Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms DOUBLE WHAMMY and DOUBLE DOUBLE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English term double whammy. When we say something is a double whammy, it means two bad things happened right in a row. And I have a good example for you. I was really busy at work, and then when I was done being busy at work, I got sick. I got a stuffed up nose and a sore throat. It was a double whammy. If you haven't noticed, there hasn't been any English lessons on this channel for a couple of weeks because of that double whammy. Because I was really busy at work and then I got a little bit sick. And it's kind of hard to make English lessons when you have a sore throat. I tend to get sore throats quite a bit, I think, because I talk for a living. But anyways, a double whammy. Two bad things that happen in a row.

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And then the second term, which I think I've taught before, is double double. This is a Canadian term. This is a way to order coffee if you want two scoops of sugar and two creams in it. So I guess two shots of cream. I'm not sure how they put the cream in, but if you drive through a Canadian coffee shop, drive thru and say, I'll have a large double double, it means you want a large coffee and you want two sugars and two creams in it. I don't actually like double doubles. They're too sweet.

So to review, a double whammy is when two bad things happen in a row. Like the example I gave. I was busy and then I was sick. A double whammy and a double double. By the way, you can use it as a noun. You can just say, can I have a double double? It means you want a coffee with two creams and two sugars. Very sweet, very rich.

Hey, I don't actually have a comment from a previous video ready to go. I'm a little behind and I'm slowly getting back into this YouTube thing. I wasn't super sick, but sick enough that I couldn't get anything done. It was a little bit annoying, but hey, that's the way life goes sometimes. As Jen always says, when you're sick, you're sick. There's nothing you can do about it. It's not your fault. It's just something that happens to us all.

I think, though, it's pretty normal for teachers to get sick at the beginning of October. We spend most of our summer by ourselves. We spend most of our summer with family and friends a little bit, but then we go back to school and there's, like, all kinds of people around us. I see over 100 people every day. There's almost 350 people in our building. So it's not surprising that teachers get sick at the beginning of October. And then the second reason is because we use our voices so much, you naturally get a bit of a sore throat just because, just from use, because you're talking so much. And then I think what happens is it... it's easier to get sick when that happens.

So anyways, what was I going to talk about today? It is starting to feel like fall. You can actually see, I'm not sure if Jen wants to be in the video, but in the distance you can see that things are a little more brown than they are green. By the way, you have to look in the distance to see the brown. Everything here is actually quite luscious. Is that the word? Luscious? I'll have to look that up. Lush. That's the word I was looking for, quite lush. Lush just has a slightly different meaning. It's quite lush. Everything's still quite green, but you can tell it's almost time to start wearing a jacket. It's that time of year where it's like, oh, what do I wear in the morning? Do I step outside and see what it's like?

Anyways, thanks for watching. Sorry that I haven't been

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the phrases TO PLUG AWAY and TO PULL THE PLUG

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to plug away. When you plug away at something, it means you work out it slowly and methodically until it's done. It doesn't necessarily mean it's something exciting, either. Sometimes you plug away at things that you don't actually want to do because you just want to get them done. A great example would be this. Sometimes I give my students a test, and then I have 25 tests to grade, and I don't really enjoy grading tests. But if I plug away, if I work at it slowly and methodically, eventually I will be done. I don't have to work at it quickly. I just have to plug away so that I can finish the task that I don't find that enjoyable.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to pull the plug. When you pull the plug on something, it stops working because it doesn't have electricity. But we use this to talk about other things as well. If I'm working on a project at school and it's not going well, me and the other teachers, we might decide to pull the plug, or should I say, the other teachers and I might decide to pull the plug. Sorry to use informal English there. When you pull the plug on something, it means you stop working on it. I'm really enjoying making lessons on this channel and on my other channel. So I'm not going to pull the plug on either channel anytime soon. As I've said before, at least three or four more years, maybe longer.

So to review, to plug away means to work at something so that you get it done, sometimes slowly and methodically, and without taking breaks. And to pull the plug on something means to quit doing it.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I have the comment right here. I'm kind of laughing because I've been talking for two minutes, hoping a truck would go by related to this comment. I think there's one coming now, but actually, it looks like he's turning. Anyways, from Béla. Hello, Bob. I have always wondered why the trucks are different in Europe and in North America. Do you know anything about it? And my response, I think it has to do with length. Here, there is less of a limit on length, so the cab can be longer.

So, yeah, we still don't have any trucks going by. But, Béla, my understanding is this. In Europe, many of the trucks have a flat front. Maybe I should put a picture up here. Whereas in North America, many trucks have a long snout or nose on the front. And my understanding is that the basic reason is the laws are different. Here in North America you can have really long trucks. I think the trailer can be 54ft long. And I don't know if there's a limit on the tractor. That's the front part of the truck. But I think in Europe they have laws governing the total length of the truck.

By the way, I'm still laughing that no trucks have gone by because honestly, I've been making videos in town for the last couple of weeks and I usually find it a little disturbing because there are so many trucks. But that's my understanding that I guess in North America we just have laws that are a little more forgiving in terms of length of truck.

Now there's a truck coming here. It's not the type of truck I normally talk about. And I think he's turning as well. Way in the distance there, you can see that truck. It's a garbage truck. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's too far in the distance for you to see. When I'm done with this English lesson, I might have to wait for a bit and try to get some footage of the different kinds of t

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases ALL DONE! and BEEN THERE, DONE THAT!

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase all done. Now, you probably know this phrase. It's a pretty common one. It means that you've done a job and the job is finished. You are all done. I love it when I finish something and I can say that I'm all done. I'll give you a better view of that later. But I worked on this for a long time, and now I'm all done. I started the project, I worked on the project, and now I'm at the point where it's completely done. All done.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase been there, done that. So this is kind of a phrase we use in a funny way or a sarcastic way when someone's describing something they've done and we've already done it. So if someone said to me, oh, I went to Toronto and saw a Blue Jays game, if I was like, it's kind of funny, but also a little bit mean, or it can mean that you're not interested in what they're saying, I could say, ah, been there, done that. Basically, I'm saying, I don't really need to hear about your experience because I've already gone to a Blue Jays game and it was very, very exciting. Been there, done that. So kind of funny, but kind of rude at the same time.

So to review, when you do something and when you finish it, you can say all done. Or you can even use a complete sentence and say, I'm all done. And when you say been there, done that, it's kind of a dismissive way to express yourself when someone's talking about something they've done that you've already done and experienced. Been there, done that.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. You're probably anxious to see the work behind me, but this is from Ünsal. Hi, teacher Bob. I can't wait to see the results of your exhausting work. Thank you so much for the amazing lessons. Have a great day. Bye. And my response? I feel like I'm running out of time for my summer jobs. Thanks, Ünsal, for that comment. Yes, I feel like I'm running out of time, but that's okay. There's always more time in the fall.

So I don't know if you remember what this used to look like, but now it looks like this. I was able to take some time to remove a whole bunch of dirt and stone with my tractor and of course with a shovel as well. My son and I spent a great deal of time out here and then I laid what's called interlocking block, or pavers, or simply patio stones. Let me get in the shade here so you can have a better look. This was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing this. Underneath, we put down coarse stone and then finer stone that you can spread easily. And then we chose a pattern that was kind of the hard part, actually choosing a pattern so that it looked really, really nice.

But as you can see now, I have room. Oh, yes, we also put lots of new stone down over there. I have room to park both my vehicles. And Jen and I can sit out here in the morning and have a cup of tea if we want. Maybe I'll try to find a link to an older video where you can see what this used to look like.

But I am very, very happy because for a couple of reasons. Number one, we wanted to do all this, or have all this done professionally, but this was cheaper. I did it myself. Secondly, the interlocking block, the pavers that we used were actually used. My son got them from somewhere. He paid very sorry, there's a spot here that's not level. I'm very particular. He paid very little money for them, so they weren't free, but they were very, very cheap.

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO HIT A WALL and I'D LIKE TO BE A FLY ON THE WALL

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to hit a wall. When we say in English that you hit a wall, it means you've hit an obstacle or even a feeling that makes you stop doing something. If I'm working really hard on a video and I can't think of other ideas to finish the video, I could say that I hit a wall. If I'm running a long distance, if I run for more than two or 3 minutes, eventually I hit a wall. Basically, I can't breathe fast enough to actually keep running. So I would say that I hit a wall. We often describe runners who run long distances when they get to a point where they can't run anymore, we say that they hit a wall.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, I'd like to be a fly on the wall. This is a phrase we use when we know people are talking about something in a room, maybe at work or maybe in your house and you're not in the room, but you would like to be in the room. You would say, Oh, I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that room, or I'd like to be a fly on the wall. This happens mostly at work when the boss is meeting with someone else. A lot of the teachers are like, I wonder what they're talking about. I'd like to be a fly on the wall in that room, or I'd love to be a fly on the wall so I could just kind of hear what they're saying and see what they're doing.

So to review to hit a wall means to hit an obstacle that stops you from being able to do something. Here's something that happened to me. In university I took one year of math. I took calculus. But during my second year of calculus, I hit a wall. I wasn't able to understand it or do it well. That's about the limit of my math knowledge. Calc II in university is where I hit a wall. And I'd like to be a fly on the wall simply means that people are meeting somewhere and you would just really love to hear what they're saying.

But anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Know that. Hello Mr. Bob. A warm welcome back from my side too. You really are a hard working man, but we know that. It's very nice of you that you lend a hand and take care of the grade nine French class. Your school is very fortunate to have someone like you, just like we do here. Anyway, I'm glad that you're at good health and back on track. Thanks for the lesson, sir. And my response: I'm happy to be back on track too. I'm looking forward looking forward to making today's lesson. Thank you. Know that for that comment. For some reason, I'm having trouble talking today. I don't know why.

Hey, we are out here having a look at the wagon. So this is the wagon that, as I've explained before, is a little bit like a greenhouse. And you can see that there are still a lot of seedlings in here that need to be planted. There are some down here getting full sun on the ground and more over here as well. And I'll show you where I'll leave you guys walking this way. You don't need to see me when I go for a walk, do you? We'll walk over here and I'll show you where some of them are getting planted.

