting in time and effort. So  that's my goal with running a sub 2:55 for 2025.  

I'll be running the Seoul Marathon in March here,  and I hope I can repeat my past glory of the sub  

three in 2024. So, we'll see how it goes. Please  cheer me on and I'm going to try my darndest,  

try my hardest to hit that goal. All right, what  else? Let's talk about Culips goals, because this  

is another area of my life that really involves  you as a member of the Culips community and as a  

listener to the Culips podcast. So, we have tons  of goals. I expect 2025 to be a really huge year  

for us. We've been putting in a lot of effort  behind the scenes, and I hope that I'll have  

some announcements that I can make about this  soon. But there are some huge changes happening  

here at Culips that I think are going to be really  great for everyone who learns English with Culips.  

It's going to be a gigantic step forward in how we  do things at Culips and how you will be learning  

English with us. I think it's just going to get  better and better and better. And I'm working  

hard to make it better and better and better for  everyone. So, some of the things I made a list  

here of some of the things that we want to do for  2025. Of course, in 2024, we introduced speaking  

classes, and these have been just so awesome. And  one of the best things we've ever done at Culips,  

in my opinion, all Culips members are able to join  up to three classes per week. And what we do is we  

get together and we just chat about a recent  Culips episode. And so, this has been just so  

fun. We have Culips members from all around the  world. I host one of the classes each week and  

we have members from Asia, from Europe,  from South America, from North America,  

from the Mideast. I mean, really, it's global.  And so, to connect with you guys and talk with you  

guys is just so fun. And to get to know you and  make friends with you as well is just wonderful.  

And I think this is just also a really lovely way  to learn English. First, you listen to the podcast  

episode and then later you get to talk about the  content and what you heard, and you get to share  

your opinion, your voice, your thoughts. And so,  it's the total package for English learning. You  

get the listening, you get the vocabulary and  grammar study with the transcript and going  

deep into the study guide. And then you get the  speaking practice with the small group classes as  

well. So, we're hoping to expand these and offer  even more options for the speaking classes for  

our members going into 2025 and maybe even some  specialized speaking classes. I think one of our  

members suggested that a presentation class could  be really fun. And I like that idea of having a  

presentation class or maybe each week a member  or two makes a presentation and everyone is free  

to join, and we can listen to the presentation and  then ask questions. And it could be really a great  

opportunity for practice your English speaking  and formal presentation making as well. I love  

that idea. Maybe we'd have more leveled classes  so that if you are a lower level or intermediate  

level or advanced level, you could join the class  that best fits your level and so that you could  

feel comfortable interacting with members who  are at a similar level to you. Of course, we're  

going to still have some classes for everyone,  but I think those leveled classes, in addition  

to the free for all classes, could be really  fun and a nice thing for a lot of you. Also,  

we're planning to introduce courses, Culips  courses. So, this has been something that has  

been requested for a long, long time by many, many  people having courses for grammar, pronunciation,  

culture, maybe current events, and current  topics. And we're planning to make that kind  

of course material available for our members as  well in 2025. So, we've got big plans for Culips  

courses. And also, one of the highlights for 2024  for me. And I talked about this in the recap,  

2024 recap episode that I recorded with Kassy. But  spoiler alert, one of the things I talked about in  

that episode is that the meetup in Osaka in July  of 2024 was one of the highlights of the year for  

me. So, we met up with Culips listeners in Osaka.  We had a great time hanging out and spending  

time together. And it was just so nice for me to  connect with Culips listeners. And I'd love to do  

more meetups into 2025 as well. And so definitely  here in Korea, my home base. We're going to have  

a meetup in early 2025, I hope by the spring.  Definitely. Let's do it. So, if you're a listener  

in Korea and you'd like to meet up with me and  hopefully I can convince Kassy maybe to join me  

as well, I'll have to check with her, but it would  be awesome for us to do a meet up here, probably  

in the Seoul, Gyeonggi-do area. I think that is  probably the most convenient for most listeners  

in Korea and definitely for me. So, yeah, Seoul  meet up in 2025. And also, I haven't confirmed the  

schedule yet, but it looks likely that I will be  spending a little bit of time in Tokyo in February  

of 2025. And if any listeners out there who are  in Tokyo would like to help me plan a meet up  

or organize a meet up, I think, why not? Let's do  it. I really relied on the Culips community's help  

to plan the Osaka meet up. And I would really need  to do the same for a Tokyo meet up. But if you are  

out there listening and you are a Culips fan and  you would like to help us organize a simple, small  

meet up in Tokyo sometime in February, please send  me an email [email protected] or you can DM me  

through our Discord server. And if we get enough  interest, let's make it happen. And of course,  

we're still going to keep making awesome English  lessons and podcast episodes for you into 2025  

as well, as much interesting content as possible  to help you achieve your English fluency goals in  

