They’d invite over some friends, usually another family that had kids around the same age as my brother, sister, and me, and mom would cook a big dinner and we’d sit at the dining room table instead of the kitchen table, and we’d use the fancy dishes that were reserved exclusively for company. In fact, that’s what my parents would call their guests, company.

They’d say things like, “We’ve got company coming over next weekend.” There’s actually a really funny bit by the American stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco about company coming over to his house when he was younger. By the way, a bit is what stand-up comedians called jokes. And this bit really cracked me up and made me laugh really hard.

And I know that comedy in a second language can be one of the more difficult things to understand because of the speaking speed and the cultural references and the slang that comedians use. But if you’re up for the challenge and you want to check out the joke, you can find it on YouTube. Just search for the video called “Doorbell”.

I think that’s what the bit is called, “Doorbell”, and you’ll be able to find it and I’ll also make sure to leave a link to that joke in the description if you’d like to give it a listen and laugh along just like I did. So, I grew up with company coming over to my house fairly often, but these days I don’t really host or entertain guests at all. It’s really, really rare. And to be honest, neither do my friends.

It’s not like we don’t want to see each other or spend time together or anything like that, but it’s more like hosting a dinner party at your house is an awful lot of work. Well, last weekend, my friends and I found a way to get together and have a dinner party, but no one was the host, and everyone had a great time. My name is Andrew, and this is bonus episode number 46 of the Culips English Podcast.

Today, I’m going to talk to you about that dinner party that I had over the weekend and what made it so fun and special. And as I’m telling you the story, I’m going to explain and break down any interesting or difficult vocabulary so that you can understand as much as possible without having to run for the dictionary.

I’ll also give you some updates about what’s new this week here at Culips and at the end of the episode I’m going to teach you in detail about a useful English idiom that you’ll hear me use today. There’s a 100% free transcript for this episode that you can get by following the link in the description or by visiting our website which is Culips.com.

Now the transcript comes in an interactive version that’s great for studying with on smartphones, and computers, and tablets, and there’s also a PDF version that’s perfect for printing off if you’re the kind of person that likes to hold a physical paper transcript in your hands. And with that being said, I’m going to get started now by telling my story about my weekend dinner party. Here we go. A moment ago, I said that my friends don’t have dinner parties very often.

And I think I can explain why that is. You see, I live in Korea, and here in Korea, space is at a premium. It’s a small country, and there are a lot of people. And that means, in general, homes are small too. In fact, most people live in an apartment of some sort rather than a house. And because of this, most people don’t have room to host more than two or three guests at their home.

Now, it’s not that I’ve never been to a dinner party at my friends’ places here in Korea, but it would have to be a pretty special occasion for this to happen. And when it does happen, my friends and I usually have to cram into a small apartment and sit on the floor because there isn’t enough room at the table. And to be honest with you, that isn’t really too weird to do in Korea because there is a floor-sitting culture here and it is pretty comfortable once you get used to it.

But the fact still remains that people generally live in small places and it’s just uncomfortable to host a lot of guests. Now in addition to small apartments, having company over to your house for dinner is a ton of work if you’re the host. Now personally, I enjoy entertaining and having company over to my house, but it’s exhausting. First, you have to clean, and opinions on this may differ, but I’m one of those people who, in general, is fairly clean and organized.

Of course, I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I think if you randomly stopped by my house at some moment where I wasn’t expecting you, maybe there’d be a chance that you’d notice that I hadn’t dusted the bookshelf for too long, or maybe the bed wouldn’t be made, or maybe you’d find my jacket thrown across the chair instead of being hung up neatly in the closet. Something like that, but my house would be generally clean.

However, if my wife and I are having guests over, we can’t let any of that slide. We can’t have a jacket thrown across the chair, or a dusty bookshelf or anything like that. By the way, to let something slide means to excuse or ignore something. So, in other words, I guess if I’m having company or guests come over to my place, then I just need to make sure that my house looks really clean. And my wife is also like this. Maybe even a little bit stricter than I am even.

So, if we have guests coming over to our house in the evening, then we usually start cleaning the house in the morning so that it can be looking its best when they arrive. Now actually doing that is kind of unnecessary and a little bit silly because my friends couldn’t really care less if my house looked perfectly clean or a little bit disorganized. I don’t think that they would care at all, but it’s still something that we feel like we have to do.