So over here we have what is actually our first flower bed. When we started farming, this was the first flower bed that we created. You have some flowers growing here. We sometimes put down black fabric to kill all the weeds or plastic. This is actually plastic. So the heat of the sun and then the lack of sunlight will kill the weeds. And you can see here Jen's getting ready to plant. She has drip line here to water. And over here there

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases SIGN UP and SIGN IN

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the phrase sign up. When you sign up for something, it means that you want to do it and the person organizing it is asking for people to write their names down on a piece of paper, or maybe to send their name in via the computer, maybe an email or an online form. At school, sometimes there are sports at lunchtime and students and teachers can play if they want to, but you need to sign up. The day before or the week before they start playing basketball or volleyball or whatever the sport is they usually have a sign up sheet and you can sign up to play that sport. I don't normally do this, although last year I did play a little bit of baseball. I signed up (Past Tense) to play baseball. It was quite enjoyable. I hadn't played baseball for a very long time.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase sign in. Now, this is similar to log in if you're talking about a computer or something like your email. I have to sign in to check my email. When I turn my computer on, I need to sign in. I can also say log in. I need to log in to check my email. I need to log in once I turn my computer on. And it simply means to enter your username and your password. But we also use this for paper and pen things as well. My mom now lives in a retirement home. When I go to visit my mom, I need to sign in when I get there. They actually have a book at the entrance and I need to write my name and the time that I arrive and here's a bonus I need to sign out as well when I leave. I need to kind of write down what time I leave.

So to review, when you sign up for something, it means you put your name on a piece of paper or you give your name to someone who's organizing something. You sign up because you want to do that thing, and when you sign in, you can either sign in to a computer or a piece of software or a website or your email, or you can sign in like I described at an old age home or another place like that where they need to see your name when you get there.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. Hopefully I remember how to do this still. This is from Berevilson. Thank you so much, Teacher Bob. How I like that landscape, it’s starting to look pretty nice here. Really amazing. Or as you like to say, awesome. Thanks a lot and my response. You're welcome. I'm replying to this 14 seconds after you typed it. I'm speeding to speed today

So that was actually two weeks ago. I was speedy that day, but then I wasn't very speedy or responsive after that, was I? So I do want to thank Berevilson, thank you so much for that comment. That is awesome.

And, you know, I always like to explain when I take a little bit of time off what I've been doing, not that you guys need to know, but a few things. One, I had some stuff I had to take care of normal things, like I had to file, finish filing my taxes. And then there was some additional paperwork afterwards that I had to take care of. We didn't get audited, but something similar to that. We had to provide some additional receipts.

And then a couple of things to somehow I agreed to teach an extra class at school just for the last few weeks of the school year. I can't give you all the details about why that happened, but there was a French class and I'm now the teacher. So instead of teaching part time, I'm a little closer to full time again, but just for a few weeks. And don't worry, it's pretty manageable. It's a grade nine French class, something I've taught many time

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases THAT'S THAT! and THAT'S MORE LIKE IT!

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, “That's that!” This is a funny little phrase we say when something is over or when something is done. When the workday is done, you might say, “Well, that's that! Time to go home!” When you're done having a conversation with someone, you might say, “Well, that's that! See you again tomorrow.” So it's just a way to kind of sum up that something is over. It's kind of a way to end something. I could do this when I'm done my videos as well. I could say, “Well, that's that. The lesson is over.” It's not over, though. Stick around. There's a little bit more to go.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, “That's more like it!” This is something we say when someone starts doing something in a better way or when something turns out to be better. Let me think of a good example. If I was doing something wrong, let's say I was watering the plants wrong and then Jen said, “No, no, turn the hose this way and go slower,” She might then say, “That's more like it!” to tell me that I'm now doing it correctly. So if someone's doing something wrong and then you show them how to do it right and when they do it right, you might say, “Hey, that's more like it!” You might get this when you're learning to pronounce an English word. When you do say it right, your tutor might say to you or your English coach might say, “That's more like it!”

So to review, if someone says, “That's that!”, it's just a way, kind of a funny little phrase to say when something is over or ending. And if someone says, “That's more like it!”, it must mean whatever you're doing, you're doing it right.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. It's in my back pocket. Oh, my wallet's in this back pocket, this is my wallet and this is my phone in my front pocket. And these are my keys because I just got home. I don't know why I'm showing you all that, but that's what's in my pockets today. Where's the actual comment? Here it is. This is from Revolution. Thanks for this valuable information. I don't know how to pay you. And my response? You do not need to worry about how to pay me. YouTube is a win-win situation. You watch my videos, I get advertising revenue. You learn English. It's a great system.

So I often mention... Sorry I dropped the comment. I often mention this to people. Some people want to thank me somehow or they want to pay me somehow for my lessons. If you want to be a member, you can, but it's not required.

There are some things you can do though, that help me here on YouTube, and those would be good things to do if you did want to thank me. Number one. Watch my video from start to end, especially on my other channel. If you do that, then YouTube knows it's a good video and they're more likely to show other people the thumbnail. The other thing you can do is watch the video twice. By the way, watching my entire video helps you and me. The second thing you can do is watch the video two or three times. This also helps you a lot because the repetition helps you to remember. And it also tells YouTube that my video is a good video.

By the way, don't do these two things if the video isn't a good video. If it's a boring video, just stop watching it. But if you did want to thank me, that would be a good way to do it.

What else could you do? You could tell other people about this channel or my other channel. That also helps me a lot because the more people that watch, and the more of

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A SLIP OF THE TONGUE and A SLIP UP

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase: a slip of the tongue. A slip of the tongue is when you say the wrong word by accident, or you use the wrong name when you're talking to someone. If I was talking to my brother John, and I called him Dave by accident, that's my other brother's name, I would say it's a slip of the tongue. I've made a mistake and I might not even realize it. Sometimes when you have a slip of the tongue, someone else will tell you that you made a mistake. So if you're ever talking and you use the wrong word in English or even in your own language, we would simply call it a slip of the tongue.

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And we also have something called a slip up. A slip up is just a small mistake that someone might make. Let's say my van needed to go to the garage and they said bring it in on a Tuesday and I brought it in on a Monday. That would just be a slip up. I got the dates wrong. That would be a little mistake that I made. This actually happened a couple weeks ago where I brought my vehicle somewhere on the wrong day, but it was just a little slip up.

So to review a slip of the tongue refers to when you use the wrong word or the wrong name, when you're saying something out loud, you have a little slip of the tongue. Sometimes when I'm talking to students, I'll call a student by the name of another student, and it's just a slip of the tongue. And when you make a small mistake, we simply call it a slip up. And we usually use the word little in front to we say, Oh, it's just a little slip up. It was just a small mistake.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. The comments actually laying in my van by here, I'm standing under or I have the camera under the back of my van because it's raining just a little bit here. But this comment is from Nutshell Collecttor. Thank you for the lesson. There is a gas tank behind you. Can you explain a bit about that? What is that for? And my response, it is full of propane and is used to heat our house. There is a line buried underground from the tank to our house and connected inside to a furnace. The furnace burns the propane.

And that makes heat for our house. So if you go back and watch the last lesson, you'll see that there is a green tank behind me in that lesson. And that tank is full of propane. It's not natural gas, but it's like natural gas. I think propane is a little bit of a different chemical makeup, and that's what we use to heat our house. It comes in a big truck and they pump it full and it's just full of propane. And then that goes through this little line underground to our house and it makes our furnace go.

So, hey, I'm walking outside here in town. I just popped over to another small park. I did make a video in this park once, a long time ago, a couple years ago. But I thought I would come here quick because it is spitting just a little bit. In English when we say that it's spitting, it means it's raining just a little bit. And I was going to show you some of the signs at the park. It says, Welcome to the township of West Lincoln's community park. So that means the town owns this park.

And then there are some rules. You must throw your garbage away. You must have your dog on a leash. You must pick up your dog's poop. No drinking, no driving, four wheelers or other ATVs and no smoking. Those are the park rules. And then what does it say down here? The township of West Lincoln is not responsible for damage or theft to vehicle or contents.

So

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 In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "a walk in the park". When we describe something as a walk in a park, we mean that it's going to be very, very easy. If I say that tomorrow I'm going to go for a 20-minute walk, that's a walk in the park for me. Oh, it's a bad example. I'm using the literal example of walking to talk about this. I usually go for a 45 to 60-minute walk. If I have to walk somewhere and it's only 10 minutes, it's a walk in the park. It's really easy. Let me think of a better example. If I had to write an English test, it would be a walk in the park for me because I speak English. It would be something that's really, really easy.

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The other term I wanted to teach you today is "a cakewalk", and this means exactly the same thing. If you needed to take an English test, it might be hard for you, but I'm not trying to brag here. If I needed to take an English test, it would be a cakewalk. Well, hopefully if it was advanced grammar, I might have some difficulty, but especially if they were asking for the actual names and terms. I'm not a a super expert on grammar if you haven't noticed, but a cakewalk would be how we refer to anything that's really, really easy. If Jen needs to grow something, it's a cakewalk for her. She's really good at doing that.

So to review "a walk in the park" and "a cakewalk", both these terms are used to refer to something that's really, really easy for someone to do. When a team that's really good plays a team that isn't so good, usually you expect it to be a walk in the park when they play that game, you expect them to win easily or you expect it to be a cakewalk.

Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Vítor, I believe. "I think it's good for Bob to be a teacher. The students learned a lot from the teacher and vice versa. And I say for sure, I learn so much from all of you."

There's some truth to that. A teacher teaches students, and students learn from the teacher, but I would say vice versa makes sense here because often, I learn things from my students as well. As I talk to students, they teach me things. In fact, one of the things that's true about being a teacher is that you learn your subject better than you would if you were a student. Let me explain this a little bit. As I teach you the English language, I actually learn more and more about the English language myself. I become more of an expert, because in order to teach what I want to teach, I have to really know what I'm teaching. Hopefully that made some sense. Anyways, thanks Vítor for the comment.

I wanted to give you a look here. I usually like to show you things that are in bloom so we have not only the dandelions down here in the lawn, but we also have these beautiful daffodils. We'll probably be harvesting some of these, although it's a little late to sell daffodils, and here we have some where they haven't quite bloomed yet. That's really it for right now. There's not a lot of other stuff blooming here on the farm.