2025. And I also have some goals that are outside  of my hobbies to an extent and are more personal  

in nature that I want to do for 2025. Number  one, I want to do something social and that  

gets me out of the house from time to time here  in Korea. To an extent, I think I work a lot and  

I'm doing a lot of my hobbies like running. And  these are pretty solo activities. And it would be  

nice to integrate a little bit more into Korean  society by doing something social with Koreans  

that's not related to English education or English  learning. I spend a lot of time with people here  

all the time, but most of it is related to English  education and English teaching. I think it would  

just be nice to live my life here in a way that's  similar to how Koreans live. And so, I'm thinking  

about doing something like maybe joining a running  club or a hiking club or something like this,  

maybe a volunteer activity, something that gets  me active and able to meet some new friends and  

just something that's not like me being an English  teacher all the time. I think it would be nice to  

turn off that side of my brain for a little bit.  So, we'll see. I have to make the time for it.  

There's a reason why I haven't done that yet. I've  been thinking about doing this for years and years  

and years. And it's just hard to find time in my  schedule. So, I'm going to try and make more of  

an active effort in 2025 to free up some time for  these kinds of activities. I think it would just  

be good for my mental well-being, my physical  well-being and living life as an immigrant here  

in Korea. I think that's an important step to  do as well. So, I'm going to try and do that.  

And another thing that I would like to do maybe in  2025, my wife and I have been talking about this  

a little bit on and off. And yeah, the first  thing that we want to do is maybe get a car.  

My wife especially has been saying, you know, as  non-drivers... We both have... I think there's an  

expression in the Korean language where they call  it a closet driver's license. It's like you have  

your driver's license, but you don't use it. So,  it's almost like you've hung it up in the closet  

and it's just sitting there. My wife and I, we  both have these closet driver's licenses where  

we're licensed to drive, but we don't have a car.  And public transportation in Seoul is just really,  

really convenient. So, it's not been something  that's necessary for us. But we've been talking  

about, like, you know, the older we get now  we're in our 40s, if we keep pushing this off  

and pushing this off, it just gets harder to  get into driving again. And if you remember,  

not too long ago, I had a running injury where  I injured my knee and I had to hobble around  

the city. My wife and I were talking about at that  point, like, thankfully, it was just a very minor  

injury and it healed quickly. But what if it was  something more serious? What if I broke my back  

or something and I needed a car? I need my wife  to drive me around to the hospital or something.  

This would be really, really important. And I  would hate for her to suddenly have to just start  

learning how to drive really quickly in that kind  of situation because there was an emergency or  

something like that. So, we've been talking about,  you know, don't delay, act today. And we might as  

well just get this going and start driving more  often and hopefully get a car for ourselves.  

And I think there's advantages and disadvantages  to driving. But at the end of the day, it's just  

like anything. You've got to get your time in  as a driver. The more time you spend driving,  

the better driver you are. And we might as well  get started with that in 2025. So, I think that's  

something that we're going to do. And we've been  also talking, maybe me talking a little bit more  

than my wife. I'm not sure, but I would love to  get another dog. We lost our dog, Pinky, about  

a year and a half ago. And it was a huge loss for  us. We really miss him a lot. But I really enjoyed  

having a dog when we had our sweet Pinky Boy, and  I would love to get another one. And of course,  

it's a huge time commitment. It's a huge  commitment just in general. But sometimes  

my wife and I, we both follow animal shelters on  Instagram, and I have some animal shelter apps  

and you see all these dogs out there that need a  home. And we have a home, and we have, I think,  

a lot of love that we can give to another dog. So,  we'll see. We'll see if it happens. But I think it  

would be awesome to get another dog in 2025. So,  we'll see. I'm not sure what the future will hold,  

but I'd love to get another dog sooner than  later. So those are my goals for 2025. I'm  

going to try my best to achieve them and to stay  on track. I said at the start of the episode that  