And on top of all the cleaning there’s also the cooking, right? Now I’m not a gourmet chef, but if you invite someone over for dinner, well then you have to serve them some dinner. Now personally, I think all the steps involved in the food prep process are pretty fun, except for maybe the last step, but I’ll explain that in a moment. We’ll start at the start. And the first step is to plan the menu.

You have to think of what you can serve your guests and you have to consider what your guests’ dietary requirements are and what they like to eat and enjoy. And then in addition to that, it has to be in the range of your cooking skills, right? You don’t wanna cook something that is too difficult to prepare. Now, once the menu is set, then you have to do the shopping and luckily here in Korea, online shopping, even for groceries is really super convenient.

So, if you’re strapped for time, strapped for time, strapped for time means that you don’t have much spare time and you’re really busy. So, if you’re strapped for time, then online shopping is the way to go. It’s a great option. And then the next step is actually preparing the food itself, which is probably the most fun part of the whole thing. Like I said, I’m not a great cook, but I’m also not the worst cook in the world. And it’s fun to just turn some music on and cook away.

But of course, cooking for a group of people is always much more challenging than just cooking for yourself, because you have to time everything correctly so that all the food is ready to go and ready to serve at the same time. And then finally, you get to serve the food and enjoy the meal with your friends and your company. So, although the cooking process, for me at least, is a fun part of the dinner party experience, I think for a lot of people, they don’t like that.

And it can also be stressful sometimes too, especially if you burn something or mess something up when you’re cooking or even worse, if your guests don’t seem to enjoy the food, that’s never a fun situation to be in. Another thing that’s not very fun is having to pay for everything if you’re the host. Serving food to six to seven to eight people isn’t cheap. And of course, as the host, I would never expect my guests to pay any money to eat food at my house, right? That would just be ridiculous.

And of course, because my friends are good people, they always offer to give me some money, which I have to refuse, of course, no, no, no. But at the end of the day, hosting a dinner party isn’t cheap, and it’s not something that my wife and I can personally afford to do too, too often.

A kind of interesting cultural difference, I think, between Korea and Canada, and Korean people correct me if I’m wrong here, because maybe I am wrong about this, but in Canada, this kind of party seems to be really common, and I haven’t noticed it as much here in Korea and that kind of party is a potluck dinner party. So, in Canada, many people, I think especially younger people, like students, when I was a university student, I remember going to many of these potluck parties.

So, a potluck dinner is when every guest to the party brings one dish with them and then everybody shares the food. And in theory, I think this is a great idea. But in reality, at least at the potluck parties that I went to that I can seem to recall, in reality, it wasn’t so great because there always seemed to be that one guest who, you know, only brings Jell-O but then eats a ton of the other food. Or a guest who brings a friend with them and together they only bring a small loaf of bread or something.

And I don’t know, maybe it’s just because at that time in my life, when I was a student, all of my friends were also students or starving artists and we never had much money, but at those potluck parties I always remember leaving them and going back home still feeling hungry and looking for something to eat when I arrived back home to satisfy that hunger.

So, I guess for all of the reasons I’ve mentioned here, hosting dinner parties just isn’t too common in my circle of friends, right? There’s the cleaning, there’s the cooking, and there’s the cost. So instead of gathering at someone’s house, when I do hang out with my group of friends, we usually just meet at restaurants when we want to eat dinner together. And of course, that’s awesome, right? You don’t have to worry about any of the cooking or any of the cleaning.

But it has a different feel to a dinner party that’s hosted at someone’s home, right? You lose that intimacy, and you can’t do things like play games or listen to the music that you want to listen to and maybe even depending on the restaurant, you can’t really stay for that long either. But recently, one of my friends thought of a great solution to all of these obstacles that go into blocking us from having a fun dinner party together and that is the party room. The party room.

Do you have these in your country? I don’t know. They might just be a South Korean thing. If they aren’t and you have them in your country, let me know because I would be very curious. But here in Korea, at least party rooms are a thing. They do exist and let me explain what they are. So, a party room is essentially just an apartment or space that you can rent out for a few hours.