It will be a few months, probably about a month and a half before the peonies start popping up and probably a good two months before we're in the full swing of things here on the farm. When you're in the full swing of things, it means that you're working from sunup to sundown. That's what I would say. On a farm, when we're in the full swing of things, we work sunup till sundown. And I'm looking forward to a bit of shade. I use shade a lot in the summer to make my English lessons. There's always a nice shady spot to stand. Right now, I don't have any shade. Hopefully, i

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases VICE VERSA and ON THE OTHER HAND

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, vice versa. I think this is actually a Latin phrase and it means the opposite, or the other way around. Let me explain. If I was to say I don't like my sister and vice versa that would mean my sister also doesn't like me. By the way, my sister and I get along really well. We like each other a lot. That was just an example. Sometimes I say, you should watch my English lessons with the subtitles on and then watch them with the subtitles off, or vice versa. That means the opposite. You could watch the video with the subtitles off and then watch it with them on. So when you say vice versa, it means you can do it the other way around and it's just as good as the first way it was mentioned. Or it can change the meaning to mean in both directions like the first example.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, on the other hand. This is when you add other information that might contradict what you've just said. I could say this, I'm a little worried that it might rain today, but on the other hand, if I look that way I see the sky is clear, so it might not. So you're introducing a new fact that might slightly contradict what you just said. If I said to you, you should watch these videos with the subtitles on in order to understand more what I'm saying. On the other hand, if you listen to them or watch them with the subtitles off,it's better for your listening skills so maybe you should do both.

Anyways, to review, vice versa simply means the other way around at the end of a sentence. And when you say, on the other hand, you're introducing new information to the discussion that might actually contradict what you've just said.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Iryna, I believe. "Your video is cool. "It is very good that you are helping your wife to grow flowers." And my response, many hands make light work.

Thanks Iryna, for that comment. Yes, I try to help Jen out as much as I possibly can. I just think it's nice for her to have help on the farm. The more help I give, the easier it is for everyone. And I always laugh at the English phrase, "Many hands make light work." It makes me laugh because we have another phrase, "Too many cooks spoil the broth." I think I've explained both before. The first phrase, many hands make light work, means if lots of people work on something, it's easier. The second phrase, too many cooks spoil the broth, means if too many people work on something, it can actually ruin the thing you're working on because too many people are doing things different ways or the wrong way.

Anyways, where am I today? I am out. Hopefully the wind's not blowing too much on the microphone. I am out here on our local soccer fields. I'll try to hold the the camera here so the mic's outta the wind a bit. Soccer has started. We do have to wait until the fields are dry a little bit. They are drained really well. But yeah, soccer starts. You can actually, I'm not sure if you guys can see this, but in the distance, the city workers are actually here mowing the lawns, trimming the edges. I'm sure they'll probably put the lines down for soccer. They were down last week, but I think it rained because the soccer lines are just made out of chalk. Oh, and the sun's coming out now as well.

So anyways, soccer will begin. I think when I drove by yesterday there were actually little kids having a practice here so I think it has begun. May

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO KEEP COUNT and TO LOSE COUNT

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "to keep count". This simply means to count something while you're doing it. When I put flowers in a bucket for Jen, sometimes Jen says, "Put 100 flowers in each bucket." So as I do it, I need to keep count. I put in one flower and then two flowers and three. And as I do it in my mind, I try to keep track. I try to keep count of the number of flowers that I put in so that I don't put in too many. Because if I put 105 flowers in a bucket and Jen sells it, then we gave three, or sorry, five flowers away for free, I'm having trouble doing math today. So when you keep count, it simply means to count something while you're doing it.

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Now to lose count, this is something that happens to me when I am putting flowers in a bucket. Sometimes I put in 50, 51, 52, and I get distracted and then I lose count and I forget how many flowers I've put in the bucket. I think that was 52, maybe 53. And then I have to count again so I know how many are in there. So when you lose count, it simply means that you got distracted, which often happens to me. And even though you were trying to keep count, you lost count because you were thinking of something else.

So to review, to keep count means to simply count something. There's an airplane going by today. If I was to keep count during the day, I would say about seven or eight airplanes fly by. And when you lose count, it means you were counting something and then you forgot how many you did. Sometimes I walk up and down the driveway when the weather's bad and I try to keep count how many times I've done it, but often I lose count. So I will make little marks on the van to help me keep count. Well, I think I just use both phrases a bunch of times there.

Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from UIF. To miss out, yes, FOMO, fear of missing out. You are correct is my response. That is exactly what FOMO means. This is a newer phrase or a newer term in English. FOMO, fear of missing out. I think it started a few years ago, but I've been hearing it a lot more lately.

By the way, I was gonna show you how I keep count on the van. Do you keep count this way? I think it's dirty enough for me to do this. I'm not sure if you'll be able to see that. It's probably out of focus, but this is a method of counting that we quite often use. Maybe I'll do it down here and spin you around. That way I can see it as well. I should really wash my van. I'm not sure, do you keep count that way? Like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's a very simple way of keeping count. The other day I was bringing compost to the flower beds for Jen and she wanted 10 in each flower bed so I had to keep count. I didn't wanna lose count, so I used that method on the tractor. I would make little markings to keep count.

Anyways, I think I've just lost my train. Good thing I'm not trying to count something today, because I just lost my train of thought and I'm not sure what I was counting. What I was counting, what I was doing. Boy, this is turning into Bob making mistakes while he speaks English.

Anyways, here are many of our small flowers. I think these are actually weeds, but these are Lisianthus. I will definitely show you all of these out in the field in a couple of months. If we go over here as well. And some of you sometimes ask why we have this wagon. So if you see the little door, that door folds up and this door folds up so light can get in through the ceiling. It's a little bit d

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO MISS OUT and TO MISS THE POINT

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you understand the English phrase, to miss out. When you miss out on something, it means you don't go to that thing or do that thing. Here's a good example. If I knew that tomorrow if I stayed after work, I would get free supper, I would say, I can't go. I'm going to miss out, because I have other things that I have to do. If someone said to me, hey, we're going to go see a Toronto Raptors game next week, Thursday night, this is fictional by the way, the Raptors aren't actually playing anymore, but I might say, oh, I'm going to have to miss out because I have other things that I need to do. So when you miss out, it simply means that you can't do something because you have to do something else, and then you miss out. You don't get to do it.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, to miss the point. When you miss the point, it means you don't understand something. Sorry, there was a loud truck there. You don't understand something or you misunderstand it. When you miss the point. If I said to my students, let me think of a good example here. If I said to my students, you should study chapter one, just in case, they might miss the point, and think that they're studying chapter one just because it's fun, when the point was there might be a quiz or test on it. Don't think I'm explaining this one really good. But when you miss the point, it means you don't understand something or you understand it wrong. If you watch this lesson, thinking that you are just going to learn two phrases, you've kind of missed the point. 'Cause the point of this lesson is to learn two phrases and to practice your listening skills and to watch me walk around and show you the town and to get to know me a bit better. So hopefully you don't miss the point.

So to review, to miss out means you don't do something because you can't go or you have other obligations. And to miss the point is to simply misunderstand something or to understand it wrong. Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Aline. "Hi Bob! Thanks a lot for another really nice video! And yeah, it's amazing to see and hear nature around you during the lessons." And my response, "Today's lesson will be in town, so no nature to speak of!"

But certainly, loud pickup trucks. I think that might have been in your field of view. I'm not 100% sure, there was a loud pickup truck there. Hey, today, by the way, thank you for the comment, Aline.

So today, I'm in front of an old building. This is actually an old feed mill. In fact, I think it says that somewhere way up there. I'm not sure if you can see it. It says Niagara Grain and Feed. This was a place that made feed for chickens and cows and pigs. But it has been abandoned for a long time. In fact, you can tell it's abandoned by looking at the flower beds in front of it. You can see they're a little bit overgrown. There's not very many nature sounds here. There's a lot of truck sounds. You can see it's overgrown. You can't even use the stairs.

There are signs here like no smoking and no dumping. So they don't want people to dump their garbage here. That's why there's a no dumping sign. But anyways, we used to get feed from here when my parents were dairy farmers. This was one of the places. You can see a big green grain bin, as well. This is one of the places where we got our feed, and it's right in town, by the way. It's smack dab in the middle of town, because it's located, on the other side of

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO DIE FOR and TO DIE OF BOREDOM

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, to die for. When you describe something as being to die for, it just means it's really, really good. I know it has the word die in it, which is a sad word, but if you were to go to a restaurant and order a chocolate dessert and it was amazing, you might tell your friend, "You need to order the chocolate dessert, it is to die for." It just means that it's really, really good, it's like the best chocolate dessert you've ever had in your life, it's to die for.

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The second English phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, to die of boredom. We sometimes use the word die, and I'm not sure why, because obviously death and dying is a very serious thing, but sometimes people will describe something as it was so bad that they were going to die of boredom. Sometimes I think my students might describe my classes this way. I hope you don't find my English video lessons this way, where you're thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna die of boredom, if I sit and watch this whole lesson." But I know there have been times in my life, where maybe I've gone to see a movie, that someone said was to die for and I actually find it extremely boring and I would say, "You know what? I almost died of boredom while I was watching that movie."

Anyways, to review, when you say something is to die for, you are saying that it is amazing, when you say that you're going to die of boredom, it means you're at something or watching something and it's just not interesting, you feel like you're so bored that you're going to die, not literally.

Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Anaya. "Hi Bob, iconic place, love it so much. The greenery and daylight boosted my mood way too much. Thanks for that." And my response, "You're welcome, Anaya. I'm always happy to share the view." And I am, I'm always happy to share the view.

And some of you noted as well, that it has turned quite green here. It happens rather quickly, I'm always a little bit shocked at how quickly we go from winter and cold to things looking quite green. I'll spin you around in a sec to see the other side here. Yes, I still have to fix this picnic table, I'll get to it eventually, but if we walk over here, I'll spin you around and you'll see we do not have leaves on the trees yet, but we do have the grass turning nice and green.

You'll notice that the daffodils over here are starting to bloom and just all in all, it is a nice spring day. I really enjoy this, if I'm quiet once again, I just hear birds chirping. It is a nice time. I should show you this though. Last fall, Jen and I, our order for tulips didn't come in and so we only ended up with a small amount of tulips. Usually we have a lot more, you can see that they're in what we would call a raised bed here and they are starting to pop out of the ground and they will bloom in a bit, but usually this is much longer, it's usually about four or five times longer than this. But yeah, a little bit of a mix up last fall, that's okay. If we look here, you can see that on the maple trees, we are close to the leaves popping out.

