Hello there everybody. How’s it going? My name is Andrew, and you’re listening to a bonus episode of the Culips English Podcast. Thank you for joining me here for another English study session today. It certainly is great to be with you and I hope you’re doing well. I especially wanna give a shout out and a big welcome to any first time listeners out there. 

If this is your first time joining us, let me just briefly introduce Culips and myself. So here at Culips, we make audio lessons for intermediate and advanced English learners that we design to help you improve your fluency and become a better communicator. And of course, we try to do that in a fun and helpful and entertaining way. 

And as for me, I’m an English teacher and I have been for many, many years. I’m originally from Canada, but now I live in Seoul, South Korea. Now for every bonus episode that we make at Culips we provide a transcript that is 100% free. And it’s available on our website, which is Culips.com or by clicking the link in the description for this episode. And everyone, we launched a brand-new feature last week on our website for bonus episodes. 

That feature is interactive transcripts. So, with interactive transcripts, you can really easily follow along with the text of the transcript while you listen to the audio. So, if you haven’t checked out the interactive-transcript feature yet, please do that with this episode, because I think you’re going to like it. 

Now we got a lot of feedback from you guys about the interactive transcripts and it was overwhelmingly positive. So, it’s great to hear that many of you are enjoying this new feature. And also many of you guys gave us some feedback about how we can make the interactive transcripts even better and more user friendly and you suggested a lot of good ideas. So, we’re going to try and implement some of them as soon as possible. Implement, implement. Do you know that word? It’s kind of a high-level word? It’s not super, super common. Implement means to start using something. So, we use this word a lot when we’re talking about tech and technology and especially new features of technology. In fact, I think those two words go together often implement and features. So, implement new features just means to start using or taking advantage of some new features. So, anyways, guys, we’re going to try and implement some of your suggestions as soon as we can and make the interactive transcripts even better than they already are. 

I actually spent Saturday morning in front of my computer tweaking the code and trying to work on some of your suggestions, and by no means at all am I a coder or a programmer, so, it’s trial and error for me. It’s a little bit frustrating at times to do this sort of work, but it’s also really fun and a good challenge, and it’s nice to have little projects to work on and I feel like I’m slowly very, very slowly, but surely getting a bit better at learning how to code and program some basic things like this interactive transcript. So anyways, yes. Please check it out. And if you do prefer the old-fashioned PDF file transcript, well, don’t worry. We’re still making those as well and you can download that for free as well on our website.

So everyone, what did you get up to last week? What did you do last week? Is there anything new or exciting going on in your life? Or is it mostly just same ol’ same ol’? Same ol’ same ol’. That’s a fun expression. Same S-A-M-E. Ol’., O-L. Same ol’ same ol’. And we use this expression when you are answering a question like when somebody asks you what’s new? What’s going on? What’s up? You could just answer, “Oh, same ol’, same ol’”. And it essentially means that your life is just the same as always. You’ve got nothing new going on, nothing new to report or talk about. No new news. And in that expression, the ol’ just means old. So, sometimes you’ll hear people say same old, same old, and it means the same thing. Same ol’ same ol’. Same old, same old. Exactly the same.

In my life, things are pretty much, same ol’ same ol’. Last weekend, I twisted my wife’s arm into going for a hike with me. If you’re a longtime listener of Culips, you’ll know that I really enjoy spending time outdoors. And my wife does too, she likes spending time outdoors, but she likes spending time outdoors more in like going to a park kind of way, instead of the going on a hike in the mountains kind of way, which is my style. I like going for hikes in the mountains. So, I kind of had to twist her arm into going on that hike with me. And that’s an idiom that means to convince somebody. So, I had to convince her. I had to twist her arm, but in the end she agreed and we went hiking on one of the local mountains here near Seoul. Now, like I said before, I spent Saturday morning working on Culips stuff, so we didn’t actually leave our house until around 3:30 PM, which I found out is just way too late to go on a hike because by the time we got to the trail, it was getting close to 5:00 PM and officially the trail closes at 6:00 PM. 

So, we didn’t really manage to make it very far at all before we had to turn around and then head back home. And maybe that was actually for the best, because once we got into the woods and into the forest, we were attacked by mosquitoes. The woods were jam packed with mosquitoes. They were everywhere. It was crazy. They were buzzing around in our ears and landing on us and biting us. And it was torture, actually for pretty much the whole time we were on the trail, we just kept swatting the mosquitoes away and they just kept coming back. So, maybe it was a good thing that we only went hiking for around an hour. I don’t even know if you could call it a hike, it was more like a walk in the woods. 

I will say though, that to their credit, Korean mosquitoes are much, much easier to deal with than Canadian mosquitoes. Maybe some of you listeners have the experience, just like me, of living in Canada and living in Korea. And if you do have that experience, maybe you understand what I’m talking about. But, when you get bit by a Canadian mosquito, the itchiness lasts for days, it just is itchy and itchy and you gotta keep scratching that mosquito bite for several days until the itchiness goes away. On the other hand, Korean mosquitoes, at least in my experience, are much, much gentler. Although their bite is equally annoying as Canadian mosquitoes, at first, the itchiness goes away in like an hour, it’s just uncomfortable for an hour or so, and then it’s fine, and not a problem at. So, yeah, during our hike, we were attacked by mosquitoes and I did get several bites, but thankfully after an hour or so, they cleared up and I was good as new. 

And after our hike, my wife and I went to a hot pot restaurant to eat some Chinese style, hot pot, which is super delicious and just a fantastic meal to have after a hike. For those of you who don’t know what hot pot is or who have never tried it before, and in fact, I don’t think I had tried it before moving to Asia. But it’s quite common in Korea and especially, I think very common maybe in China and also Japan and other Asian countries as well. 

If you’re listening from an Asian country, why don’t you leave a comment on the website and let me know if hot pot is popular, where you live. But yeah, anyways, we went and we had hot pot, which is kind of like a soup. The server will bring a big pot of broth to your table and put it on a burner and start boiling it for you. And usually the pot is divided into two parts. There’s a divider in the middle of the pot. And on one side you have a mild, savory broth. And then on the other side, you have a hot, spicy broth that is usually very red in color and just looks spicy and taste spicy. And all of the ingredients that you put in the broth to make your hot pot are self-serve. It’s kind of like a buffet, so you can go to the self-service area and there’s just a huge selection of fresh vegetables and different kinds of meat. There was pork, and beef, and lamb and all kinds of different stuff. There was seafood, there were noodles and sauces, and then you just pick what you want, you put it in your hot pot and boil it to cook it, and then you just eat right from the pot. So, it’s a fun eating experience. It’s cool to cook at your table like that, and it was really delicious. And best of all, I can’t forget this, best of all my wife paid for the meal. So, that was great too. I can never complain about a free dinner. 

The rest of the week was more stressful though .Mainly because of one reason, and that is because next month, my visa here in Korea is set to expire, and that means I have to go through the visa renewal process again soon. In fact, I have an appointment with the immigration office coming up very quickly and because I got married last year, I’m now eligible for a spousal visa. So, I’m actually not renewing my visa, I’m going to change visas, change types. From the point based visa that I currently have that gives me long-term residency. I’m gonna change that to a spousal visa. And applying for this visa is no easy feat. And actually, I feel kind of bad because it’s my wife that has to do most of the work for this application because she’s going to be the person who is sponsoring my visa. She’s my spouse and she is my sponsor for the visa. So, the amount of documents and paperwork that we both have to prepare is insane, but especially she has to prepare almost double the amount of documents that I have to do. And guys, I’m not even lying when I say that our application folder looks like an encyclopedia. No joke. There are probably around 100 or 150 pages of documents that we’ve had to prepare. So, it’s been a lot of work, and the last few days we’ve just been going through all the paperwork, filling out the application forms, and it’s been pretty monotonous. A lot of the paperwork actually asks you for the same information again and again, you know, writing your address again, and again, writing your ID, number, your phone number, your email address again and again. 

And I don’t know about you, but I find it really difficult these days when I actually have to physically write something down with a pen. You know, by printing or by handwriting. I’m so used to typing on a computer or on my phone these days that the muscles my hand uses when writing have become very, very weak. And my hand just gets sore and cramped up after like 10 minutes of writing. So these days, I really hate writing things out by hand, but I’ve been getting a lot of practice in because there’s no way to avoid it with this visa application. 

Now on Thursday night, I believe it was Thursday night. My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table going through all of the documents and filling out some forms when disaster struck. Well, it almost struck at least, we nearly avoided disaster. Because my wife, you see, she was drinking some juice. And she had a bottle of her juice on the table. And as she was reaching for a document, she accidentally knocked that bottle of juice over and it spilled all over the table. This grape juice, dark-purple grape juice. And when she did that, it was almost like it happened in slow motion from my perspective. I was sitting across from her and she let out this yell like this, “Noooo!” And I could see the juice fall over in slow motion. And I looked up and she just had this totally panic-stricken look on her face. Thankfully, it was just a really small bottle of juice, like maybe a hundred milliliters or so. Here in Korea, it’s pretty common to drink these really small bottles of juice. So, it wasn’t like an American sized bottle of juice, you know, like a one-liter juice bottle. No, it was just a small juice bottle. And although the juice did spill over some papers and ruined them, thankfully, it was only the checklist that we had made to keep track of our documents and not any of the actual documents that we needed to submit that got hit by the juice. 

So, we were really, really lucky. We did freak out for a minute when the juice was spilled and, you know, we dove across the table trying to clear the documents, “Ah save the documents!”, from the juice. But in retrospect now, it’s kind of funny and we learned our lesson and it’s a good lesson to learn guys, when you’re filling out and signing important documents, make sure to keep any drinks far, far away. 

I’ve got a question to ask you guys. You know, here at Culips, we’re always thinking about how we can improve our lessons and be the best we can be. And in order to do that, it’s really helpful to know what our members think and what our listeners think. Your feedback and your opinions help us out tremendously. 

So, what I’d like to know is this. If Culips started to make structured courses with a very well-organized curriculum where we would walk you through the learning process step by step by step, what kind of course would you like to take? I can’t say that we’re going to start making online courses for certain, but I will admit that it’s something, the team and I are starting to think about and brainstorm. And we’d love to get your feedback about what you would like to learn from a Culips course, if we did start to offer this kind of learning material in the future. So, we really wanna know your opinion and you can let me know by leaving a comment on Culips.com or by sending an email to me directly, my email address is andrew@culips.com or you could message us through social media like Instagram. I’d just really love to hear your opinion and what you think about the idea. So, please don’t be shy and let me know. 

In other important Culips news, our live stream for Culips Members that we do every month is happening very, very soon. In fact, it will be happening this week on Tuesday, September 27th at 7:30 PM, Korean Standard Time. And if you’re a Culips Member, please join us. Kassy and I will be hosting the live stream together, and we’ll just be hanging out with you guys. We’ll spend some time practicing English and we’ll even open the stream so that any members out there who want to participate can call in and join us on the live stream and talk with us in real time. We’ve had a few Culips Members do this in the past, and I’m hoping that many more will do it in the future. So, please come and join us for the live stream. It’s always a ton of fun. And to do that, you just need to log into your Culips account and follow the link from the dashboard. 

Now speaking of Kassy, we uploaded a brand-new Simplified Speech episode last week, where Kassy tells us about her first impressions of Thailand. So as you may know, she recently moved there, and in this episode, you’ll get to hear what she thinks of her new home and how she’s adjusting to life in Thailand. So, I really enjoyed the conversation and I think you’ll like it as well. So, make sure that you don’t miss that episode. 

And now it’s time for this week’s vocabulary lesson. At the end of each bonus episode, I teach you a useful English expression and tell you how to use it in a natural way. Today, I’m gonna teach you about an advanced adjective construction. Sounds difficult, doesn’t it? But don’t worry, it’s not so bad. And you can use this advanced adjective construction to describe negative situations using the word stricken. Stricken. S-T-R-I-C-K-E-N, stricken. OK? So, that is the common word in all of these adjectives. Now, actually, if you were listening carefully, you probably noticed that I used an adjective like this in this episode, when I said that my wife looked panic-stricken after spilling juice on our table. Did you hear when I used it earlier? If not, it’s okay. We can go back and rewind the tape and listen a couple more times. So let’s do that now. Here we go. 

She let out this yell like this, “Noooo!” And I could see the juice fall over in slow motion. And I looked up and she just had this totally panic-stricken look on her face. She let out this yell like this, “Noooo!” And I could see the juice fall over in slow motion. And I looked up and she just had this totally panic-stricken look on her face. 

OK, so in that audio clip, I said that my wife looked panic-stricken. Panic-stricken. Now, this means that she was filled with panic at the thought that her accidental actions may have ruined all of our hard work of filling out the visa documents. And we can use similar adjective constructions with this word stricken to describe situations where something really bad or negative is happening, or people are suffering from some negative or bad circumstance. 

So, for example, if a group of terrorists take over a country, then we could say that that country is terror-stricken. It means that the whole country is living in this state of fear where a terrorist attack could happen at any moment. 

Another example is if we say a country is famine-stricken, it means that the country is suffering from famine. Famine, by the way, is what we call it when there isn’t enough food to eat. Often, famine is caused by drought, and drought occurs when it doesn’t rain. So, famine happens when there’s a drought or when other weather conditions kill all of the crops on the farms, and as a result, there’s no food to eat. A very, very bad situation indeed. 

Another example is that we could describe people who have recently lost a loved one as being grief-stricken. So, if you’re grief-stricken, it means that you are really, really sad because someone who you loved died. 

So guys, as you can see, we don’t use this expression to talk about happy situations. It’s always about really bad, negative situations like terror, grief, panic, famine, and so on. As always I’ve prepared some examples for us, so we can hear how to make some natural sentences using these kind of stricken adjectives. So, let’s take a listen to the first example sentence now. 

Example sentence number one 
In her spare time, my sister volunteers at a food kitchen that prepares meals for children who live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. In her spare time, my sister volunteers at a food kitchen that prepares meals for children who live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. 

Let’s break that example down. So the speaker is talking about his sister and his sister volunteers at a food kitchen. A food kitchen is the name that we call a place, it’s like a community center or a community kitchen that prepares meals, usually for people who are poor or homeless, or are just going through a difficult time in life. Now, that food kitchen that the sister works at prepares meals for children who live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. So, poverty means very, very poor. In every area of the world, there are rich neighborhoods and there are poor neighborhoods. And the poorest of the poor, we could call poverty-stricken. It’s like an area where there are many, many people who are suffering from poverty, suffering from having no money. 

Example sentence number two 
This Friday, there’s going to be a fundraiser event to help the families from flood-stricken areas who lost their homes last month. This Friday, there’s going to be a fundraiser event to help the families from flood-stricken areas who lost their homes last month. 

Let’s break that example down. So in that sentence, we heard that there will be a fundraising event. A fundraiser, a fundraiser is an event where maybe there’s a concert, maybe there’s a dance, maybe there’s a sports competition, some kind of special event. And the money that is raised from that event, the profit, it doesn’t go to the organizer and help them to make more money. No, the money is donated to a good cause like a charity, or in this case, the money is going to families who lost their homes because of a flood. OK? So in that sentence, we heard about flood-stricken areas. So, flood-stricken describes the areas that were flooded, that were affected by the flood waters. 

Example sentence number three
When I thought I accidentally deleted the files for tomorrow’s presentation, I was completely panic-stricken. When I thought I accidentally deleted the files for tomorrow’s presentation, I was completely panic-stricken. 

Let’s break the final example sentence down for today’s episode. So in that example, we heard the speaker reminisce about a time when he was completely panic-stricken, OK? Why was he completely filled with panic? Just completely 100% stressed out? Well, it was because he thought that he deleted the files for his presentation. Now, thankfully he didn’t do that, and it was okay. But for a moment there, when he thought that he deleted his files, he was just filled with panic, he was totally, 100%, completely panic-stricken. 

Congratulations on making it to the end of this episode and for completing an English study session with me. Great job, everybody. And guys don’t give up here, OK? You made a great start to this week, but don’t quit. Keep going and carry this momentum forward with you throughout the rest of the week as well. So, I’m gonna end things here. Please take care everyone and I’ll talk to you next time, goodbye.