Think of it as like Airbnb, but instead of renting the apartment for the whole night, you only rented out for the evening or for the day. So, recently, one of my friends suggested that our friend group get together and have a dinner party in one of these rentable party rooms. Unfortunately, my friend group is spread out in all different corners of Seoul, but we tried to find one that was central to all of us so that nobody would have to travel too far.

There’s actually a website that you can use to find and book party rooms, and there are so many different options in terms of sizes and amenities, and we ended up booking a party room that was on the top floor of a small four-story building, and the party room took up the entire floor, and the other floors in the building were actually restaurants, so we didn’t really have to worry about bothering other residents, you know, with like our talking or anything like that.

I guess that’s something else that you have to consider when you live in an apartment is that you don’t want to be too loud, right? Especially if you live in a place with thin walls because if you laugh too much or talk too loudly, and let’s be honest, when you’re together with your good friends it’s really, really easy to laugh loud and talk loudly even if you’re not trying to be loud, right? It just sort of naturally ends up happening and that can be annoying to your neighbors.

But we didn’t have to worry about that at all because there were no other people living in that building. Now the room itself was like a large open loft. So, there were actually only two rooms, one big main room and then a smaller bathroom as well. And in the main room, one corner of it was the kitchen and then in the rest of the room there were some sofas set up and there was a projector and a stereo so it was perfect.

And although we could have cooked in the kitchen, that was an option that was available to us, we figured that it would be really inconvenient to bring all of our own ingredients with us, so instead we just ordered takeout food. There were so many restaurants in the area, so we just ordered from a few different restaurants.

Got a little bit of this, a little bit of that, we picked up the food ourselves, and brought it back to the party room, and it ended up working out great, and was also a lot more affordable than going to a restaurant, or even to be honest, cooking for ourselves. As for the party itself, well, it was great to spend some time with my friends and catch up with them. We rented the party room from 5pm until 11pm and the time just seemed to fly by.

I think I’ve mentioned here on Culips before that it’s really difficult these days for me to get together with my friends. We all have really different schedules and lifestyles and finding a time and a place that works for everyone can be a big challenge. And overall, that’s unfortunate. But the good thing about that, if there is a good thing, is that we always have lots to catch up on and many stories to share with each other when we do see each other again.

Now my friends were most curious about how my recent trip to Canada went. And of course, I told them all about it. And I also brought some unusual Canadian snacks for them to try out that I brought back with me from Canada. Some kinds of jerky. I brought buffalo jerky and also venison jerky. So, we tried those out and they seemed to enjoy it. By the way, venison is what we call the meat from a deer. So, it was cool to introduce my friends to that new food that they had never tried before.

Something else that was really fun that we did together was listening to music. As you guys know, I’m really into music and so are my friends. My friends are all music people. So, there was a stereo in the party room that we could use to connect our phones to using Bluetooth. So, we all took some turns DJing and played some music for each other.

One of my friends played some music by this band that he discovered while he was traveling in Thailand, actually, and there’s kind of a funny story behind it. I guess a few years ago he was there on vacation, and he had rented a little motor scooter to travel around with and get around with while he was in Thailand.

And I’m not exactly sure what area he was in in the country, but he was in Thailand somewhere and one day he was just driving around on the scooter, and he started to hear some live music playing from somewhere.

And to him the music sounded really good, and he thought oh maybe there’s like a festival or a concert or something happening in the area, so he just followed his ears to where the music was coming from and when he finally found the source of the music, he noticed that and it wasn’t a concert, it wasn’t a festival, it was just a band practicing. So, he stuck around for a little bit and listened to these guys jammin’ away, and he even talked to the band for a little bit.

They introduced themselves and told my friend a little bit about their band. And my friend really liked their tunes and thought, wow, this is a really cool experience, just randomly coming across this band in Thailand on vacation. And so he went back to his hotel, I guess, at the end of the day and tried to search and find this band. But as luck would have it, he couldn’t remember the band name. Like he didn’t write it down for whatever reason. I’m not sure.

Probably should have written it down, right? But he didn’t write it down and he couldn’t find the band later when he tried to search for it. So ever since then, and like I said, this was a couple years ago, he’s been trying to find this band online and it hasn’t been easy for him. He’s just been at a dead end. And to be at a dead end means you’re stuck and that you can’t make any progress with the project that you’re doing.