So anyways, beautiful spring day, it's to die for this day. Anyways, thanks for watching. I'll see you in a couple days, sorry, this one's late. I'll get back on track eventually, hopefully, bye.

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases AS FAR AS I CAN SEE and TO SEE SOMETHING THROUGH

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "as far as I can see." Now this doesn't have anything to do with seeing a long ways. It has nothing to do with me being able to see something that's far away. It basically means "as I understand something." So I could say this. As far as I can see, YouTube is a good way to learn English. As far as I can see, learning how to do something can only help make you a better person. So basically as I understand it, as far as I can see, those things are a good idea. So I guess I'm trying to think of another way to explain this. Like my understanding of the situation lets me say that I think this is a good idea. So as far as I can see, hiring someone to help you speak English once a week for 30 minutes? As far as I can see, that's a good idea. It has no drawbacks in my mind.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to see something through. When you see something through, it means you work at it to make sure that it happens and that it is finally completed. At work, sometimes we're working on a project and other people might wanna quit, but I like to see it through. I like to make sure the project is finished. I want to make sure we take it to completion. So I like to see it through.

By the way, this is different than seeing through something. That's a little bit different. If I lie and you see through my lie, it means you knew that I wasn't telling the truth. Sorry, hopefully I'm not confusing you there. To see something through and to see through something have completely different meanings. Hopefully you understood them.

Anyways, to review. "As far as I can see" simply means "as I understand it." As far as I can see, planting more trees in the world will just make the world a better place. And to see something through means to make sure it gets done. If I said my neighborhood is going to plant 1000 trees and I'm going to see it through, that would mean I'm going to make sure it actually does happen. That would be cool if we did that. Maybe I should start that initiative. The Bob the Canadian Tree Planting Initiative. We'll see.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. from Setayesh. "Thanks. If you don't mind, can I ask, are you the owner of all that land?" And I replied by saying, "I'll show you in the next video what Jen and I own."

So when I say own, I always like to also say basically what Jen and I purchased by taking out a large loan from the bank and paying them back every month. So it's not like I bought all of this farmland from my mom because I had lots of money. We did go to the bank. We do pay a hefty amount every month for it. But let me show you what we do own. If you look across the river, we do not own that land. If you look this way where you can see the barn and then you look at the land on this side of the river, we do own that land. So we have a field where we grow crops in the distance. We usually grow soybeans or wheat or corn.

Down further, I think I'm pointing to the right spot, we have a place where our goats go out on pasture. If you squint, you can see Walter down there right now. He's on his way to the river, maybe to go for a swim. And way in the distance there is a piece of land where we have hay that the neighbors actually cut and bale that every year and they give us some hay for our animals as well. But yes, this is what we own. We do not own that. We just look at it and appreciate it. It's a beautiful piece

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO RUN OUT OF STEAM and TO BE STEAMED

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to run out of steam. When you run out of steam, it means you're really tired after working for a long time or maybe hiking all day or doing something that is a bit exhausting. Yesterday I worked really long. I worked till it was really late last night and I ran out of steam. At around 7:30 I thought, you know, I should just go in, have a shower, maybe watch the Blue Jays game, because I was starting to get... I was just exhausted. My muscles hurt. I was laying blocks by the house. I'll show you that job when it's done. But I definitely ran out of steam. So to run out of steam means to be out of energy, but usually because you did something that was physically exhausting.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to be steamed. When you're steamed, it simply means you're angry. Like you could say, oh, I was late for work five days in a row, my boss was steamed. It just means that your boss was really, really angry. When you say someone is steamed, it means they are not happy and sometimes not happy with you.

So to review, to run out of steam means to be tired or exhausted, to be physically and mentally just done like you have no more energy left. And to be steamed simply means to be angry. Or maybe you eat your vegetables that way. The other day I ate steamed broccoli. The broccoli was steamed. So obviously it has other meanings as well.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Vitor. Hello Bob. When you and Jen are at the market, do you notice what kind of flowers people like the most? I mean, different strokes for different folks. I don't think people will have preferences because all the flowers you produce are beautiful. You know, maybe it is good to know if one kind of flower is selling more than another. Thank you, Bob.

Mohd chirps in: I'm also wondering what their best seller is. Probably peonies and lizzies.

And then my response: It changes as the season progresses. People love to see the bouquets slowly change week to week. Like see different flowers in them. If we had the exact same flowers every week, people would get a bit bored. So sunflowers all season long, but peonies, then zinnias, then dahlias and then lisianthus are how the season progresses and changes.

So thanks Vitor for that comment. And yeah, so we do have flowers that kind of, as the season goes along, become more popular. And people do like variety. People do like to see different flowers. So at this point in time, the Lizzies are starting to bloom. The dahlias are actually starting to bloom at the same time. But the question is, which is the most popular? You know, variety is the most popular. People like to see different flowers from week to week. They don't mind, like zinnias, lizzies dahlias. They don't mind buying the same flower.

I think I just walked through a spider web with the camera.

They don't mind buying the same flower for a few weeks, but not longer than three or four weeks. And then they're, you know, we're humans. We like to see new things. We like to experience new things. So certainly sunflowers, we just use all the time. They're kind of like a mainstay. You would say it's a pretty common flower. But throughout the rest of the season, people do like to see a little bit of variety and a little bit of change, especially towards the fall. They like to see more what we would call fall colors, colors like browns and deep oranges. A

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A CLOSE CALL and TO CALL OFF

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, "a close call." When something is a close call, it means that something bad almost happened, but it didn't happen. Here's a little story. Once when I was younger, I was working, I was about 17. I was working on a building on scaffolding. You know, what they put along the side of the building? And lightning struck the ground about a kilometer from where I was. But me and my coworkers saw little bolts of static electricity go from the scaffolding to the building. So we quickly climbed down and ran inside. That was a close call. I didn't get hit by lightning but it was certainly a close call. I was happy that the lightning hit far away.

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So the second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "to call off." When you call something off, it means you cancel it. This happens sometimes when it snows a lot in Canada. They'll call off school, they'll cancel school for the day. Sometimes this happens when two people are planning to get married and then they start to not like each other. Sometimes they call off the wedding, they decide not to have it.

So to review a close call is whenever something almost happens that would be bad. Like if you almost hit someone with your car. If two cars are driving and almost hit each other, we would say that that is a close call and when you call something off, to call off means to cancel something.

So, hey, I don't have a comment today. I have to apologize. I've had a really busy week and I did not have a chance to respond to all the comments and it's close to raining out here. So I ran outside quickly. I'm not sure if you can see the storm approaching. There are actually some small raindrops hitting me right now. If you don't believe me, I'll show you the puddle. You might be able to hear the thunder as well.

Whoa, that's upside down. That's not how that's supposed to work. Here we go. You can see maybe some drops hitting that puddle there. Let's see if we can get this turned around. I'm not sure if you can hear the thunder. I probably should just go inside now instead of staying out here.

So just a short lesson today. Busy week, haven't had time to reply to comments. I'll get back at that as soon as possible. But I thought I should still jump outside and make a quick lesson for you. Hopefully you learned a couple phrases and I better get back inside now. I don't want to tell another version of the lightning story after this lesson. So, have a good couple days. I'll see you in a couple days with another short English lesson. Bye.

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases BY WEIGHT and DEAD WEIGHT

In this English lesson, I'd like to help you learn the English phrase "by weight." When you buy something, you can either buy it by weight. You pay a certain amount per pound or per kilogram, or I think the opposite is by volume. When I buy gas, I pay per liter. But when something is sold by weight, you pay for a certain number of pounds or kilograms or whatever other measure of weight they are using. When we sell bouquets, we sell by quantity. You buy 12, sorry, you buy 12 flowers in a bouquet, so you're buying I guess by volume but I would say by quantity. When I buy gas, it's by volume, and when I buy things like bulk food at the grocery store, where you scoop it yourself and put it in a bag, often you pay by weight. We actually have a store called Bulk Barn in Canada where you can buy everything by weight, candies, chocolate. I like buying chocolate by weight, although the scoop I make usually ends up costing more than I'm expecting.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "dead weight." This refers to anyone who isn't doing their job. We also would say they're not pulling their weight. If you watch a sports game, if you watch a football game and one person isn't running very fast and they don't play very good defense and they never score a goal, you might say that they're dead weight. You would describe that person as being dead weight. Not a very nice way to be described, but if you're dead weight, it means you're not really doing anything.

So to review, when you buy something by weight, you're paying by the pound or by the kilogram depending on how you measure things in your country. And when someone is dead weight, it means that they're not contributing the way they should to a team or at work or someone else.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Axmed. "Hello teacher Bob the Canadian. "Is this phrase correct? "'I met the President, or I met with the President'?" My response, both are correct, but with slightly different meanings, so I'm glad you brought this up. "I met the President." This means you saw him or her once briefly, maybe shook his or her hand and maybe got your picture taken. "I met with the President," this means you probably sat down for a bit of time and talked with the President.

So thanks for that comment by the way, Axmed. Yes, you can see from my response, slightly different meanings. The first one simply means that maybe you were somewhere and the President was there and you said "hi" and got a selfie taken with the President, and then the second one would mean you actually had a meeting. You actually sat down and you talked about things. You probably must be a very important person if you had an actual meeting with the President, although everyday people sometimes can meet the President or Prime Minister.

Someone I work with actually met the Prime Minister and got his picture taken. I was surprised. He didn't meet with the Prime Minister. He met the Prime Minister at like a meet and greet in a park I think that's where it was. So I was a little bit jealous. I thought, Bob the Canadian should someday get a picture with the Prime Minister. That would be really, really cool, of Canada.

