Thank you for pressing play and joining me for an English study session today. It's great to have you here. My name's Andrew, and this is a bonus episode of the Culips English Podcast. There's a completely free transcript that accompanies this episode, and you can get it just by visiting our website, Culips.com and clicking the bonus episode link from the podcast menu, or instead, you could just click the link that's in the description for this episode and get it that way.

We kick off each week here at Culips with a bonus episode where I share some stories about what's going on in my life, update you about what's happening behind the scenes here at Culips, and teach you a useful expression. And by learning with the bonus episodes, you'll be able to improve your fluency, your cultural knowledge, and even your communication skills. And if you're looking for even more material to study with, we've got you covered too, don't worry. We have hundreds of lessons on our website, and if you're a Culips Member, you can even get the study guides for all of them as well, and also support the work that we do here at Culips. Now, before I tell you about what I got up to this week, I wanted to take just a moment here to give a special shout out to all of our wonderful listeners from Iran. To be honest, our Iranian listeners are some of the most passionate English learners that we have. Despite that it's actually pretty hard for Iranians to study with Culips.

So, for those of you who don't know, our content is frequently blocked in Iran and because of the international sanctions that are in place, it's extremely difficult for Iranians to become Culips Members and to get access to all of our study materials. Now, unfortunately, those issues are outside of our control and there isn't too much that we can do to solve that problem on our end of things. But despite these challenges, we still have a great community of Iranians who somehow find a way to learn English with us, and we do really appreciate that. Well, over the last week, my inbox has been flooded with messages from our Iranian listeners asking me to talk about what's happening in their country right now. And if you have been watching the news recently, then you'll probably know about the protests that are happening in that country after the tragic death of a young woman named Mahsa Amini, who was killed while in the custody of the morality police.

Now guys, I'm not the right guy to talk about this issue. I unfortunately lack the background knowledge and the qualifications to convey the story accurately. However, I'm going to add a link in the description of this episode to the New York Times podcast, which is called The Daily. It's an excellent podcast, it's really interesting. For some of our higher-level learners, I recommend that you check it out. . It comes out every day and they focus on one important news story in each episode.

And last week, they released an episode that had an Iranian-American reporter explain what's happening in a very clear and easy to understand way. So, if any listeners out there from around the world would like to get more details on what's happening in Iran, then I recommend checking out the daily. And of course, I hope that all of our listeners in Iran and in other conflict zones around the world are staying safe and that you will find peace and comfort soon. And I think I can speak for the whole Culips community when I say that our thoughts are with you. Happy October everyone. It is October now and it's one of my favorite months. I love the fall, I love October, and as a coffee lover, I was really happy to start this month with International Coffee Day, which happened on October 1st. Did you know October 1st was International Coffee Day? Well, if you didn't, now you know. I didn't really do anything extra special to celebrate or anything. I just drank a cup or two in the morning like I always do. But it's great that October is bookended by two awesome days. We start the month with International Coffee Day, and then we end the month on the 31st with Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. So, I'm hoping that it's going to be a great October for myself and also for all of you listening right now.

By the way, that was a cool expression that I just said there a moment ago. Bookended. Bookended. Do you guys know what bookended means? Well, originally it comes from this little accessory that we usually put on desks or bookshelves. And that accessory is called a bookend. A bookend is one of those pieces of wood or metal or stone even sometimes. Usually, they're pretty heavy and we use them to lean books against so that we can stand the books up on a shelf or on a desk without having the books fall over. So, they kind of prop up and hold the books up. Usually we put one bookend on the left side of the books and another bookend on the right side of the books. And then the books are in the middle, right? And those two bookends are holding the books . Straight. So, that's the origin of this expression. And we can also use it metaphorically to talk about two things that start and end something. So, then we could say that October is bookendeded by special days because it starts with International Coffee Day and ends with Halloween.

So, what did you get up to last week? Did you do anything fun or exciting or was it just a regular old week for you? I didn't get up to too much, but I did do a couple of things that I think are worth sharing about. I guess the highlight of my week happened over the weekend. I went to an international festival that happened in a neighborhood that is pretty close to where I live right now. It's only about a 15-minute walk away from my place. And this festival was in an area in Seoul where many foreign ambassadors live. It's a pretty swanky neighborhood. Swanky meaning fancy and upscale and rich.

And from the outside, it looks like many of the ambassadors are living the good life. Guys, you can walk around in this neighborhood and you can see all of the houses where the ambassadors live and it's pretty cool because there are little signs or plaques on the outside of each home and it will tell you which country the home belongs to, and often you can see the flag of that country flying in the yard as well. So, for example, you'll be walking down the street and then all of the sudden you see the German ambassador's residence, or you'll see another house that says, "This is the Ethiopian Embassy", or the "Columbian Foreign Mission", or something like that. There's just a lot of foreign government officials working and living in that area of the city, and they all have these really fancy and lavish and swanky homes. So, it's a fun place to take a stroll. Anyway, I guess every year all of the foreign diplomatic residents of that neighborhood get together and they throw a big party and have a street festival. So, I've heard about this festival before. I believe it actually used to happen at Christmas, but I haven't been able to attend it because once I moved to this neighborhood, it was shortly after that Covid hit, and during Covid, the festival was canceled. So, this was the first year starting it up again, post-Covid, and they decided to move it to the summer this time. I think that was an awesome idea because it was, really a pretty cool event.

So, I went there with my wife and I actually ran into one of my coworkers there and his family as well too. So that was cool. There were cultural performances and some activities and displays for kids, but to be honest, I wasn't really too interested in any of that. But what I was really, really interested in were all of the different food booths. Each country that participated had a booth where they were selling some of their famous dishes. So for example, the Americans were selling American southern barbecue, the Ukrainians, borsch, the Pakistanis biryani and so on and so on.

Unfortunately, I didn't see a Canadian booth, so I don't know why we weren't participating, but there were many, many other countries, so that was cool. It was a lovely sunny day when we visited and there was just this fantastic street festival vibe and it put me in the mood to eat barbecue. I wanted to eat something barbecued like maybe a sausage, so I was hoping that I could find a European-style sausage.

I thought that would just be perfect. So, I found a German booth and they were selling currywurst, which was really tempting, but the line was super long and I didn't wanna wait like 45 minutes in line, so I decided to pass on that. I kept walking around looking at all the booths, and finally I saw that the French, the French booth, was also selling sausages, so I decided to give it a try. There was also a long line at the French booth, but it was much shorter than the German booth, so I waited about 15 minutes, and then finally I was able to buy a French-style hotdog. It was like a sausage in some bread with some mustard and some cabbage, and I was really hungry, so I was excited to sink my teeth into it. Sink your teeth into something means to eat it. So, I was excited to sink my teeth into it. But, I have to say though, it was really disappointing. It was nothing special at all, and I know that globally French food is very well respected as being some of the world's finest, but I don't think this was a good representation of French cuisine because it was so-so at best.

While I was buying the sausage, my wife went off to grab some grub from some of the other booths. Grub. Grab some grub. Grub is like a slang expression for food, so she just went off to buy some other kinds of food and she ended up buying Guatemalan food, which I was so excited about because I have had Mexican food a lot in my life, but I don't think I had ever tried Guatemalan food specifically. Now, I'm sorry to our listeners in Guatemala, but I never actually caught the names of the dishes since my wife ordered it. She saw the menu, but I didn't see the menu and I was so hungry I just jumped right in and ate it all up. But I think one of the dishes was a tamale, and I think the best way I could describe it is it was like a big dumpling made from corn and inside there was some chicken and there was some sauce as well, and I really enjoyed that. It was much better than the French sausage, and so, so different from the Korean food that I usually eat. So, it was a really refreshing change from my normal routine. My wife also bought this kind of barbecue steak on a stick from the Guatemalan booth, so we ate that as well, and that was good. We wanted to even eat more food. There were so many booths and so many options there, but the food was a little on the expensive side, so we decided just to leave it there. All in all though, it was a nice way to pass a weekend afternoon, and we headed home satisfied and full.

If you listened to last week's bonus episode, you know that I was preparing to apply for a spousal visa last week. Since I'm Canadian, I need a visa to live in Korea. But after getting married last year, I now qualify for a spousal visa since my wife is Korean. My current points-based visa is nearing its expiration date, so I thought this would be a good time to apply for the spousal visa. As I mentioned last time, it took a lot of prep to get the application ready, but I visited the immigration office last week and it looks like we did everything correctly and the visa will be processed without any difficulties. Fingers crossed, at least, fingers crossed. It'll still take several weeks before I find out the results, but the immigration officer I met with was very kind and said there were no problems with our documents. So, I think everything will be fine. Visits to the immigration office, though are always very stressful, but I'm happy that it's out of the way and I won't have to visit again at least for another year.

Actually, I had a little bit of bad luck with the timing of the application because my passport expires next year. Even though the spousal visa can be a multi-year visa, because my passport is expiring next year, the immigration officer told me that they can only provide me with a one-year visa. So, that means next year I'll have to renew my passport and then reapply again for a longer visa. So, more bureaucratic fun to look forward to in the next year. But for the time being, I think everything about my visa is complete.

As for what's new here at Culips, we had our September live stream for Culips Members last week on Tuesday, and as always, it was super fun. We even had one of our members who is currently living in Sri Lanka call in and that was wonderful. It was fantastic to talk with him, and it's always so fascinating for me when I get to interact and talk and connect with all of you guys. Our next Culips Members live stream will be happening on Tuesday, November 1st at 7:30 PM Korean Standard Time. If you're a Culips Member, please mark it in your calendar and join me. We'll be posting more details about that to our website shortly, and I hope a lot of Culips Members can participate next month.

I also met up with some of my co-hosts, Anna and Kassy last week, and we recorded a ton of new episodes about all sorts of topics from socializing with coworkers, all the way to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. So, the team and I are going to start working on these episodes now so that you can listen and learn with them, and we hope to release those lessons as soon as possible.

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

I wanna teach you about the idiomatic expression, for the time being. For the time being. For the time being. It's a really, really common idiom, guys, and it's super important for you to know. I use it all the time and I hear it all the time. However, I hear native speakers use it. I haven't heard too many English learners use it before, so that's why I wanna focus in on this idiom now. So, for the time being means for a short amount of time only, OK? How long? Well, it could be 10 minutes or it could be a year. It really depends on the context, but it means that it's a limited amount of time, OK? It's not forever. It's not permanent. Did you hear when I used this expression in this episode? I used it when I was talking about getting my visa. Let's rewind, go back, and listen to that part of the episode a couple more times.

So more bureaucratic fun to look forward to in the next year. But for the time being, I think everything about my visa is complete. So more bureaucratic fun to look forward to in the next year. But for the time being, I think everything about my visa is complete.

OK, so there, I said that for the time being, everything about my visa is finished. So, that means as for right now, all of the work that I need to do to get my new visa is finished. I don't have to do anything more right now, but the visa I'll be getting is not a permanent visa. It's not forever, and in fact, I'll have to renew it again next year. So, because it's not a forever visa and it's only lasting for a little bit of time, I can say that my work is finished for the time being, for now, for one year, but then after a year, I'm gonna have to do some more work and reapply for the visa again. So how about some example sentences? I've prepared some for us to listen to using this idiomatic expression for the time being. And while you listen to them, just keep in mind that for the time being means for a short period of time only. And then I think you'll be able to understand them perfectly. So example sentences, here we go.

Example sentence number one.
I'm living in the suburbs for the time being, but I hope I can move downtown next year. I'm living in the suburbs for the time being, but I hope I can move downtown next year.

Let's break that example sentence down. In that sentence, the speaker says that he's living in the suburbs for the time being, so that means in the current moment, for now, but he doesn't expect it to be a permanent living situation. In the future, maybe next year, he hopes that he can move downtown. So, in this sentence we hear for the time being, meaning for now, for a small amount of time, but not forever.

Example sentence number two.
You can park here for the time being, but please move your car by tomorrow morning. You can park here for the time being, but please move your car by tomorrow morning.

Let's break that example down. In that example, we hear the speaker telling somebody that they can park in this parking spot for the time being, for now, OK? For a short amount of time, but definitely not forever. In fact, that speaker wants the car moved by tomorrow morning. So, when that speaker said you can park here for the time being, they simply meant that the car can stay in the parking spot only until tomorrow morning, and then the car must be moved.

Example sentence number three.
For the time being, Jane's working at a cafe while she goes to night school. For the time being, Jane's working at a cafe while she goes to night school.

Let's break this final example sentence down. For the time being, Jane is working at a cafe So, this means that Jane is working at a cafe now, but that is not her end career goal. She probably has some better goal in mind. She wants to work at a different place. So for now, she's working at the cafe, but it's not her forever career plan. In fact, she's going to night school right now and probably studying something, and then once she graduates from school, she'll move on to a different career. But for now, for the time being, she's working in a cafe.

That brings us to the end. Thanks for studying with me for today and congratulations on completing another bonus episode. Just remember, guys, that what you just did, this is the kind of effort that you need to do to keep making progress with your English. Keep putting in the time, keep putting in the work, and the results will follow. And if you made it this far, you did the right thing today and you can feel good about that, but don't stop here, OK? Make sure to keep up your momentum throughout the week, and if you need help with that, don't forget, we have hundreds of more lessons that you can listen to for free on our website, Culips.com, along with study guides and many other bonuses for Culips Members. OK, I'm gonna go. Have an awesome week and I'll talk to you next time, bye.