So, he’s been at a dead end in his search until just recently, like the week before we met, he finally found them after years of searching. And he played this music for me, and I have to be honest, it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea but I really enjoyed the story and I know just how satisfying that feels.

Like probably you can relate to you know when you’re trying to find something or remember something, like have you ever tried to remember someone’s name or some random piece of information and your mind is just blank and you know you know it but you can’t remember in that moment? But then a little bit later, finally, you remember it? Isn’t that feeling just amazing?

In my opinion, it’s one of the most satisfying feelings there is, so I can imagine that my friend just felt so much even better than that after several years of hunting for that band that he randomly encountered in Thailand. So anyways, the rest of the evening, we just spent hanging out and chatting and listening to music until around 10:30 in the evening. And then it was time to clean and tidy up. We didn’t have any dishes to do because we just took out our food and we had takeout containers.

But of course, because of that we did have quite a bit of recycling to take care of. So, we made sure that all of the recycling was washed out and sorted correctly before we left, and then we all headed to the nearest subway station so we could make our way back to our respective homes and 30 minutes later I was home and getting ready to go to bed.

So, all in all it was a fun night spent with good company and I really have to tip my hat to my friend who came up with this idea of renting a party room in the first place. That’s a good expression I just said there. I really have to tip my hat to my friend. Do you know what that means? Have you heard that expression before? To tip your hat to someone means to give credit or praise or just recognize someone for something good that they accomplished.

Come to think about it, this expression probably originates from way back in the day, like maybe a hundred or two hundred even years ago when it was much, much more common for men to wear hats in their daily lives. In fact, you could go onto YouTube and type in “New York in the 1930s”, for example, and you can find old videos of people walking around in the city at that time, and you’ll notice a lot of the men wear full suits, business suits, but also hats as well.

That was kind of a common part of business fashion, I suppose, back in the day, which we don’t really do anymore. But I think this expression dates back to that time when men often did wear hats in their daily lives, because if you were walking down the street and maybe across the street on the other side of the street, you saw a friend or an acquaintance of yours, in that moment instead of waving, you would likely just kind of pick up your hat and tip your hat to your acquaintance.

And I think this is where that expression comes from because we would acknowledge seeing somebody that we recognized on the street by tipping our hats back in the day. And these days, now we just use this expression to say that we want to recognize or thank or give credit to somebody for doing something good.

So, I have to tip my hat to my friend because thanks to her, we were able to have a fun dinner party, but no one was shouldered with the responsibility of doing all the cleaning and cooking and all of the cost that comes along with hosting a dinner party.

Speaking of cost, because we were able to rent this room together, it was really easy to share the cost of the party evenly between everyone and having a set check out time was also really nice because it meant that we could all make the subway and get home on the subway before it finished for the night. So, I don’t know, maybe I’m sounding like a party room salesman here.

I’m not sure, hopefully I’m not too much, but just overall I thought the party room was a great solution to the many difficulties of hosting a dinner party that I have and that my friends have. And I’m sure we’ll use another one again sometime in the future. But what about you? Have you ever rented a party room? Would you ever consider doing it? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment on our website, Culips.com, on the page for this episode and let me know what you think.

If you’re a Culips member, I have an important announcement for you. The next edition of the Culips live stream will be happening coming up pretty soon on Tuesday, April 4th at 8pm Korean Standard Time. The theme for the stream is “How do you study with Culip?” And together we are going to share our different study methods and learning techniques with each other. I’m really excited for this stream, and I can’t wait to hear what you guys have to say.

If you’re a Culips member, I would really love you to join me for this stream. We had a fantastic turnout last month for our live stream and I hope we will have another great turnout on April the 4th. So, to join the live stream and to participate in the community conversation, then just log into your Culips account and follow the link from the Dashboard.

And if you’re not a Culips member but you’d like more information about all the benefits and bonuses you can get by becoming a member, then just visit our website, Culips.com for all of the details and to sign up.

We also released a brand-new Simplified Speech episode this week about a very interesting topic actually, which is table manners. This episode featured the return of Suzanne, and it was so nice to have Suzanne back with us again here at Culips after she had to take a long break for personal reasons, but it’s so nice to have her back.