By the way, did you know that's one of my dreams, which will probably never happen? I would love it if the Canadian Tourism Board hired me as an ambassador for Canada promoting this beautiful country. I thought, wouldn't it be cool if when I retire from teaching, if the Canadian government se

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A SPLIT SECOND and TO SPLIT UP

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase a split second. When something happens in a split second, it means it happens in less than a second. It happens instantly. It takes hardly any time at all. The other night I had to hit my brakes in a split second because a deer ran out on the road in front of me. That happens sometimes in this part of Canada, so I hit my brakes in a split second. My foot went from the floor of the van to the brake pedal in a split second. It went immediately like no time passed at all. It was definitely less than a second. I don't usually move that fast, but in situations like that, you need to react in a split second.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to split up. Now you can use this to talk about dividing something up. If I had ten candies and I split up the candies among my children, I would give each of them two. I would put the ten candies on the table and make little piles of two, and I would give each kid two candies. You can also use this to talk about relationships. Sometimes people will split up. Sometimes Frank and Kim have a relationship where things aren't going well and they decide that they want to split up. This means that they are no longer together. They have gone their separate ways.

So again, to review when something happens in a split second, it happens immediately.It happens very, very quickly. And when somebody splits something up, it means they divide them up like candies. And if two people split up, it means they are no longer in a relationship.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Mohd Ags, and my response is pretty long, so this might take a while. I'll try to read clearly and quickly. Mohd says, I really like learning useful phrases like to make a day of it as simple as it might seem, you will most likely only hear native speakers use it because advanced English learners are busy learning some odd fancy words like obfuscate and elephantine. Thank you, Mr. Bob.

And my response again, kind of long sorry. Honestly, sometimes I don't know what to think about the advanced English lessons some of the other YouTube teachers create. I'm not one to speak badly of others, so I don't really talk about it much, but sometimes they teach words that simply aren't used very often at all. I think it might be time for me to statistically analyze what I hear every day in the English speaking world. Sometimes simple isn't just better. It's literally the most common and correct.

So again, I don't like, thanks Mohd for the comment, I don't like to speak negatively of what other teachers do. I think everyone does a great job. Everyone has their own approach. But sometimes I do think some of the advanced vocabulary being taught isn't very common at all.

I think you're better off learning the more common vocabulary and then focusing on vocabulary that has clearly been labeled as important for like an IELTS test or another English test. That can kind of be a really cool way to know if the advanced vocabulary you're learning is important.

But yeah, sometimes I'm not sure there are words like I can't even think of some. There are words. Sometimes people will ask me in a live stream and I'll say, You know, I don't think I've ever used that word. I might have read that word somewhere, but I don't know if I've ever used it. So learn to be fluent with all of the simple vocabulary and then slowly build from there by listening to w

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases AT THE END OF THE DAY and TO MAKE A DAY OF IT

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase at the end of the day. Now, this can literally mean at the end of the day. At the end of the day, I go home. Well, at the end of my workday. But we also use this the same way we use the word ultimately. To kind of sum up a thought. When you're working hard at the end of the day, you can only do so much. When you are helping someone out. At the end of the day, you can only do so much to make their life better. So ultimately you can only help someone so much before they need to help themselves. So we use the phrase at the end of the day to kind of sum up to kind of clarify a thought that we're having. I don't think I'm explaining this very well. Let me try to think of another example. At the end of the day, all I can do is make the best video lessons I can and hopefully they help you. So ultimately, all I can really do is make the lessons as good as I can. So it's not exactly the end of the day, but it's kind of summarizing a thought.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you is the phrase to make a day of it. When you make a day of something, it means something wasn't going to take the whole day. But you add one or two things to make a day of it. If we go to visit Jen's parents, sometimes we just go for a cup of tea. But sometimes we decide to make a day of it. We go for a cup of tea. We help Jen's dad on his farm a little bit. We help Jen's mom do some work in her garden, possibly, instead of just going for an hour or two, we decide to make a day of it.

So to review at the end of the day simply means ultimately, or to summarize or my final thoughts on something and to make a day of it means to plan to do something that will take most of the day instead of just a little part of it.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Marcio. How are you, Professor Bob? I'm Brazilian and here the autumn season has already started. I really like you and your videos. Thank you. I'm very happy with the new season in your country because you will be able to make video lessons for us without freezing. Hehehe. A hug for you and your whole family. And my response. My favorite type of day for making videos would be cloudy, mild and no wind. Hopefully there are lots of those coming up.

So thanks, Marcio, for that comment. Yes, this is literally my favorite type of day for making a video, although it is a little bit windy. I'm hiding by the shed so that the wind doesn't hit the microphone too badly. But my favorite kind of day for making an English lesson would be cloudy. When it's cloudy, the camera can focus really well and the video just looks nice. The cloud kind of diffuses the sunlight. That's how we would describe it in English. So clouds create really nice light for a video. When it's mild then I don't get hot or cold.

When we say that it's mild outside, we mean it's like ten degrees or 15 degrees Celsius, something kind of nice. And then what's the last one? No rain. I didn't mention that one. I don't like rain. Oh, no wind. Yeah, wind messes with the microphone. You can't see the microphone, but it's right here. When it's windy, you get that funny sound when I'm outside and it's not very, very pleasant.

So yep, that's my favorite kind of day. A day just like today. If we look at the sky, it's overcast or cloudy, we would say. It's a little bit windy, but I have the shed behind me to kind of block the wind and it's mild. I'm outside just wearing m

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BE IN THE WAY and TO GET OUT OF THE WAY

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to be in the way. When you are in the way, it means someone is trying to go somewhere and you’re blocking their path. Sometimes at the grocery store when I go down an aisle, there will be someone in the way and I'll have to ask them to move because I can't get my cart through the aisle. So when you are in the way, with... you think someone is going to be in the way it means they're going to be in your path when you're trying to get somewhere. I'm trying to think of another good example. Sometimes when I'm trying to get into my classroom, there will be students in the way. They'll be standing in the doorway and I'll have to ask them to move so that I can get into my classroom. So to be in the way simply means to block someone's path when they're trying to get somewhere.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to get out of the way. I'm offering the solution to the problem from the first phrase. When you see someone in the way, sometimes it's nice to ask them to get out of the way. Sometimes we even say this directly. We'll say, Get out of the way! You might even yell it if your car was rolling along with no one driving it and there was someone walking, you might yell, Get out of the way! to them so that they will be safe, meaning that they need to get out of the way of the vehicle. They need to not be in the path that it is traveling down.

So to review, to be in the way means to yeah, be in the way. I can't define it by using the phrase. But if I was standing in my driveway and Jen wanted to leave, I would be in the way. And so I would need to get out of the way so that she could leave.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. Let me see which pocket I put it in. Here it is right here it is from Andrey or Andrey. Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong. Such a comfy place on your farm where you're filming the video. And my response? It was a nice little corner. I might have to find another one. It's going to be really windy all this week.

So it's a little windy right now, but not too bad. But I found this little corner because I wanted to show you that yes, spring is definitely starting. One of the first signs of spring for me is when Jen starts to put the little baby plants outside. So you can see it's warm enough here today, you can see quite a few of them, that Jen has some of the plants out. So she's decided that it's warm enough today that the plants can be outside for a little bit. So what was I saying? Yes, I picked that comfy corner. I had a nice comfy corner over there the other day.

It's not as windy right now, though. This morning it was super windy, so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find a good place to do this. Anyways, what was I going to talk about? Spring is starting. Here's another little look down here. You can see that the daffodils are just starting to pop out of the ground. Another sure sign that spring is coming. And I was going to show you all the geese in the river, but they all flew away. But there's definitely a lot of Canadian geese and there is either white geese or swans. I'm not sure which it is because I haven't been able to get close. I know they were flying overhead the other day, but I can just sense right now that spring is just around the corner.

Actually, it did start yesterday. Yesterday was the first day of spring. I guess I should have mentioned that one of the reasons I'm talking about spring is

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO GIVE IN and TO GIVE OUT

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to give in. Now, this is kind of the opposite of the phrase to put your foot down. Sometimes you need to give in when someone asks you if they can do something. Sometimes when my kids ask for something, I put my foot down and I say no. But sometimes I give in and I say yes. This happened a few years ago when they wanted to buy a Nintendo Switch. I put my foot down and said, No, it's too expensive. But they said they would pay for part of it if I paid for part of it. So eventually I was able to give in. Eventually, I decided that it was okay and we went and bought a Nintendo Switch. And by the way, that was a good decision. It's a lot of fun to play games with them. I like Mario Party and Mario Kart the best.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to give out. This is a phrase we use to talk about something that's going to break or something that's going to break down. If I drive my van for another ten years, eventually it's going to give out. Eventually the engine is going to give out. Eventually the wheels are going to give out. Eventually the whole van is going to give out. It's going to stop working.

So to review, to give in means to finally say that someone's allowed to do something. Sometimes my classes ask me if they can, I don't know, walk the town for a field trip and eventually I give in and plan something like that instead of saying no. And to give out means to simply break down. Now, both of these phrases have other meanings. Those are just two of the meanings that I wanted to teach today.

Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I think I have it here in my pocket. Here we go. The comment is from Pristine Horizon. Dear teacher Bob, I wish I had wings to reach there to sit in the classroom there. How beautifully it's designed. And my response? I have to admit, the schools have been getting nicer here in Canada. My favorite thing is that the newer parts of the building have more windows to the outside and more natural light.

So that's actually thanks... for the comment for Pristine... that's been a common trend. I don't... Not just in Canada, I think in a lot of parts of the world, buildings have more windows to let more natural light in. Not this barn it’s quite old. There aren't very many windows at all. So in our school, the newer parts of the school are really nice because they have floor to ceiling windows in some spots. It's really, really cool.

Hey, you might be wondering, what am I doing standing here? What am I doing wearing a T-shirt? Well, it's spring break. It's really windy, and I had to find a place where I could stand to make this video. So I'm kind of hiding in this kind of gross corner by the barn.

I wanted to show you this, though, while I'm standing here. This is the sign that my dad put up when we had animals. It says Stop livestock at work, please obtain authorization before entering. And then this is the name of a feed company. Shur Gain. Back when my parents were farming, it was just starting to become a concern that you didn't want too many people visiting a farm. There are more and more diseases that spread between chicken farms and cow farms or cattle farms and pig farms, and it's just more of a concern. So I think back in that era, the feed companies decided they would start to give farmers signs like that one to put up to tell people, please don't go in this building without first asking if it's okay, without first

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO PUT YOUR FOOT DOWN and TO PUT UP A FIGHT

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to put your foot down. When you put your foot down, it means you're not going to agree with someone. Let's say that my kids said that they wanted to have ice cream and I said no. And then they asked again. And then I said no. Eventually I would just put my foot down and say, Stop asking. The answer will always be no. So when you put your foot down, it means you're in charge of something or you're the one that can make a decision and you're not going to change how you feel about it.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to put up a fight. When you put up a fight, it doesn't mean that you're actually, you know, punching and hitting. It means that you're not going to give up on something. When I tell my kids they can't have ice cream, they tend to put up a fight. They keep asking. They don't want to give up. They just keep asking me about it because they..., they want to put up a fight. They want to discuss it, they want to argue. They want to try and make me change my mind.

So to review, when you put your foot down, it means you're saying no to something. I guess it doesn't have to be “no”, it could be, yes. But normally it's no you're saying no and you're not going to change your mind. And when you put up a fight, it means you want to change someone's mind and you're not willing to take no for an answer. You're going to argue and want to discuss it until they change their mind.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Irina. Hello, Bob. Thank you so much for this video. Usually I am full of energy without coffee and sugar. The river and the fields in the background of the video always calm me down. Oop! I'm somewhere else today. And my response? Right now the river is full of geese. There are probably over a thousand.

Yes. It's interesting right now because the river is super, super full of geese. In fact, if you go to my other channel and look for my stories, I did a little video of them. Maybe I'll see if I can do that here as well in the next video if they're still visiting.

But hey, I'm at school. It's nighttime. One of my kids had a club that they had to go to, so they're playing basketball right now. So I thought I would show you lockers and combination locks and one of the entrances. And if you look behind me, you can even see a classroom. This isn't my classroom, by the way. My classroom is in a completely different part of the school that's closed right now.

But this is what a school looks like. You can see the recycling bins behind me. And if you look behind me, you can see the long, long hallway. This is a pretty traditional school in Canada. Our schools in Canada are usually hallways, lots of lockers. Students can have an upper locker or a lower locker. They prefer the upper locker. They're required to keep their lockers shut, but sometimes they leave them open. Hopefully there's nothing valuable in there.

Our newer classrooms have windows, so it's just more of an open concept. We've been building more and more. When we build onto schools in Ontario, Canada, we often build rooms that have more windows. So you can see what's going on. Not all the teachers and students like that. We've had windows in the doors to our classrooms for a very, very long time. That's been pretty normal. But in the last ten or 20 years, we've been adding more and more windows to the walls just to give it more of an ope

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BE WIRED and TO HOT WIRE

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to be wired. When we say someone is wired, it means they're a little bit nervous or they're a little bit energetic. We usually use this when we talk about the effects of coffee on people or the effects of sugar on kids. You might hear someone say something like this, Oh, I have a lot of energy today. I'm really wired because I had three cups of coffee this morning. So to be wired means that you can feel the effect of the caffeine on you. Sometimes people have trouble sleeping at night because they're just too wired. They've had too much coffee that day. And sometimes little kids, when they have lots of sugar, they're just wired. They run around and they have lots of energy because they've just eaten way too much sugar. So to be wired simply means to have a higher level of energy and maybe even a little bit of nervousness or anxiety as well. There's a couple of different feelings you could be having when you're wired.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to hot wire. I don't really know anything about this phrase. I don't know how to hot wire a vehicle, but I thought it was worth mentioning because you might hear it if you're watching a show about the police or something like that or a movie. When you hot wire a vehicle, it means you start it by just touching wires together instead of turning the key. I think it's harder on modern day vehicles to hot wire them, but I think on older vehicles, if you know what you're doing, you can pull the wires out of the dash and put the right two wires together or three and the car will start without keys.

So to review, to be wired, when you are wired, you are just feeling very energetic because you've had something that has stimulated you like caffeine or sugar. And when you hot wire a vehicle, it means you start it illegally without keys.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Janith. Hi, Bob. Sir, is there a difference between headlight and fog light? And my response? Headlights put a bright white light and are the main light on the front of a car. Fog lights are lower on the front of the car and put out an orange or yellow light.

So great question. It's too bad we don't have a vehicle to look at. Oh, wait, we do. So for me, I would call this the headlight. This is what puts out the very bright light that you need to see at night. And this would be what I would call a fog light. I think this is also the signal light on my vehicle. I think it does double duty. I think it does both things. Some people have special fog lights that they mount on the front of their vehicle after they buy it. We would call them aftermarket fog lights, but they're also lower down and they're usually orange or yellow.

So, hey, many of you have been commenting about how you've been enjoying the change of scenery with the videos - using the phrase from the last video. I've been doing many of these short lessons in town, and I've been really enjoying that. The reason I have been doing them in town is because my schedule changed. So I teach in the morning now and then when I'm done teaching, I'm in town and I usually bring my camera with me and I just go and find some place to shoot a video.

Today, though, I'm at home, a little bit of a different day today for me. I had a different sort of schedule this morning, so I'm home now. Let me check the time here. Oh, I have 30 seconds to talk, but that's why there's been a bi

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO CHANGE THINGS UP and A CHANGE OF SCENERY

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to change things up. Now this just means to change things. But we use this phrase a lot in English when we talk about something that we do a certain way, and then when we just do it a different way, one or two days, just to make it a little more exciting. Let me try to think of a good example. The last video, I changed things up a little bit. I just did a quick short video outside. I didn't follow my regular routine. Sometimes when I'm teaching a class, I like to change things up because I don't want students to get bored with what I'm doing. So the other day, in order to change things up a bit, I decided we were going to walk to town instead of staying in the classroom. I'm teaching a business class, so it's okay to walk to town and look at businesses and study how they do business. So anyways, I decided to change things up.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase a change of scenery. Did I spell that right? Yes, a change of scenery. We usually use this to talk about when someone moves. The reason for moving might be because they want a change of scenery. They might want to go somewhere where they live and can see other things around them. If you live in the city and you move to the country, you might do it because you want a change of scenery. Maybe you're tired of listening to traffic and hearing people yelling in the night. I don't really know what it's like to live in the ci..., in the city. Maybe you need a change of scenery so you move to the country where things are a little more pleasant, at least in my opinion.

So to review, to change things up simply means to change something. If you have a routine and you do something different. On a certain date, we would say that you have decided to change things up and a change of scenery would be when you decide to move somewhere else. It's usually related to moving. Sometimes people use it in a slightly more minor way, but it usually means you've decided to live somewhere else because you just want to see different things around you.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Oksana. Sometimes it's better than a regular lesson, or at least definitely not worse. Take care. And my response? I think it's good to change things up every once in a while.

So Oksana was referring to my sliding down the hill lesson, which, by the way, I did actually end up falling. I don't know if you saw my short lesson on my other channel, but yes, I did actually end up falling. I just hurt my knee a little bit. Wow. Well, I did actually slip and fall, didn't I? Just a little bruise. Nothing major. Hey, anyways, Oksana, thank you for leaving that comment.

By the way, I just wanted to show you today. Let me spin you around. I've been trying to find a place in my local town where they're actually building new buildings. This is a multi dwelling house or a multi-unit house that would be a house where more than one person is going to live. At a certain point, you can see this house is almost done. They just need to put the siding on the outside.

I'll try to find a house that's earlier in the construction phase because I wanted to show you how primarily we build our houses in Ontario, Canada, out of wood. We have a lot of wood in Canada, so we build a lot of our houses out of wood. Let's do this. I'll keep talking while I give you a bit of a better look.

Trying to walk as fast as I can

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases AN UNWRITTEN RULE and A HARD-AND-FAST RULE

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase an unwritten rule. Now, this is exactly what it sounds like. It's a rule, but it's not written down anywhere. There are a lot of unwritten rules when you are speaking English, because sometimes when you're in an English speaking country, not just the language is different, but the culture is a little bit different. And not everyone writes down those rules. A great example would be the questions that were in my lesson from yesterday on my bigger channel. There are certain questions that you just don't ask when you're having a conversation in English. But there's nowhere to go to find that rule, it's not written down any where. It's just an unwritten rule. It's a rule that we have all agreed to, but no one's actually written them down in a rule book. It's not actually the law. It's just an unwritten rule.

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The other phrase I want to teach you today is a hard-and-fast rule. Now, a hard-and-fast rule is a rule. It is written down. And if you break the rule, there are consequences. Consequences are what happens after you break a rule. Let's say at your job there is a hard and fast rule that you do not... Let me see... Trying to think of... That you do not. I'm drawing a blank here. Let me come up with a different example. Let's say at the movie theater, there's a hard-and-fast rule that you can't chew gum in the movie theater. That means because it's a hard-and-fast rule, if you're caught, they'll kick you out of the movie theater. Like, there are immediate consequences if you break that rule.

So to review an unwritten rule is a rule that everyone kind of knows about, but it's not written down anywhere, someone has to tell you about it. And a hard-and-fast rule is a rule where if you break that rule, you will.. you can expect consequences immediately.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Vítor and Vítor says, Hello, Bob. It is interesting how we can come up with new ideas nowadays. If one day you run out of ideas or topics for your lessons, you can try crowdsourcing or even A.I.. With crowdsourcing, you can ask your viewers for new ideas or topics they think are gripping for people. In another case, you can try something like ChatGPT or another AI. I do not know if that technology is able to do such a thing, but you can give it a try someday. In the future I think we are going to have a smorgasbord of technology doing things for us. By the way, thank you.

And my response? I will keep that in mind. Right now I am around so many people, I just listen for interesting words and phrases. Maybe when I'm older and around less people I'll need some other tools.

So yes, AI is becoming quite cool I think. I was playing around with it the other day in one of my classes and my students and I really enjoyed using it. It was kind of fun to play around with it. We even talked a little bit about what would be good jobs to do in the future, jobs that AI couldn't do. And we decided that teaching is probably one of those jobs, although I wasn't sure I agreed with them.

But they said that during the pandemic, online learning wasn't fun, and they think for the next ten or 20 years, people will actually prefer to have actual teachers, human teachers in their classrooms doing the teachings, doing the teaching, not teachings the teaching. And I think they might be right. I think the pandemic and remote learning gave us this little view of online learning or r

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO THIN OUT and TO SPREAD YOURSELF TOO THIN

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to thin out. Now, this has two meanings or two ways that you can use this. One is kind of when you see something thin out and then you can actually thin something out. Let me explain. If you were to go up a mountain, at the bottom of the mountain, there might be trees, but as you go up the mountain, the trees will thin out. There will be less trees as you go up. For every hundred meters you go vertically, there will probably be less trees and they'll get smaller as well. So the trees will start to thin out. Out in the flower field, sometimes we grow flowers and there's too many in one spot. So Jen will take out every other flower. She'll actually snip them with the pruners. She will thin out the flowerbed so that the flowers have a better chance to grow and thrive. Because if there's too many, they kind of compete for nutrients. So when you go up a mountain, trees can thin out, and you can use this for other things as well. But if you have something like flowers, you might thin out the patch so that there are less. So the ones that remain can do well.

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And the second phrase I wanted to teach you today is to spread yourself too thin. So if you are really busy, if you agree to do too many things, we sometimes say that you are going to spread yourself too thin. Sometimes in the fall, I spread myself too thin. I'm back at work. I'm doing YouTube videos. I'm helping Jen on the flower farm. I'm bringing my kids back and forth to work. Oh, but I don't have to do that as much because they have their license now. But I'm too busy. I have spread myself too thin. Just like when you spread butter or peanut butter on bread, sometimes you spread it too thin. You can also spread yourself too thin.

So to review to thin out means to see less and less of something. Maybe when you're walking in a field of plants, there's a spot where they didn't grow well and it will thin out. And then sometimes you will thin something out. Some people, I think people thin out their hair sometimes. When I was a kid, I had lots of hair and the barber would use like a special scissors to thin out my hair. And then to spread yourself too thin means simply to be too busy to agree to do too many things.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Mohd Ags. Oh, yeah, those cargo shorts with more pockets that I care to count and infinite storage space are an essential part of the dad look. That's how someone like me looks. Also, nice illustration of all the growth stages of sunflowers. I'm this close to taking an interest in farming, thanks to you. And my response? It's called succession planting. I'm not sure I mentioned that it's the secret to having sunflowers every week. I knew nothing about this until Jen explained it to me years ago.

So yeah, in the last video. Thanks for the comment Mohd. In the last video, I showed you the sunflowers and how Jen actually plants sunflowers each week. And that way you have sunflowers throughout the growing season. So early on, they're kind of little. They don't grow that well because it's not warm enough. But we start with sunflowers a few weeks ago, and because we've planted them every week, we then have sunflowers to harvest every week. It doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes there's a little bit of a dip and we don't have lots of sunflowers, but generally it works pretty good.

So anyways, I'm out here just taking a little wal

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO COME UP WITH and TO COME AND GO

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to come up with. But before I talk about it, sorry, I know you've been enjoying the lessons in my local town. Today I'm just out here in the countryside. Or am I? What if I was to turn the camera? You would then see that I'm actually on the edge of town. I kind of tricked you a bit. But anyways, back to the lesson. We'll walk in a bit.

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To come up with means to think of something. When you're talking with someone, sometimes you have to come up with topics. You have to think of things to talk about. Sometimes in school, the teacher will ask students to come up with new ideas or to come up with the answer. So the phrase to come up with simply means to think of something. I have to regularly come up with ideas for these English lessons. I sit. Usually if I'm sitting somewhere and I'm bored, I spend the time just thinking so that I can come up with some new ideas.

The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to come and go. When you say that something is going to come and go, it means it's going to happen and then go away. Probably the best example I can give of this is pain. Sometimes when you have pain, it will come and go. I folded this up. I should show you. Sometimes when you have pain, it will come and go. Is that the right side? Yes, it is. I had this a lot a few years ago when I was having some medical problems. I had pain and it would just come and go. Sometimes I would have pain and then sometimes it would go away, and then it would come back. It would come and go.

So anyways, to review, now that I've crumpled up my paper, when you say that you are going to come up with something it means you're going to think of something. Maybe you're going to try and come up with a funny thing to say in your next conversation. And when we use the phrase to come and go, we're talking about something that happens and then doesn't happen and then happens again. Pain's a good example. I'm trying to think of another one. You can use it for people as well. Like, Oh, he just kind of comes and goes as he pleases. That would be one.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Judit. Thanks for the view of a Canadian town and my response? I'll try and find another good place to go today.

I am enjoying finding places to go. It's really no worry and no bother. I am enjoying finding different places in my town to just pop pop out from work for a bit and make a little video. So today we're once again in another what we would call subdivision. By the way, this is the playground in the small park. And you can see here some of the houses. These are somewhat big, actually. I thought they were smaller. Maybe I drove too far. My plan was to show you some more modest size houses today. Some houses that are more the size that Jen and I would be able to afford if we decided to live in town, which will probably never happen by the way. We're too happy living out in the country.

Oh, and here's a sign for you to read. I'm sure you can figure out what this means. It means if you drive down this road, there is no way to get out at the other end. You'll have to turn around. We would actually call this a cul-de-sac in English. So as you go to the end, there's just a circle. I'm not sure I'll get there fast enough to show you. But if you look at the end, there's just a few houses, and then you can kind of turn your vehicle around and come back out again. So technically

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO DOUBLE-CHECK and A REALITY CHECK

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English verb to double-check. When you double-check something, it means you check it and then you check it again. If you don't know what it means to check something, it means to make sure it's there or to make sure it's in a certain place. Here's a great example. When you pack to go on a trip, you put everything in a suitcase, and then when you're done packing, it's good to double-check. It's good to open the suitcase again and make sure that your toothbrush and your deodorant and your underwear is all in the suitcase. I don't know why I used that example, but you should make sure you bring all that stuff. So to double-check means to check again. It means to make sure that everything is where it needs to be before you go on a trip or before you do something else.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase a reality check. Now a reality check is when something happens and it makes you realize that maybe things are a certain way and you thought they were a different way. I better think of a good example. Think of a sports team that thinks they are the best. Maybe at the beginning of the season, your favorite sports team thinks they are the best and then they play a team that's really weak and they lose. That would be a reality check for them. It would make them realize that even though they thought they were the best, they're not. It's definitely a reality check. So whenever something happens that reminds you of reality, that is something we would call a reality check.

So to review, when you double-check something, it means you check again. I often, when I go on a long trip, I will check the oil in the van and then just to be sure, I'll check again. So I'll double-check the next day to make sure the oil in the van isn't low. And usually I'll make sure it's gassed up as well. And a reality check is whenever something happens that makes you realize again, that not everything is the way you think it is.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Aleksey. Hi, Bob. Thank you. Finally, it happened today. I did not make a single mistake while transcribing the first part of the lesson. The trickiest sentence was at the 52 second mark. My students were so much work today because, you know, it doesn't look grammatically correct. And this pause... because I paused when I said that... so I have a hunch you wanted to say something different about your students that day. And my response? You are correct about the pause. I changed what I was going to say mid-sentence because I was going to say something a bit more harsh. I was going to say something mean about my students. Congratulations on getting things right and for noticing my speech pattern change. Very advanced. Yeah. Good work, Aleksey. That's awesome.

Yeah. You know, as I make these videos, I talk, and sometimes as I'm talking, I have to think about what I'm going to say. And sometimes I have to change what I'm going to say while I'm talking. You just experienced that right there. I don't have a script. When I make these videos, I just come outside, I teach the two phrases, and then for the last bit I just talk. And so yeah, I'm not reading anything. I don't have it scripted. I just come up with it on the fly - off the top of my head.

There's another phrase for you. But hey, anyways, we are walking in a typical Canadian subdivision. These are houses that are actually much nicer than what Jen and I could afford. We're in a little bit of a pricier par

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO WIPE OUT and I'M WIPED!

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to wipe out. Now I used this phrase in my last lesson to talk about slipping on the ice and falling down. When you wipe out, this is the verb we use to describe slipping and falling. If you've ever gone skating, usually you stay on your skates and you don't fall down, but if you slip and fall, we would say that you have wiped out (in the past tense). When you wipe out, you slip and you fall. You can wipe out walking on ice. You can wipe out walking on anything that's slippery. So be careful. You don't want to wipe out too often because if you land wrong, it can really hurt.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase I'm wiped. This is a phrase we use simply to talk about being very tired or exhausted. After a long day of work. I might come home and say to Jen, Oh, I'm wiped. I'm so tired. My students were so much work today. That would be how we would describe it. I'm wiped. So I'm really, really tired. I'm just not very energetic at all.

So to review, when you use the verb to wipe out, it means that you slip and you fall down. Both actions must happen, you must slip and you must fall in order to wipe out. That truck’s a little bit loud. And when you say I'm wiped, it simply means that you are really, really tired. It means that you are exhausted.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Nikie. The older you get, the faster time whips by. And my response? This is very true. When I was a kid, summer seemed to last forever. Now it whips by.

Yes, I noticed that when I was a kid summer lasted a really long time. If you're wondering why I'm in my van, you'll see in a moment when I get out. It's raining here, but I'm going to brave the weather. When I was a kid, I definitely felt like summer lasted forever. I felt like school would end when I was ten or 11, and I would have basically two months, but it seemed like forever. It seemed like summer just went on and on and on. So, yes, now time just whips by. It goes by too quickly.

Anyways, I'm just out walking. I came here today because there's lots of people, there's been people in my videos lately, but I came here today not expecting it to be this rainy. I knew it was going to rain, but this is a little more rain than I expected. So I'm walking towards.... there's an overhang here that I can stand under while I walk and talk. What's sad for me is that it's raining, but it's February. It should be like minus five degrees right now, and then this would all be coming down as snow. And it might have even been a snow day possibly.

Ah, I got to get away from this music or I'll get a copyright strike on my video. Sorry, outside that restaurant, there was some music playing to attract people to come in. Anyways, I'm just walking here. I'm under the overhang now. Let me give you a look. So now it's a little nicer because I am out of the rain. That's how we would describe that in English. So I'm out of the rain. I'm going, Oh, a big drop just hit me. I walked outside of the overhang just for a split second there.

