Hello, and welcome to bonus episode number 70 of the Culips English Podcast. How is it going? I am your host, Andrew, and it's fantastic to be here with you for another English study session. I'm so glad that you could join me.

I'm recording this episode right now, it is 7:40 in the evening, and I'm usually not an evening podcast recorder. To be honest with you guys, I usually do most of the recording for Culips in the morning whenever possible.

Unless I'm recording with one of my cohosts, and I need to change my schedule a little bit to match their schedule. But for the most part, I usually try to record Culips earlier in the morning. So, this is a little bit of a change for me. And I've had a really long day and a long weekend in general.

As longtime listeners of the show will know very well, I'm Canadian, but I currently live in South Korea. And here in Korea this past weekend, we had one of the major Korean holidays, which is called Chuseok.

And in a nutshell, Chuseok is just an autumn harvest festival. And it happens for three days, it's a three-day holiday. But here in Korea, it's kind of nice for this Chuseok, for this year at least, it connects into some other holidays as well. So, most people in Korea actually get a six-day holiday this week.

So, it's quite nice. And I'm right in the middle of those six days now. But to celebrate Chuseok, my wife and I had her family over to the house today. So that was her brother and her sister-in-law and their two kids plus my in-laws, my wife's parents, so including my wife, and including me, that means there were eight people total.

And everybody came over for lunch. And my wife and I did our best to cook a delicious meal. To be honest, we also ordered a little bit of food as well, because our kitchen is a little bit small. So, we did, I'd say three fourths of the cooking ourselves. And then we ordered the other 25% of the food.

And yeah, it was awesome to have everybody over to our house. This was the first time that we had a big family gathering in our new house. So, it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

But of course, and many of you will know this already, that when you host a bunch of people over at your house, it's not really just the lunchtime, that you're busy, you're busy from the morning, until the evening. In the morning, you have to do all the prep for the lunch.

And then in the afternoon, you're busy actually eating the lunch and socializing and hanging out. And then once your guests go home, well, then you need to clean up and clean the kitchen and clean the house and make sure that everything is back to normal. So, an event like that is really an all-day event.

So, about an hour and a half ago, my wife and I finally finished doing the dishes. And then I took a little nap, and I just woke up from my nap and I feel great and energized. So, I thought I should hop behind the microphone and take advantage of this energy and record a bonus episode here.

So, here I am. It's funny growing up in Canada every Sunday, my aunt who is my dad's older sister would host a big family dinner at her house. And up until I was around nine or 10 years old, somewhere in there, we lived in the same place as my aunt, a suburb of Vancouver called Langley.

And as far as I remember, we'd do this almost every Sunday, maybe not every Sunday, but many Sundays, we would go over to her house on Sunday for a family dinner. And there would be, who knows? 15, 20, 25 people over at the house for a Sunday dinner.

All of my cousins, and aunts and uncles, and you know, the big extended family. And then even when I got older and my family moved to Kelowna, which is around a four-hour drive away from where my aunt lived.

Well, then still, if we were in town visiting, then we would always take part in the Sunday dinner as well. And it's like one of those things that at the time, you don't really realize how much work goes into hosting a big family dinner like that.

But now that I'm older and I have that experience myself, wow, then you just really feel another level of appreciation for all the work that goes into hosting an event like that. Even if it's just for your close family members, right? It's still a lot of work. So anyways, that is how I spent my day today.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about in this episode. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about a really great and totally, completely, 100%, out of the blue, surprise experience that I had recently. So, I'm going to get into that and share that story with you in just a moment.

But before I do, I want to take care of a little bit of housekeeping. You know, at the start of every program, I do have to do some housekeeping. And housekeeping, in this kind of context, doesn't refer to cleaning your house.

Instead, it refers to announcements or updates that you need to give at the start of a meeting or at the start of a podcast. So, I do always have a little bit of housekeeping that I need to do at the start of every Culips episode. So, let's get to the housekeeping now.

And the first announcement that I want to let you know about is the interactive transcript for this episode. And it is free for everybody to access whether you're a Culips member, or not a Culips member, it doesn't matter. It's free for everyone.

It comes in an interactive version, which is the one that I recommend, honestly. It's really cool, because you can click on any word in the transcript and hear the audio from that part of the episode. It works on your phone, and it works on your computer and your tablet. It's awesome.

Check it out just by following the link in the description. The next announcement that I have for you is about the Culips member monthly live stream. So it's going to be happening, let me just pull up my calendar here, on October the 5th.

So, this upcoming Thursday at 9pm Korean standard time, I'm going to be joined by our lovely discord mod and study guide writer, Alina. And we're going to have some fun with the Culips member community. Alina has prepared some trivia questions.

Actually, we did this last livestream and it was really fun guys. Alina goes back and just listens to some of the most recent Culips episodes, like from the last live stream up until now. And she picks out some trivia questions.

And we're going to ask you those questions, just to see how much you understood and how well you've been paying attention to Culips over the last month or so. So, we'll play the Culips trivia game together. And of course, we'll also be available to hang out and answer your questions.

And if you want to call in and chat with us as well, then that is totally an option that's available for you. But to participate and receive an invitation, you do have to be a Culips member. This is a benefit that comes along with being a Culips member.

And it's just our way to say thanks to our members for their support, and also to hang out and spend some time with our wonderful member community. So, the live stream this month is happening, like I said at 9pm on October the 5th. And it will be happening on our Discord server.

And the link to join the Discord is in the description for this episode. OK, final announcement is actually about Culips membership. So maybe you're wondering, what is a Culips membership? How do I join? How do I sign up?

Because you want to join the live stream, or you want to get some of the other great benefits that are available to you if you're a Culips member. So, we rely on members to support Culips because without our member community really Culips wouldn't exist.

It's the way that we can keep making English lessons for everyone, each and every week. And when you become a member, you'll get lots of amazing study tools that we've designed to help you improve your English fluency faster than ever. So, what are those? Well, you'll get access to our study guide library.

For each and every regular Culips episode, you'll get a study guide that has a word for word transcript of the episode and explanations of all the useful vocabulary. There are real world examples that will teach you how to use that vocabulary in a natural way.

There are quizzes and prompts that you can use for speaking practice or essay writing or diary practice. There's a lot of good stuff packed into each and every study guide. You'll also get ad-free audio.

And recently what we've been doing in a lot of the ad-free episodes is actually extending our conversations and giving you bonus content that is exclusive only to Culips members. So, you get like a little bit of extra content that is exclusive only for members in many episodes as well, especially a lot of the newer episodes.

This is kind of a newer feature that we've added recently. Plus, you'll get invitations to the live streams, like I mentioned, and also exclusive access to our members-only series, the Fluency Files, and even more. There are so many benefits and bonuses that you get when you are a member that I can't even list them all right now it would just take me too long.

So, to sign up and become a Culips member, visit Culips.com Or just follow the link that's in the description for this episode. OK, so now that all of that housekeeping is out of the way, it's time to get started with this episode in earnest.

So, here it is my story about this completely random, out of the blue, unexpected surprise event that happened to me just the other day. Here we go.

So just the other day I was going about my day. To go about your day just means to live your life doing your regular routine throughout your day. So I was at work, actually, and I was going about my day. And suddenly, I got a little vibration on my phone.

You know, when you get a new message and your phone's on vibrate mode, and it just goes buzzt. So, I checked my phone. And it was a text message from an unknown number. So, I was expecting that it would be a spam message. But when I opened it and read the text message, it wasn't a spam message at all.

It was a message from one of my friends. And I haven't asked him if I could use his name in the podcast, so I'm gonna give him a pseudonym. A pseudonym is a fake name. So, I'm going to use a fake name. Let's call him Kyle. So, I got a text message from Kyle.