And Suzanne actually really cracked me up and made me laugh really hard with this funny story that she shared during the episode about a rude guest that she had at one of her dinner parties. Weirdly enough, I guess the theme for this week at Culips is dinner parties. So, if you haven’t heard that episode yet, make sure that you do so.

And if you’re a Culips member, make sure to check out the ad-free version of the episode, which you can download from our website, because in the ad-free version, there’s some extra bonus content at the end that’s exclusively for you. And now it’s time for this week’s vocabulary lesson.

Just a moment ago I shared a story about having a dinner party with my friends in a party room that we rented. And at the end of the story, I mentioned how awesome party rooms are because it means that no one is shouldered with the responsibility of having to host a party at their home and all of the cleaning, cooking, and cost that goes along with being the host of a party. The key expression for this episode is that interesting phrase that I used in that sentence “to be shouldered with something.”

To be shouldered with something. You know, shouldered just like your body part, right? Shouldered. Before we talk about the meaning of this expression, let’s rewind and go back to that part of the episode where I originally used that expression, to be shouldered with something, just so we can hear it used in context again. In fact, let’s do that right now. So here we go.

And now let’s talk about what to be shouldered with something means. So essentially, it means to take on or be responsible for something. And we often use it to describe situations where someone is burdened with a task or responsibility or problem that is difficult or challenging. So, for example, if a parent is shouldered with the responsibility of caring for their sick child, then it means that they have to take care of their child’s needs to make sure that the child gets better.

It’s really easy to mentally picture this expression, and I think doing so will help you to remember it. So, all you have to do is think of someone physically carrying a very heavy load on their shoulders. You know when you carry something heavy on your shoulders, that weight really presses down on your back and your shoulders and it’s really uncomfortable, right? And you’re kind of hunched over.

So, when we use this expression to be shouldered with something in its metaphorical sense, then it means that the responsibility or the burden is very significant and it’s heavy and it weighs heavy on the person who is carrying it. Like, it could be maybe a difficult or challenging task or maybe a problem that requires a lot of effort and attention.

So, the imagery of carrying a heavy load on one’s shoulders is what you should picture and it’s really great at describing that sense of responsibility and weight that someone feels when they’re shouldered with something. OK, so now that we know all about what to be shouldered with something means, let’s listen to some examples so we can learn how to use this expression in a natural way. I’ve prepared three examples for you, so let’s take a listen to the first one now. Here we go.

Let’s break this example sentence down. In this sentence, we hear the speaker say that he and his coworker were shouldered with the responsibility of organizing the company picnic. So, I guess they had to plan and organize the picnic for their company. Luckily enough, they were able to pull it off without any major hiccups. Which just means there were no problems and the picnic in the end was a success.

So, in this sentence then, the speaker is saying that He was shouldered with the responsibility, just meaning that he was the one that was responsible and in charge for doing the picnic planning.

Let’s break this example sentence down. In this example sentence, we hear about a doctor who is shoulder with making life or death decisions for her patients. So yeah, this is another context that we can use this expression in, right? Think of a doctor who is giving care to patients. Sometimes that doctor has to make some very serious decisions. And it could impact whether that patient survives or passes away.

So of course, I’ve never had to make a decision like that thankfully, but some doctors do indeed need to make decisions like that and that can weigh very heavily on you, right? That’s not an easy thing to do. That is a very, very serious responsibility. So that’s why we can use this expression to be shouldered with in this kind of situation.

Let’s break this final example sentence down. In this example, the speaker says that he was shouldered with the task of cleaning up the kitchen after the big Thanksgiving dinner. So maybe he had his family over for a big party on Thanksgiving and you know there’s just tons and tons of pots and pans and dishes and glasses and cutlery to wash after the party is over and everybody goes home. That’s a big job, right? That’s a big responsibility and he was shouldered with that task.

Meaning he was the one that was responsible for doing that cleanup job. So, as you can see, we can use this expression to be shouldered with to talk about really big important responsibilities like doctors making life and death decisions, but we can also use it to talk about smaller responsibilities or burdens like having to do the dishes after dinner, which I think you can agree is on a different level than the kind of responsibilities that the doctor has.

And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I’m going to take off, but it was so nice studying English with you here today, and congratulations on making it all the way to the end of this episode. Very nice work indeed. Take care, have a great week, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye!