And I hope that by listening to these stories, you will be able to improve your English communication skills. Specifically, our goals here in the bonus episode series are very clearly and well defined. What we want to do is we want to B.I.G.B. That is our acronym for this series. That is our motto. And B.I.G.B stands for build your fluency.

The I stands for increase your cultural knowledge of the culture of English-speaking people. The G stands for grow your vocabulary. And then the final B stands for become a better communicator. So, if those goals align with your goals, well then, you’re in the right place and I think you will enjoy this series. Before we get started, just a couple of announcements.

First of all, as always, there’s a 100% free interactive transcript and vocabulary glossary available for this episode to everybody. And if you’re a Culips member, then we’ll also include a comprehension quiz. If you’re interested in getting the quiz or signing up and becoming a Culips member, and there’s a lot of other benefits and bonuses that you get with Culips membership.

I won’t list them all here. There are too many. It’s a really helpful way to improve your English skills is by becoming a Culips member. And at the same time, you also support the work that we do here as well, helping us to create awesome English lessons each and every week. So, if you’re interested to sign up and become a Culips member, then just visit our website, which is Culips.com.

Or you can click the link that’s in the description for this episode. Next up, I wanted to say a big thank you to all of our Japanese listeners who reached out to me after my announcement last week. I just threw it out there last week that I’ll be visiting Osaka at the end of July. And I asked anybody if they’d be interested to attend a meetup or to help me organize a meetup in Osaka.

And many, many people emailed me. I haven’t been able to respond to everybody yet, but I’m going to do that. So, if you messaged me and you haven’t heard back from me yet, just give me a bit. I’ve seen your message and I’m going to reply right away. But I was overwhelmed with the response. So many helpful people out there. So, thanks to everyone who reached out.

Guys, I’ll be making an official announcement about the meetup in Osaka soon. So please stay tuned for all the details. Finally, before we get started with this week’s main story, I just want to tell you about our Culips small-group conversation sessions. They’re a new feature here at Culips, and I’m trying to spread the word and make sure everybody knows about this awesome new feature.

So, if you’re a Culips member, what you can do is join one of our several small-group conversation sessions that we host each week. One is hosted by our study guide writer Alina, the other by our study guide writer Indiana, and one by me. So, we have three each week in different time zones from around the world so that they should be convenient for most people on earth to attend.

Of course, everybody’s time zone is different, but we tried to make them really convenient. The idea is that we’re going to talk about a recent Culips episode. So first, you listen to the episode, and then next, you can join the small-group discussion sessions and chat about the episode with other Culips listeners, and also with the host of the session, Alina, Indiana, or myself, and we’ll have a fun English conversation that way.

Of course, if you have any questions or comments about the episode too, then you can ask one of us directly, and you can get that advice from an expert English teacher who will be hosting the session. So, this is available for all Culips members.

If you’re a Culips member, you can log into our website and look for the schedule and see when upcoming sessions will be happening in your time zone. And if you’re not a Culips member yet, but you’d like to join us for one of these small-group sessions or many of these small-group sessions, you can join as many as you would like. Just please visit our website, Culips.com.

You can sign up and become a member, and I hope to see you in one of the upcoming sessions. Now let’s get started with our main story for today, and actually, this is going to be a little bit of a part two. Part two to last week’s episode.

In last week’s episode, I talked about visiting a small city on the west coast of Korea called Boryeong, and while I was there, I participated in a half marathon, and I met up with some of my friends, and we went to the beach, and we ran in the race, and we just had a good time overall.

I said that my weekend was really, really good, almost a 10 out of 10. I had an awesome time, just a really nice weekend away. But one thing that was not so great was my train trip back from Boryeong. So, it’s about a three-hour train ride from Boryeong to Seoul, where I currently live, and it was filled with chaos.

Now I teased this story in the last episode, and that’s a nice expression to know, if you don’t have that one in your English vocabulary already. “To tease [something]” means to preview it. Like you give somebody just a little taste, a little preview, but you don’t tell the whole story, or you don’t show the whole thing.

In fact, sometimes the trailers that you see before a movie, like when you go to see a movie in the cinema, they show three or four movie trailers, the previews before the main film starts. Sometimes we even call those teasers because they tease the upcoming movie. They make you want to go watch it.

They try and make it look as fun and interesting as possible, right, so that you’ll go and buy a ticket to that movie in the future. So, I teased this story in the last Culips episode, and I threw it out there. I said, “Hey guys, this happened to me,” and I told you a little bit of the story, and I said, “Do you want me to tell the full story in the next episode?”

And many people responded, “Yes.” So, I took it as a sign, and that’s what I’m going to do in this week’s episode. And also, it relieved a little bit of work for me this week because I didn’t have to think of a new episode topic to talk to you about. Let’s start with the story.

For those of you who didn’t tune in last week, what happened was my train ride from Boryeong back to Seoul was filled with chaos and let me tell you why that was. So, as I mentioned in last week’s episode, I took a Mugunghwa train from Boryeong to Seoul. For those of you who are not familiar with the different types of trains in Korea, that’s OK.

All you need to know is that the Mugunghwa is the slowest train. Because it’s slow, it’s also cheap, and because it’s cheap, I think many people ride it. Also, I rode back from Boryeong to Seoul on a Sunday, which I think is a really popular time for people to go back to the big city, right?

You go away for the weekend, and then on Sunday, Sunday afternoon, early afternoon, is when I went back to Seoul. So, it was a super popular time. Very, very busy on the train. In fact, it was a sold-out train. So, there were people standing in the aisles of the train car, which, yeah, doesn’t happen very often. I don’t see that very often.

But there is a standing-room-only ticket that you can get if all the seats are sold out. So even, I think, all of the standing room only tickets were sold out because the train was packed to the gills. It was stuffed to the gills. And that’s a cool idiomatic expression. “Stuffed to the gills” or “packed to the gills.” Do you know what gills are? Good question for you.

Do you know what gills are? This is like a really specific English vocabulary, I think. So, if you know what gills are, then you can pat yourself on the back. Because this is not like a common everyday word. Unless you enjoy fishing. If your hobby is fishing or maybe keeping fish, like if you have an aquarium or a fish tank or a fishbowl, then maybe you know this word.

But gills are those flaps right near the neck of a fish. I don’t know if we can call a fish’s neck, but like right close to its head where its neck would be, right? Those flaps that the fish uses for breathing, those are called gills.

So, if something is stuffed to the gills or packed to the gills, it means like from the tail of the fish all the way almost to its head, like where its gills are, right at the tip, the end of the fish. Well, that means that whole area is just jam-packed. So, we just use this idiomatic expression to describe things that are really, really full, or really, really packed or really, really busy.

And the train that I was riding that day was packed to the gills. All of the seats were sold out. And it was standing room only even in the aisles of the train. There were many, many people standing. And in the areas in between the train cars, there were also many people standing. So, it was just a busy train. And it was also a really hot day. So, the train was a little hot.

Of course, there was air conditioning in the train. So, it wasn’t like extremely hot, not like some of those videos I’ve seen of trains in India or something. OK, it wasn’t like that. It was still like, you know, comfortable. I wasn’t uncomfortable. But it was just like one of those busy trains with lots of people, lots of things in motion.

And you know, like sometimes when you’re in a public place, you can feel the temperature of the place. And what I mean by “the temperature of the place,” I’m not talking about how hot or cold it is. When we say that, like “you can feel the temperature of the place,” means like you can feel the mood of the place.

And sometimes you can feel like a situation like that, people are very relaxed and it’s calm and it’s easygoing, right? It has that cool feeling. Well, this was not one of those situations. This felt like a kind of stressful, busy environment. And it felt a little bit like the temperature of the place was a little bit hot.

People were a little bit annoyed, you know, like traveling on a Sunday, it’s hot outside, it’s a busy train. It’s just not a situation that’s super pleasant to be in. So, it was made much, much worse. It was made much, much worse. And I’ll tell you why it was made much, much worse.

But before I tell you the story, I do want to give a little disclaimer because I’m going to talk about some kids who were annoying and I’m going to talk about a mom who was annoying. But I don’t want to paint them in too bad of a light. Please don’t think that I’m anti-child or anti-parent. I think this was just a difficult situation.

And yes, in retrospect, maybe the mom made a mistake in this story. But that’s life. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. So, I’m not saying that she’s a bad mom or anything like that. Please don’t misunderstand the story because that’s not what I’m trying to say. I think she was doing– I think she’s probably a fantastic mother.

Also, in retrospect, probably I could have handled the situation and other passengers on the train could have handled the situation in a different way to make it so that everybody would have had a better train-travel experience. So, I’m not saying that I’m 100% blameless in this story as well.

I think, you know, looking back on things, sometimes we could say, “Oh, if I had only done that, would the situation have just been avoided in the first place?” So, kind of a nice learning experience for me overall and maybe for– hopefully for other passengers on the train as well and maybe for that mother and her kids as well. So, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into the story.

So, in that very hectic, packed to the gills train situation environment, I had been riding the train for maybe 20, 30 minutes when we made a stop and this young family got on. The young family had a mom and two kids. And the two children, I don’t know, I’d estimate they were probably 4 or 5 years old in Western age.

Here in Korea, we actually have a different way of counting age and if you want to know about that more, you could ask me or even ask a Korean person you know. They could explain it even better. But yeah, Western counting age, just for our Korean listeners out there, I would say they were about 4 or 5 years old.

So very young kids and there was a boy and a girl, and the boy was slightly older than the girl. So, I’d say there’s probably like a year difference between them. There’s the bigger brother, the little sister, and the mom and they were, yeah, traveling just the three of them. So, we made the stop, and this was kind of a busy train station.

So many people got on the train at the same time. It’s probably like 15 people in my train car that were looking for their seat and the mom, you know, she’s carrying her baggage and has the two kids and they’re looking for their seats and there’s other people that they have to pass and yeah, it’s just a busy chaotic situation. And you could see that the mom looks stressed.

Like this is not a situation that’s just easy to handle, right? I can only imagine how difficult that must be and it just looked very difficult and very stressful. So, the mom found their seats and she was like putting the baggage up overhead.

There are the overhead compartments where you can store your bags on the train and she was, you know, getting set up and got her kids seated and she gave them some snacks and some juice and stuff. And then she told the kids, “All right, kids, stay here. Don’t move. Be quiet. Just eat your snacks, drink your juice. Don’t make a scene. Mom’s gonna go sit in her seat now.”

And I was seated maybe five rows back. So, I wasn’t really close like beside this young family, but I was within earshot. And if you’re within earshot, it means that you can hear what they say. So, I was a little bit shocked at first when she was explaining this to her kids because she was saying where her seat was, and it was like several cars away.

And to go from one car to the next car is actually quite a long walk. And I think there was a difference of four cars between where we were and where the mom was seated. So, she was going to be a considerable way away from her kids.

I was like, “Huh, that’s kind of weird because you don’t see that these days too often.” I know back in the day, like when I grew up or even when my parents grew up, this would probably be more common. But these days, so many parents are really like hyper, hyper vigilant, hyper, hyper protective of their children, right? They don’t let them out of eyesight.

They don’t let them out of earshot. They’re always around and making sure that their kids are safe. So, I guess, yeah, they had each other, right? Like the brother and sister were together and they had their seats. In theory, this should be OK, right? In theory, this should be OK. But in practice, you know, kids are kids and they’re going to do kid things. And that’s what ended up happening.

So, the mom explained this. And while she was explaining it, my first thought was, “OK, I’m a foreigner. I’m not from Korea. Everybody else on this train is Korean. I’m the only, or at least in my train car, everybody else was Korean. I was the only foreigner. I’m seated about five rows away. So, I’m not like super close to the mom.”

But in my head, what was happening, or what I was thinking, my thought process is, of course, somebody is going to hear this situation and offer their seat. And be like, because everybody else, like there were no other families. Everybody else seemed to be a solo traveler.

So of course, I’m thinking, “OK, one of the other solo travelers, just like me,” or maybe there were some couples too, but I thought almost 100% somebody is going to overhear this situation and just offer their seat. Be like, “Hey, you know what? You should be with your kids. You can take my seat and I’ll go sit in your seat.” And I was expecting that to happen, but nobody offered.

And then what was going through my head, and this is probably what I could have done better, is like, “Why didn’t I offer the seat? Why didn’t I go up to this woman and say, ‘Hey, you know, I’m here by myself. I don’t care.

As long as you’re going to Seoul,'” because my seat was all the way to Seoul, and that could cause some confusion and make things difficult if she got off in the middle of the trip. But in that situation, that’s what I should have done in retrospect. Now I didn’t do that, and one of the reasons I didn’t do that, here’s my excuse, is just that… It’s interesting.

When you talk to a Korean person in Korean in this kind of situation, I’m the only foreigner, and suddenly I come up and start speaking to her in Korean. I’ve done this before, and so many people are absolutely shocked that they have to interact with a foreigner speaking in their language that it just causes a very awkward situation, and people don’t know really how to respond.

And often that situation is like kind of cut down very quickly because the person is sort of overwhelmed. And I think in this situation, that’s why I didn’t act because we’re on a moving train, the mom’s trying to get her situation figured out, she’s dealing with like bags, and like I said, the temperature’s hot, it’s a busy, stressful situation.

And then for me to go up and be like, you know, offer, “Hey, do you want my seat? Where are you going to?” Blah, blah, blah, trying to work out this negotiation to trade with her, I think would have been just maybe– I felt like it would have added even more stress to the situation. So, nobody else responded.

I probably in retrospect should have, but I didn’t offer my seat to her and offer to trade. So, she went on her way to go find her seat. Now I was thinking once this happened, because I was like, this is my mindset, OK? My next thought as we took off is like, “OK, I got to watch these kids from a distance.”

You know, I got to make sure these kids are all alone, that no, like, bad guy comes up and talks to them. So, I kind of in my head, I made it my mission, I’m going to keep my eyes on these kids and make sure that nothing bad happens to them. Like I heard the mom clearly explain the situation, I knew who the mom was, and I knew what was going on.

So that was like my first mental goal. Like, OK, got to watch over these kids a little bit from afar and just make sure some bad guy doesn’t grab them and run off the train, right? So that’s what I was thinking. And the mom goes back to her seat, and then the train is moving, and all’s cool for like the first 10 minutes?

Maybe even less. Like the kids didn’t have that much of an attention span, right? They’re just little kids. And the mom gave them some snacks and gave them some juice, but didn’t give them any toys, or like probably if she gave them an iPad or something, fine, but they had no electronics or books or anything like that. So, after about, yeah, let’s be generous and say 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the kids start to get curious, right? And especially the little girl, she was a very curious little girl. The boy, the older brother was trying his best to like restrain her and be like, “Mom told us to sit down and be quiet,” but she didn’t listen to her brother, and she just went her own way.

Very independent little girl, which is probably a good quality that will be advantageous to her later in life. But in that situation, it actually caused a lot of problems. So first she starts, you know, exploring her area around the seat. And so, she’s standing on her seat. She’s kicking the chairs in front of her. Thank goodness I wasn’t seated in front of these two kids.

And I was, like I mentioned, several rows back. But that’s what she starts doing first, right? So just like this, and then the brother can calm her down every once in a while. But then actually, instead of the brother having influence over the sister, the younger sister had influence over the brother.

And I think the brother saw how much fun the sister was having, dancing on the chairs, kicking the seats. Then he started to engage. He started to do this behavior as well. So, the two siblings had fun exploring their little seated area for a little while. But then eventually, they ventured out. And they went from their seated area to the aisle of the train.

And as I mentioned, this was a sold-out train. And there were several people standing in the aisle of the train. And there were a couple of, like, older, middle-aged folk who were probably in their early 60s or so. So, it’s not like… they’re fine standing. They were standing in the aisle. That was the ticket that they had.

But, you know, like maybe a little bit uncomfortable for them. Even in that situation, I would be uncomfortable standing for a few hours. So, it’s not like the best situation, right? But then you had these two kids whipping up and down the aisle. If you’re whipping up and down, it means that you’re moving really, really fast, moving really, really quickly.

Just like a whip that you might hold in your hand to, you know, whip a horse to make it go faster or something. That kind of crack, crack that you can hear from a whip. So, these kids were whipping up and down the train aisle, running around and causing even more discomfort for the people who were standing in the aisle.

Because, you know, kids are just in their own world. And they weren’t being like, “Oh, excuse me. Can I pass by?” They were just running right underneath the arms and through the legs of the people standing in the aisles. So, you could see with every passing moment, there was some growing discomfort on the people standing in the aisles.

And also, some growing discomfort from the people who were immediately in front of the children. Because, like I said, they were jumping on their chairs and kicking the seats and this kind of thing. So, this went on for like, maybe I want to say another 15 minutes. So, at this point, the mom had been away for over 20 minutes.

And when we initially departed from the place where the mom and the kids got on, I kind of thought, “OK, the mom’s going to go back to her seat. But she’ll probably be back like every 15 or 20 minutes.” Like I just couldn’t imagine how you could relax with your kids being so far away on… on the train like that. It just seemed like a kind of sketchy thing to do.

So, I figured, “OK, this mom probably…” The reason why she’s seated so far away from her kids in the first place, I didn’t mention, is just that the train tickets were all sold out. And that’s the only three tickets that she could buy. She couldn’t get three together. I’m sure if it was possible for her to purchase three tickets together, she would have done that. Absolutely.

But it was just impossible. So, yeah, I was thinking, “OK, she’s going to come back and check on her kids very frequently, right?” She’ll be back every 15, 20 minutes just to make sure they’re OK. And really, it should be the mom’s responsibility to do that. I was thinking, “That’s got to be something that she does.”

And that was really the error, is that the mom just disappeared, and she didn’t come back for the entirety of the train ride. Who knows? Maybe she was exhausted. Maybe she was planning on doing that. She sat down and just fell asleep, something like that.

But that’s the error of the mom in that situation, I think, is that she should have been back checking on her kids frequently from time to time. But she didn’t. And so, these kids were just acting wild. They’re just causing all sorts of trouble. And at first, they were kind of quiet. But as time went on, they got bolder and bolder and louder and louder to the point now where it’s just chaos.

They’re just like monkeys bouncing around in the train, going everywhere. The little girl was, like, spilling her snacks everywhere, spilling juice everywhere. And it got to the point where other passengers were starting to speak up. So, there were a few older ladies, kind of like grandmas, who were the first to react.

And they kind of asked the kids, “Where’s your mom? What did your mom tell you to do? Oh, you should sit down and be quiet.” But I think the temperature — here’s to use that expression, the temperature again. And please remember when I’m saying this expression, I’m not talking about hot or cold. It just means the mood or the atmosphere or the vibe.

The temperature in Korea, and I think the temperature maybe in many countries around the world in regard to this kind of thing, is that these days you don’t really want to interfere with other people’s children too much, right? There are just too many things that could go wrong. There are too many — like you could be accused of doing something incorrectly.

And everybody’s a little bit nervous about stepping in and disciplining kids who aren’t your own and who are strangers, right? Like, I don’t know. Tell me if you agree with this. Maybe this is just my perception. But I have a feeling that, yeah, these days it’s kind of like something that you don’t do. You don’t go and discipline other people’s kids or talk to other people’s kids.

But a couple of these grandmas stepped in, and they tried to settle the kids down. And that worked for like 30 seconds. But then eventually the kids just probably were thinking like, “You’re not my mom. I don’t have to listen to you.” And they just went and started causing havoc again in the train.

So eventually one of the kids was kicking their seat so much in the few times that they were seated. They were kicking the seat so much that one of the passengers in front who was getting his seat kicked, he just snapped. He had enough. So, he turned around and kind of scolded the kids in kind of a harsh way. He was probably around my age.

And I thought, OK, maybe if this were me — I was always more of a timid, shy child, I think — if this were me and a stranger scolded me, chewed me out is what we say in English to chew someone out. It means to get angry at them or to scold them or to criticize something. So that guy really chewed the kids out.

And I thought, “OK, if this were me, then I would have settled down. I would have been scared of the older dude in front of me and I probably would have chilled out and just relaxed.” But it didn’t seem to have any effect on these kids at all. And they continued to just be chaotic and cause mayhem on the train. And then next, what they started to do was leave the train car.

And so, they were like in the middle section between the two train cars, which is actually not dangerous in Korea. It’s still a very enclosed space. It’s not like they’re out in the middle of two train cars. And there’s nature passing by, wilderness passing by. It’s not one of those trains. Everything is connected with a hallway. The area in between train cars is where there’s storage for baggage.

There are washrooms. Sometimes there are vending machines, that kind of thing. So, they were leaving the main train carriage, though, and going into this area. And that’s when I was starting to be like, “OK, these kids are getting out of my eyesight.” And remember my goal initially was I got to make sure that these kids don’t die or don’t get abducted or something like that.

And that’s when I started getting a little bit like, “OK, somebody needs to intervene here and do something to really make sure that these kids are reconnected with their mom and their mom can watch.” And so, another passenger went up and got the kids seated down again. It was kind of like asking, “Where’s your mom?”