And I opened it up, and it said, “Hey, this is Andrew, right? Long time, no see! It's Kyle. I'm here in Seoul for a business trip. And I heard that you live in Seoul. Are you still here? Are you available? Do you want to hang out and catch up and grab some dinner or a drink? Let me know.”

So, I was shocked when I saw this text message. Kyle and I were really, really good friends growing up. I would say that he was one of my best friends. Actually, it's really hard to choose a best friend. I don't really like that word, because I'm lucky enough to have a lot of good, close friends in my life.

But definitely he was one of my closest friends growing up. We met when we were maybe 10 or 11 years old. Our families attended the same church growing up. So, he was a church friend. And we never went to the same school. He went to a private school, I went to public school.

So, our paths never crossed that way. But we lived close by, we were in similar neighborhoods. And actually, when I was in high school, my parents moved to his exact neighborhood. So, we ended up living very close by each other eventually, even though that wasn't the case when we first met.

But we met, like I said, through our parents who I think set up a playdate or something. You know, and a play date is when parents arrange for their kids to hang out. So, we met that way, but we hit it off right from the very start. And we had so many good times growing up.

I have so many great memories of spending time with him. We used to get into a lot of trouble together. We do lots of fun things. We spent a lot of time in the forest and in the woods, we would go fishing together, mountain biking together, sometimes snowboarding together.

We played a ton of video games together. We went on road trips together once we got older, concerts together. Wow. We just did so many things together. And I have just tons and tons of good memories, hanging out with him and hanging out with some of our other friends as well.

And Kyle actually became my roommate as well. After we graduated from university, we became roommates and we lived in an apartment together first in Calgary, Alberta.

I don't know if I've talked much about this period of my life on Culips before, but after I graduated from high school, I went to the University of Calgary for one year before I transferred to the University of Victoria. And that's the university that I graduated from.

But before that I did attend the University of Calgary for a year. And that is when I lived with Kyle, and we had another roommate as well one of our other buddies. So, it was the three of us in an apartment. And then we actually moved to a house as well and another one of our buddies from Kelowna joined us.

So, it was four guys in a house in Calgary. A lot of good times, as you could imagine, took place there. But anyways, I'm telling you all of these details just to establish that Kyle and I have been friends for so, so long.

But as I just mentioned a second ago, I eventually transferred to the University of Victoria from the University of Calgary. And at the same time, Kyle transferred to another university in Ontario in Canada, which is a long way away from Victoria.

So, although we had been in the same city, in the same place, at the same time, for all of our lives, suddenly from that moment, we were divided, we were in totally different places. But you know, we still remained friends.

And because our hometowns were the same, we'd often go back for Christmas, or different holidays, and we'd always meet up and spend time together. But after graduating university, that's when our paths started to separate.

And while Kyle was attending university in Ontario, he fell in love with a wonderful woman. And shortly after graduating, they got married, I was actually the best man at the wedding. And then after getting married, they continued to live in Ontario.

Whereas in my life, I took a totally different route and moved to Korea instead. And it was at that time where we started to not keep in touch as much. I don't know if you've ever had this experience before.

But definitely before getting married, when I was younger, in my earlier 20s, if I did have a friend that got married, it almost was like the end of the friendship because suddenly that friend's priorities really changed. And what was important to them was different from what I valued in my life.

And so, I had a couple of friends who got married relatively early, like in their early to mid 20s, which in my opinion, feels like a pretty early wedding. And it was kind of hard to keep up those friendships after the wedding. So anyways, that was kind of the case, what happened was Kyle and me.

You know, he had his newlywed life, and I had my Korea life going on. And there were thousands of kilometers in between us. So, it was hard to maintain the friendship. And shortly after getting married, as well, he had his first child, and then he had another child.

And at that point, we just didn't keep up as much. He had more important priorities in his life, and I had different things going on in my life. So, at that point, we really didn't keep in contact too much at all. But it was always just a really natural thing.

It's not like we had a conversation and decided to end our friendship or anything like that. It was just more of a difference in location, and a difference in priorities in our lives at that time, where we started to go our own separate ways.

But I always still considered him a really good friend, and I kind of felt like, you know, eventually we will reconnect again. But I didn't know exactly when or where that would happen, until just recently, when I got that text message one day at work.

So, as you can imagine, I was really thrilled and happy to see that kind of text message. Like it was really out of the blue, and just totally unexpected. So, wonderful. So of course, I replied to his message right away. And I said, "It's great to hear from you. And this is fantastic, wonderful news.

Definitely, let's hang out as soon as possible." So, he sent me a message on maybe Friday or Saturday. And this just happened the other week. And I had a plan that unfortunately, I couldn't change for the Saturday. But thankfully, he was also free on Sunday. So, we made a plan to hang out on Sunday.

Now, because of his line of work, Kyle has actually done many, many business trips around the world. But specifically, he has traveled a lot to Asia. To almost every Asian country he has visited several times, but specifically Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, he has visited multiple times.

So, this wasn't his first rodeo, he has a lot of experience traveling in Asia. And he's been to Korea several times. But he's never had time to explore much in Korea, it's always kind of just land, go to the hotel, do a couple of meetings with clients, and then go back home.

So, this was his first time to really get out there and do some exploring around. So, on very short notice, I had to put on my tour guide hat and to plan some activity for him. And remember, I haven't seen Kyle in about 15 years. So, it's been a long time. And he's not active on social media at all.

He's one of those people that is just totally uninterested in social media. So, I haven't even really seen his photos or anything. You know, some of your acquaintances and colleagues from the past, you have them added on Instagram or whatever, some kind of social media.

So, you kind of know what's going on in their lives a little bit. You can just, you know, tell from social media updates and stuff, but he's a guy that doesn't do this at all. So, I really had no idea like what he even looked like anymore, right? Maybe he had gained 25 pounds, or he had lost all of his hair like me. Who knows?

So, I didn't know quite what to expect and didn't know quite what to plan. However, I did have a little bit of information about him because my mom and his mom are friends.

And although they're not the closest friends, they do hang out from time to time and they go for a walk together or have tea together, or something like that. So, I do hear some secondhand information about what's going on in his life from my mom. So anyways, I thought, "What would Kyle and I like to do?"

As I mentioned before, when we were kids, we spent a lot of time in the mountains. And I always love hiking. And so, I thought we should go for a hike. So, I messaged him, and I said, “Hey, are you down to go into the mountains for a little bit? We'll do a hike together. Nothing too intense.

It's not like we're going to be climbing Everest or anything. But let's go out to the woods. I'll show you what the Korean mountains look like a little bit. We'll do a little hike. And then we'll grab some lunch together. How does that sound?” And he messaged right back and said, "Perfect. I love the idea".

So that's what we decided to do. So, on Sunday, then we had a plan to meet in the morning. And I went down to his hotel in downtown Seoul to meet him. And as I was walking to his hotel, suddenly I got a little bit nervous for the first time.

I thought, "Oh my god, what happens if he's not the person that I remember him as being? Or what happens if he's changed a lot? And we don't have anything in common? Or what happens if it's awkward between us? How are we going to spend the whole day together?"

So, I got a little bit nervous just before meeting him. But as I turned the corner towards his hotel, he was actually standing outside of his hotel. And from the moment I saw him, it was like all of those worries, those needless, stupid worries were just gone.

Because right from when we greeted each other and gave each other a hug and said hello. It was like our friendship had never stopped at all. It was like we picked up immediately where we left off 15 years ago. And there was zero awkwardness or zero weirdness between us.

And we just fell right back into things and had a great, fantastic day together. So, we met up and I gave him a little tour of the downtown area in Seoul as we walked towards the mountain that we were going to hike. And I know we have many Korean listeners out there.

So, I'll give some specific details for Korean listeners. We went to Inwangsan, which is a mountain behind the royal palace in Seoul, which is called Gyeongbokgeung. So that's the mountain that we went to, and it's I don't know 300 and some odd meters high.

So, it's not a really big mountain, but it is a little bit challenging. At the top there are some rocky sections that are hard to climb up. But the effort is worth the reward. Because once you get to the top of the mountain, you can see all of Seoul laid out in front of you. And it's just a really awesome city view.

So, we climbed to the top of the mountain and unfortunately it was a little bit cloudy that day. So, the view wasn't as good as it could have been. If you go on a clear, sunny day, then the view is amazing. But it was a little bit cloudy that day. But that was OK.

We had a great time just climbing up the mountain and chatting the whole way as we walked up and walked down. And after we finished our hike, then it was time for some lunch. So, I took him to one of my favorite areas of Seoul, which I guess in English, you would call the West Village, (Seochon).

And there we went to one of my favorite restaurants and we had some cold buckwheat noodles, and we drank some Korean rice wine. And I gotta tell ya, it hit the spot. It was delicious and the perfect post-hike meal. And after that we walked back towards the downtown area of Seoul.

And around this point in the afternoon is usually when I would kind of split off and go home if I were hanging out with one of my friends who lived in Korea. You know, you do some kind of activity, you have lunch together, you maybe grab a coffee together, and then it's kind of time for you to go on your own separate way and go back home.

So, I asked Kyle like, "Hey, what do you got going on for the rest of the afternoon? Do you have any plans? What do you have to do?" And he had nothing planned, his schedule was completely free, of course. And he said, "You know if you need to go home, go home, but I'm just going to be sitting in my hotel otherwise."

So, I felt a little bit bad about that. I was like, "Yeah, of course. Let's keep going. Let's keep hanging out." I messaged my wife to make sure everything was OK with her schedule. She had some different things going on that day. So, she gave me the clear to just hang out with my friend. And that's what we did.

So, we walked to some of the palaces in Seoul. I showed him around the whole kind of Jongro area, which is an area in central Seoul. We checked out some markets, we weren't too hungry, because we had had a lot of food. But we did grab some street food as well.

And we just wandered around until it was dinner. And as you guys know, one of my hobbies is running. So, I have this Garmin watch that I wear all the time. That helps me with running, it's got like a lot of stats that it collects about my body to help me run better, supposedly, at least.

And anyways, one of the features that's built into this watch is a step counter. And so, by that time of the day, we were already almost around 30,000 steps that we had walked around, we were just going everywhere throughout the city.

And, you know, I was joking earlier about Kyle, whether he had gained some weight or lost his hair or something like that. And I have to say that he hasn't changed a bit, he looks exactly the same, exactly the same stature still has a great head of hair. So, I'm a little bit jealous about that, he won that one.

But anyways, he had no problem walking around and was able to keep up just fine. So, we did this big walking tour throughout the whole downtown. But then it was dinnertime and we were both hungry. So, we decided to grab some barbecue, some Korean pork, BBQ pork belly. And that was delicious as well.

So, we enjoyed a great barbecue dinner together. And then after dinner, we went to a local pub, and we had some craft beer. And I think we were there until almost around 11pm at night chatting away and just catching up. And of course, having a lot of laughs as well. But we were out on a Sunday.

And of course, the next day, Monday is a day where I have to work. So, I couldn't stay out too late with him. So around 11pm, we called it a night and he went back to his hotel, and I went back home. So, it was a great day, we had an amazing time together. But I felt like it was too short.

Like we only had one day like we haven't seen each other in 15 years. One day is just too little. So, I asked him about his schedule to see if he had any more availability in his schedule any openings before he had to go home. And he said, "Tuesday evening, I have Tuesday evening free."

And thankfully I also had the Tuesday evening free that week, and miraculously, so did my wife as well. So, I double checked with my wife to make sure it was cool. And she said it was cool. And then I invited him over to our house for dinner on Tuesday so that he could check out our neighborhood and see how

I'm living here in Korea, because I think my lifestyle here in Seoul is quite different than the life that he probably saw me living when we were growing up in Kelowna. In fact, I know it's very different. So, I wanted to give him an insider's look into what my life is like.

Of course, it's cool to meet up and, you know, walk around through the city together and do some hiking and eat lunch together, et cetera, et cetera. But to invite somebody into your home and to give them a glimpse firsthand at how you live. Well, that's a totally different experience, right?

So, he was down. He said, "Yeah, I'd love to come check out your house and see where you live and see what's going on in your neighborhood." So, on Tuesday evening, he came over to our place. And actually, my wife and I asked him what he wanted to eat. And he said hanwoo.

And hanwoo is like a very premium Korean steak. It's super delicious. It's very, very flavorful, great beef. But I've never actually cooked hanwoo in my own house before, I've always gone to a restaurant. And I didn't just want to buy some and grill some in my home.

In case I'd mess it up because it's something that I've never tried cooking before. If you go to a hanwoo restaurant, usually the staff will always cook the beef for you right at your table in front of you and do it that way.

So, he came over to our house and then I said, “Hey, man, I'm sorry. I didn't have the confidence to cook hanwoo at home. So, let's just go to a restaurant that's down the road.” So, he was like, “Yeah, that's cool. That's fine.”

So, we went down to a hanwoo restaurant that's just a little bit down the street from my home. And it was actually funny because at this hanwoo restaurant, they ended up not cooking it for us. This is the first time for both me and my wife where we visited a hanwoo restaurant, but they didn't cook the beef for us.

So, my wife graciously did the barbecuing. And I have to say she did a wonderful job because the end result was so, so delicious. So, we had an amazing hanwoo meal and a great conversation over dinner.

And then after dinner, we came back to our house, and we had a beer and hung out and just chatted away until it was time for him to grab a taxi and go back to his hotel, because he had a flight early the next morning. So, all in all, I had just a wonderful time with my friend, Kyle.

Like I said, it was completely out of the blue. And I love that it was out of the blue like that. I think if I had known that he was going to be here, I would have put in a lot of time, and stress, and effort, into making a plan to try and make things perfect.

But in the end, we had an amazing time, a great two days spent together without doing really any planning at all just sort of thrown together. So, he saved me some time. I have to say thank you to Kyle for that, because he saved me some time.

I didn't have to put any effort, or stress, or thought, into planning his trip here, because he just surprised me and didn't give me that option at all. So, I love that I think in the future, if I have the opportunity to drop in and surprise one of my friends like Kyle did to me, then I'm definitely going to do that because it ended up working out really, really well.

So, it was just really wonderful to see Kyle and to catch up, and to hear some stories about some of our mutual friends back home, to learn about how well he's doing in his life with his family. And I got to introduce him to my wife and show him what my life is like over here in Korea as well.

So, all in all, 10 out of 10. We both had a great time together. And definitely we're not going to leave 15 years in between when we meet again next. As I mentioned, he's often in Asia for business trips, so it's probable that I'll see him here in Seoul again.

But even if he doesn't come over here, well then, we could always meet back home in Kelowna. And next time I'm there, I'll be sure to look him up and send him a surprise text message, letting him know I'm in town.

And now it's time for this week's vocabulary lesson.

Before we wrap this episode up, I want to teach you about one of the interesting idiomatic expressions that you heard me use when I was telling my story about my friend Kyle's surprise visit to Seoul. The idiom is to not be your first rodeo. To not be your first rodeo. And I should explain first what a rodeo is.

So, a rodeo is a kind of competition that are common in Canada and in the USA, especially in rural parts of the countries and their competitions where people show their skills at doing things on horses. So like horseback riding or catching cattle with ropes.

It's kind of farming competition, maybe where like cowboys will show off their cowboy skills. I know that growing up I went to a couple of rodeos, usually at the Fall Fair each year, there's a rodeo and you can watch some cowboys and cowgals ride around on horses and do their thing.

So, it's this kind of cowboy competition. Think of a rodeo like that. Now, when I was talking about Kyle, I said that he had visited Asia many times in the past on different business trips, and he'd actually visited Korea in the past as well. So, it wasn't his first rodeo. That's where I use the expression.

In fact, why don't we go back and take a listen to that part of the episode just a couple of more times so we can get some context. And then I'll explain exactly what this idiom means and how you can use it in your own English speaking after that. So, let's go back and take a listen now. Here we go.

So, because Kyle had visited Asia many times and had visited Korea specifically, a few times in the past, I said it wasn't his first rodeo. And this is an expression that we can use when somebody has some experience with doing something. So, Kyle has the experience of visiting Korea.

He has visited Korea a few times in the past, so it's not his first rodeo, OK? If something is not your first rodeo, then it means that you have experience in that situation and have gone through it before. Now you may be curious about this expression thinking that it's a rather weird one.

And to be honest with you, I was curious as well. I was wondering like, "Why do we say that something is not somebody's first rodeo when they have experience with doing something?" So, I had to do some searching and some Googling and some sleuthing online.

And I learned that this idiom is relatively new, surprisingly. I thought it would be an old idiom, but it's rather new. And it comes from a movie from the 1980s called Mommie Dearest, which I haven't seen. And I'm not familiar with that movie.

But in that movie, one of the characters says, "Hey, this is not my first rodeo." And the character is talking about how she has some experience doing something. I'm not sure of the context, exactly. But I guess this idiom originates from that movie.

And it must have been a famous line or something, because it's a really common idiomatic expression in at least North American English these days. So just to summarize, then, not your first rodeo is an idiomatic expression in North American English.

And we use it to suggest that someone has experience or expertise in some kind of activity or situation. And when you say that it's not somebody's first rodeo, you're conveying and communicating that that person is familiar with the task at hand and has likely encountered a similar situation before.

So, like always, I've prepared three example sentences that will show you how an English native speaker would use this idiom in their own English in a very natural way. So, let's take a listen to those example sentences starting with the first one right now. Here we go.

Let's break this example sentence down. So, in that example sentence, the speaker's a little bit angry. It sounds like somebody is looking over his shoulder while he's trying to do some task. And maybe that person is telling him what to do. So, he kind of snaps back and says, "Hey, relax, I know what I'm doing.

I've experienced this before, I know how to do it. This isn't my first rodeo. I've done this before I have the experience." And so, you can use this expression in this way to, to communicate that you have experience, it's not your first time doing something.

But be careful, you wouldn't want to use this expression to your boss or to somebody important, it could come across as a little bit rude. But you know, if you're talking to your boyfriend or girlfriend or your wife, or your brother or your sister, or your best friend, then I think it's OK to use in that kind of situation.

So, in this example, sentence, the speaker is talking to his friend, maybe, and he's saying that his friend is doing a really good job to a surprising extent.

Meaning that maybe whatever activity the friend is doing, we don't know what that activity is, but it's clear that the speaker thought that the friend had never tried that activity before and would be pretty bad at it. But actually, the result is the opposite. The friend is doing the activity really well and is good at it.

And looks like they have some experience doing it. So, he says it's clearly not your first rodeo and the meaning there is, hey, you must have done this before because you're doing so well.

Let's break this final example sentence down. In this example sentence the speaker is talking to one of his coworkers about an important business meeting that they have coming up. And he tells his coworker, hey, don't stress about this meeting. I'll take the lead. I've got it. This isn't my first rodeo.

I've done this many times in the past, and I'm confident that I can do a great job. One final thing here about this expression that I want to tell you about before we wrap this episode up, and that is that sometimes we say it ain't my first rodeo.

And sometimes we say it isn't my first rodeo, and the meaning is exactly the same. It ain't someone's first rodeo is more informal. And some people would say that it's improper grammar. But really, it doesn't matter. It's used a lot in speaking and in conversation.

And I think now that you know this expression, when you hear it in the future 50% of the time, you'll hear it with "ain't" and 50% of the time you'll hear it with "isn't" so don't really worry about that, just know that both options are possible.

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