I wasn't going to set too many goals, but kind of  in retrospect, I guess I do have a lot of things  

I want to achieve in 2025. But I think they're  all doable. And now that we're at the end of  

the episode, it's time for me to share this week's  completion code with you. And simply what I'd like  

you to do for this week's completion code is just  tell me about your New Year's resolution, your New  

Year's goal for 2025. Share that in a comment on  our Instagram or our Discord server or our YouTube  

page. And that will signal to me and our entire  Culips community that you listened all the way  

to the end of this episode, that you completed  it, that you did it. And of course, great job  

for doing that. Thank you for spending some time  with me learning English this week and this year,  

I hope going into 2025, you'll be here with me. Of  course, I'll be here each and every week to help  

you with your English learning journey. So, yeah,  share your New Year's resolutions with me and our  

community. I can't wait to hear what your goals  for 2025 are. So that's it for me for this week,  

everyone. Please take care, have a great week  of English learning up ahead. And don't forget  

about our New Year's sale happening until the  15th of January. It's the cheapest and best  

time to sign up and become a Culips member.  All right. Talk to you next time. Bye bye.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
episode /ˈɛpɪsoʊd/ B1	noun - a part of a series of broadcasts or podcasts
fantastic /fænˈtæstɪk/ B1	adjective - extraordinarily good or attractive
discount /ˈdɪskaʊnt/ B1	noun - a deduction from the usual cost of something
fluency /ˈfluːənsi/ B2	noun - the ability to speak or write a language easily and well
cultural /ˈkʌltʃərəl/ B1	adjective - relating to the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a society
vocabulary /vəˈkæbjʊləri/ B1	noun - the range of words someone knows
communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/ B1	verb - to share or exchange information, ideas, or feelings
membership /ˈmɛmbərʃɪp/ B1	noun - the state of being a member of a group or organization
interactive /ˌɪntərˈæktɪv/ B2	adjective - allowing two-way communication between a user and a system
benefit /ˈbɛnɪfɪt/ B1	noun - an advantage or profit gained from something
community /kəˈmjuːnɪti/ B1	noun - a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common
regularly /ˈrɛɡjʊlərli/ B1	adverb - at fixed intervals
motivation /ˌmoʊtɪˈveɪʃən/ B2	noun - the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way
achieve /əˈtʃiːv/ B1	verb - successfully bring about or reach (a desired objective or result) by effort, skill, or courage
realistic /ˌriːəˈlɪstɪk/ B2	adjective - having or showing a practical and accurate view of reality
narrower /ˈnæroʊər/ B1	adjective - smaller in extent, range, or width
improvement /ɪmˈpruːvmənt/ B1	noun - the action of making something better

Key Grammar Structures

• If you're new here to Culips, let me explain about our bonus episode series.

  ➔ Conditional Clause (Type 0/1) - 'If + present simple, present simple/will + base verb'

  ➔ The sentence uses a conditional clause to state what will happen **if** someone is new to the podcast. It's a general truth or a likely outcome.

• I think if that were the case, I would be just a super, ultra-productive person.

  ➔ Second Conditional - 'If + past simple, would + base verb'

  ➔ This sentence expresses an **unlikely** or **hypothetical** situation. The speaker imagines what **would** happen **if** they had motivation every day.

• I've been narrowing down my New Year's resolutions to a few key areas where I really want to see some improvement and growth.

  ➔ Present Perfect Continuous - 'have/has been + verb-ing'

  ➔ The phrase '**I've been narrowing down**' indicates an action that started in the past and is **still continuing** up to the present. It emphasizes the process of reducing the number of resolutions.

• I think some of my New Year's resolutions and perhaps some of your New Year's resolutions will actually align and overlap.

  ➔ Modal Verbs (will) - expressing future possibility and prediction

  ➔ **Will** indicates a prediction about the future – that the resolutions might be similar. The use of '**actually**' adds emphasis to the likelihood of alignment.

• I know how difficult it is and how much work and effort it takes.

  ➔ Correlative Conjunctions ('how...so...')

  ➔ The structure '**how** difficult it is **and how** much work it takes' uses correlative conjunctions to connect two parallel clauses, emphasizing both the difficulty and the effort required.