And they were like, “I don’t know.” Like, I think they forgot right away where their mom was. Even though their mom drilled in where she was seated, the kids couldn’t remember the car number or the seat number or anything like that. So, some, I think it was a younger woman, maybe in her 20s, she got the kids seated down again.

It was like, “OK, guys, just sit here. Be quiet. Enjoy the ride.” And that worked for, again, like 30 seconds. And then the kids were up. And the next thing that they did, this was like the end of the line, I think. And when I say the end of the line, I mean it was the breaking point, the thing which caused the whole situation to end.

It was like the moment where people were like, “Enough is enough. We have to solve this problem.” This was the breaking point, the tipping point sometimes we say as well. So, the breaking point, the tipping point was when the kids discovered that, you know, on a chair, sometimes you see on an airplane chair or in a train chair like this.

The back, the headrest where you can lean your head against when you’re sitting back to relax in the chair, it’s often covered because it’s a public chair, right? It’s often covered with like this little, I don’t even know what you call it, a head cover, a headrest cover that’s made of like a light fabric material that can be exchanged easily.

So, every time that the train is cleaned, I’m sure that the cleaning staff, they replace these covers just so that you’re not leaning your head back into somebody else’s dirty, hairy, gross zone that they’ve been leaning their head against, right? That’s kind of unsanitary. So, this headrest cover is changed often, I think.

So, the kids discovered that they could pull the white fabric off of the headrest and play with that. So they were, first, they pulled the white headrest fabric off of their own chairs first, and then they were waving them around like flags and fighting with each other with these white flags that they had. But then they discovered the window as well.

Now the window was covered originally, the blind was down, but they pulled the blind up and then they started like rubbing the window and cleaning the window with these rags. It was kind of funny to watch them, but when they would rub these rags, these headrest covers against the window, then it would make this kind of smear across the window, this mark across the window.

So, they really thought that was cool and they were rubbing the windows all over the place. And you know, on a train, a train has a really long window that spans the distance of several seats. So, they were leaning across the seats to rub the windows where other people were sitting.

And then really, really the breaking point was when they started grabbing the headrest covers off of other people’s seats as well, so that they could have two or three of these seat rest covers in their hands at the same time. And that was just like the breaking point. There were too many people who were like, “OK, we need to find the mom right now. We got to get these kids settled down.”

And so, at that point, a couple of passengers went, and they found some staff from the train. And then there were like two staff members who came to talk to the kids, and they got them settled down and they asked the kids what the kids names were.

And then after a moment, I heard an announcement that said, you know, “If you are the guardian of this kid and this kid, please come to their seats. We need to talk with you. You need to get your kids under control.” And so, after that announcement, about two minutes later, the mom arrived. And that was just when the train was stopping.

Actually, we were just pulling into a station and the mom looked pretty stressed. She was like, “I can’t believe my kids did this!” And she was apologetic. She apologized to the train staff. She apologized to some of the other people, the passengers who were right around where the kids were sitting. And then she hurriedly grabbed her stuff and ran off the train.

Now, I don’t know if that was her stop, her original stop, but I have a feeling it wasn’t. And I also have a feeling that she may have been asked to leave. Like she talked with the staff on the train for a few minutes and they were out of my earshot at that point. So, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were a little bit farther away and it was noisy on the train.

So, I was trying to eavesdrop a little bit and be like, oh, “What’s going on? Is she getting in trouble or what’s happening?” I tried to eavesdrop, and I couldn’t hear exactly. But since we are just pulling into a train station there, the mom hurriedly grabbed her stuff and grabbed her kids and just got off the train at that stop. So, I don’t know if it was her final destination.

I have a feeling it probably wasn’t because otherwise she probably would have been there earlier. So, I had the feeling that they were kicked off the train and asked to leave. But yeah, that brought an end to the story. After that, it was smooth sailing or maybe I should say more specifically, it was a smooth train ride. And we arrived back in Seoul in about another hour and a half.

And the second half of the train ride was really quite comfortable and pleasant. But the first half, that first hour and a half, like I said, was kind of chaotic and was a wild ride. So yeah, in retrospect, we could have handled the situation a lot differently. I think the mom probably could have handled the situation a lot differently.

Perhaps she should have been more proactive to ask some of the passengers if she could trade seats with them. Perhaps she was just wanting a rest and was hoping and believing that her kids could be well-behaved enough to do this kind of train trip. Probably if they were like double their age, if they were eight and nine years old, it would have been OK.

But four and five really didn’t really work out too well. Also, some of the other train passengers perhaps could have been more proactive, me included, in the situation to try and solve it before the problem even erupted and started. And maybe even the train staff could have been more noticeable.

I mean, there are train staff who walk up and down the aisles of the train and they pass those kids many times before they jumped in. And it wasn’t till other passengers complained that the staff from the train actually jumped in and tried to solve the situation and fix the problem. So, on many levels, just an overall failure…. an overall failure for keeping order on the train.

But hey, at the end of the day, I got this kind of fun story and I’ll never forget that train ride. And really, really, really, at the end of the day, kids should be allowed to be kids. And I do think it’s one of my core beliefs in life that as much as possible, when you’re in a public setting, you should not inconvenience others. This is like one of my core values in life.

And I really do not like it when in a public setting, we interrupt the peace and quiet of others in any situation, really. It doesn’t matter what it is, if you’re infringing on others, I don’t like that. In fact, while I was recording this episode, I had to pause in the middle. You guys won’t hear, or if you’re watching on YouTube, see the pause, I’ll edit it out.

But while I was recording here, there was a truck that drove by my home that was selling vegetables. And here in Korea, this happens from time to time. And there’s like a really loud audio recording that is played through a loudspeaker on this vegetable truck. He comes by every day to sell his vegetables. And it’s like this super loud audio recording.

It’s saying like, “Potatoes for sale, garlic for sale, onions for sale.” And this really, really loud recording is coming into my house and disturbing my peace and my podcast recording in my own home. So, like this kind of thing, you know, I realize that guy’s got to make a living. Everybody’s got to make a living. And it’s only inconveniencing me for like two minutes.

So, it’s not the biggest problem in the world. But personally, I feel, and I’m sorry to rant here. Now I’m ranting. But as much as possible, if we can just be quiet and respectful in public, everything works out for the best in this kind of situation. So yeah, at the end of the day, you know, like those kids were just being kids and having fun.

And did it really like, you know, cause a major problem in the end? No, it didn’t. But yeah, I think it could have been handled differently. And I think I’ll leave my rant at that. And I got a fun story out of it to share with you here at Culips. So, I shared a lot of opinions in this episode. And maybe some of these opinions could be a little bit controversial. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? If you do disagree with me, feel free to let me know. I love a good debate and a good argument and sharing ideas like that. The best way to share your opinion is in the comment section for this episode, either on the Instagram post or the YouTube post or on our Discord server. Our Discord server is where our community connects.

We have over 5,000 people who are members on our Discord server. It’s a great way to meet new friends, to connect with the Culips community from around the world and to practice your English communication skills. You can write comments. You can leave audio messages.

You can even join some of the voice chats and chat and discuss Culips content or whatever content you’d like to talk about in English with other people from the Culips community and with other English learners as well. So, if you haven’t joined us on Discord yet, you can do that. Just follow the link that we’ll put in the description for this episode.

And of course, before we wrap things up here, I do have to tell you this week’s completion code. So, what should we do for this week’s completion code? Let’s not get too crazy. Let’s just go with the word “train.”

So, the completion code for this episode is “train,” T-R-A-I-N. And what I would like you to do is leave a comment with this word “train” in one of those places where I just mentioned on the YouTube page, on the Instagram page, or on our Discord server. And this will signal to me that you listened all the way to the end of this episode.

You completed it, and now you have obtained this completion code. So, you can leave just a one-word comment with “train,” or if you’d like to be a little bit more advanced and push yourself a bit, you could also leave an example sentence with this word “train.” So, I’m looking forward to seeing your comments and hearing what you have to say about this episode.

And don’t forget in your comment to leave that completion code “train.” All right, everyone. Well, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you found it helpful for improving your English skills. If you’re looking for other English lessons to learn with, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

If you check out our website, Culips.com, you’ll be able to listen to hundreds of other English lessons just like this.

Please take care. Have a great week this week. Happy English learning, as always. And I’ll be back with another brand-new Culips episode in the near future. Talk to you then. Bye-bye.