Anyways, you guys like to see people? Maybe I'll spin this way. I'm in front of the Tim Hortons restaurant. There are people in the drive thru, there are people walking in. It's just a very busy and vibrant town, much different than it was a few years ago when we were still locked down. That was no fun. I think I have repressed those memories. That means that I'm trying not to remembe

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO WHIP BY and TO WHIP SOMETHING UP

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to whip by. This is a phrase we usually use to talk about something that happens quickly. I usually use it to talk about time. I feel like the days in January just whipped by using it in the past tense there. I find that at this point in the winter, time seems to whip by. It tends to go very, very quickly. I can't believe it's already almost the middle of February. Okay, it's not quite the middle of February. I think it's February 7th, the day you're watching this. But time does seem to whip by at this time of year, I think because I've started a new semester and I'm a little bit busy. I really feel like time is whipping by. You can also say that a car whips by, like, you can use it for things as well, but I usually use it to talk about time.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to whip something up. We usually use this to talk about making food quickly. This past weekend, Jen's sister and brother-in-law came over, so I whipped up some pizza. I made some dough in the bread machine, and I quickly made some pizza for them. I whipped it up. So we use this to talk about doing something quickly, usually preparing food. We almost always use it to talk about making food. Like I'm going to whip up some snacks for later tonight so that Jen and the kids and I can have a fun evening while we watch the Raptors play basketball.

So to review, when you say that something is going to whip by you mean that it's going to go quickly. When you say that you are going to whip something up, it means you are going to make it quickly. By the way, do you know what a whip is? It's like a leather thing that I think they used to use when they were chasing cows or something like that. I'm not sure exactly all the details.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from let me get it out of my pocket here. This comment is from Francisco. Out of sight, out of mind. I always wanted to be out of the line of sight of the teacher in order not to be asked L.O.L. And then my response. When you're in a big class, it's nice to sit at the back if you're going to have a snooze.

Now... Thanks, Francisco, for that comment. Good use of out of sight. You shouldn't do that, though. You shouldn't sleep in classrooms. I'm not recommending that. I'm not advocating that as a teacher. I recommend that you sit at the front and that you pay attention and you do all the work. But yes, sometimes if you are in a class that's boring, you want to sit at the back so the teacher can't see you, so you're not in their line of sight.

Hey, I'm out here just for a little walk on this path in town, you can see. Let me show you it. It's actually a little bit dangerous walking out here right now because it's melting a bit, but there is ice on the ground. And what that does, I think I've explained it before, is it makes things very slippery. Whenever ice is a little bit wet on the top, it's extra slippery and it's a lot easier to slip and fall. Now, as a Canadian, I'm used to walking on ice, but I still need to be careful. But I'm sure if you're from a country that doesn't have winter and if you were walking on that ice, you would have a little bit of trouble.

Yeah, I'm pretty good at walking on ice. I've been walking on ice my whole life, but there are still times where it's a little too slippery and sometimes I almost wipe out. That's the phrase we use to describe that. Hey, you've seen this creek before.

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases OUT OF SIGHT and LINE OF SIGHT

In this English lesson. I wanted to help you learn the English phrase out of sight. You can see this right now, but now it's out of sight. It literally means what it says when you can't see something. It is out of sight. Often people who are doing something illegal, they try to do it out of sight or if they're carrying something illegal and they see the cops, they'll put it out of sight. They'll put it in their pocket, in their back pocket, or they'll stick it in a bag. They'll put it out of sight. So that the police officers can't see it. So it's a very simple phrase. It simply means to put something where someone can't see it or to put yourself where someone can't see you. I can even be out of sight if I want. When I duck down, I'm out of sight.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase line of sight. So line of sight is an imaginary line between my eyes and what I'm looking at. So between myself and the camera, this is my current line of sight. When I'm sitting in my classroom at the back and a student’s doing a presentation. If another student sits in front of me, they're in my line of sight. I'm not able to see the person at the front. So it's simply an invisible line. If I look at that car driving by. It's in my line of sight. I'm able to see them.

So to review when something is out of sight, it means you simply can't see it. And when you talk about your line of sight, it's the imaginary line between you and the thing that you're looking at.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Shuvra. Thanks, sir. Yes, you should have brought your sunglasses. And then my response next time! You can see I'm wearing them right now. So thanks for that comment. I did remember them. I did find them back they were actually in my van. They were kind of between the seats. Sorry it's really windy out here. They were between the seats and they were kind of covered with some stuff. Hey, I'm not going to walk around today because it is extremely windy. You saw just there.

I got blown a little bit. If we turn this way, you can see the tree moving in the wind. So I'm going to just stand and talk in one spot. It's very gusty. I don't know if you know what the word gusty means. When it's gusty outside, it means the wind is blowing and it speeds up every once in a while.

So as I was sitting in the house, I thought I could make this English lesson inside or I could just go outside with my good camera, with my really big wind protected microphone. I've never shown you that have I? I'll take a picture of this tripod when I go back inside so that you can see it. But it is windy today.

Let's turn this way and then maybe you can see a little bit. I can't help but show you things. That tree is moving. But even though there are no leaves on it, that tree is still moving quite a bit in the wind. So anyways, too windy to make a video, but I'm out here anyways. By the way, speaking of weather it's supposed to get super cold here, wait for it.

I'm going to tell you what the temperature is going to be tonight. Drum roll, please. -22 degrees Celsius tonight, Friday night, the same -20, -25. Extremely cold weather. It's actually dangerous to go outside when it's that cold. So I don't go outside at night anyways. I sleep in my nice cozy bed inside my house, but it's going to get super cold here.

I’m kind of looking forward to it. That's kind of cool. Anyways, see you in a couple days with another short English lesson bye.

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English words WHATSOEVER and SOMEWHAT

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English word whatsoever. This is kind of an interesting word, and Konstantin asked if I could explain it. When you use the word whatsoever, it means at all. If I was to say, "There isn't any traffic behind me whatsoever," it would mean that there are no cars or trucks behind me. By the way, sorry if I'm squinting a lot. It's very bright out here. I tried to stand in the shade, but it's still hard to keep my eyes open. I should have brought my sunglasses because there aren't any clouds in the sky whatsoever right now. It's a clear blue sky, and it makes it hard to see.

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The second word I wanted to teach you today is the word somewhat. This means the same as a little bit. You could say, "It's somewhat cold out here today." It's minus two degrees Celsius, so it's not super cold. It's just somewhat cold. It's a little bit cold. When I make my English lessons, I'm sometimes somewhat talkative, so I'm a little bit talkative. I talk a little bit too much.

So to review, when you use the word whatsoever, it means at all. So there's not a cloud in the sky whatsoever. Today there weren't any students at school whatsoever, because we don't start teaching until tomorrow, which is actually today for you. Wednesday is the first day of second semester. I'm making this video on a Tuesday. And when you use the word somewhat, you mean a little bit, so I talk somewhat loud when I'm teaching my classes. I'm kind of a loud talking teacher. I'm somewhat loud, so it means I'm a little bit loud. I don't yell at my students, but I'm somewhat loud.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Padma, and Padma says... I can't get my paper open, 'cause I got my gloves on. It's somewhat difficult to get the paper unfolded. Padma says, "When I watch your video, I always have a feeling that I am hanging out with a good friend of mine." And my response. "That's a very nice way to describe it. Thanks for the kind words, and good use of the phrase from the last video as well."

It is kind of like hanging out a bit. I try as best as I can to be myself when I'm making my videos. I don't try to put on some sort of fake personality. The Bob that you are seeing and hearing right now is the same Bob I am when I'm at home, and so I can understand that. It's fun for me to talk to you. It's fun to read comments from all of you and respond to them. It's fun to get to know you a little bit. So in a certain way, we are hanging out a little bit. We're somewhat hanging out. I guess you could use it that way.

Anyways, I'm walking through my downtown right now. I just thought I would come out here on this bright, sunny day. I'm not sure where my sunglasses are. I thought they were in the van, but they're not. But I'm just taking a little stroll here, just having a look around. You can see the intersection behind me is somewhat busy, so that means it's a little bit busy. It's not crazy busy, but it's definitely somewhat busy. I'm gonna keep walking. I think you have seen parts of this town before. Behind me is what's called a credit union. Actually, no, this is an actual bank. Sorry, I got that wrong. A credit union and a bank are kind of the same thing. There's a bank behind me.

This is the place you go if you have to renew your driver's license or your license plates. It's called a ServiceOntario. It's a little place where you go when you need to do that. I'm just gonna walk over here in the shade, so that I can see how much tim

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO HANG OUT and TO HANG BACK

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, to hang out. When you hang out with someone, it just means that you are with them. You can go to someone's house and you can hang out. Jen and I are really good friends with our siblings. Sometimes we go to my sister's house and we just hang out for a bit. Sometimes we go to visit her sister and we just hang out for the afternoon. So when you hang out with someone, when you use that verb in English, you simply mean that you're going to be with the person. Maybe you'll sit and have a cup of tea. Maybe you'll sit and chat about things. You'll just spend the afternoon or the evening hanging out. You'll just spend the time together.

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The second phrasal verb I wanted to teach you today is to hang back. And this is a little different. When you hang back, it means other people leave and you don't. So let's say a bunch of people are going on a trip and everyone's leaving at 9:00 AM you might say, hey, I'm just gonna hang back for a bit and make sure that everything is turned off in the house. So when you hang back, it means other people are leaving for something, but you are going to go, but you're not going right away. You're just going to stay behind for a little bit. You're going to hang back.

So to review, to hang out simply means to be with someone. By the way, you don't have to just hang out in person. When you talk to a bunch of people on Zoom or on FaceTime, you could also say that you are hanging out. That's a legitimate use of it as well. And to hang back simply means to stay behind for a little while. Maybe everyone's going to go hiking and you are having trouble getting your shoes tied. You might say, hey, I'm just gonna hang back for a bit. You guys go on without me, I'm just going to tie my shoe and then I'll catch up. There's another verb for you.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Misael. Hi Bob, do you have a video about the verb to hang out? Thank you very much. My response, I think so. If not, I'll make one. Let me look for a sec. I can't seem to find one. I'll make one next week. And then Misael says, thank you so much. And then Bob promptly forgot to make the video. But I did reply and say, oops, sorry I forgot about this one but it's done now. If you look at the time difference on my replies, one is from six days ago and one is from one second ago. So there you go. I did just do a lesson on to hangout.

Hey, you might be wondering where I am. I'm in my classroom. I'm getting ready for the next semester. You can see behind me that all the chairs are up on the tables. Some of you don't like that you've said in the past that that's unsanitary, but it makes it easier for the janitor to vacuum and to deep clean the carpets before the next semester starts. A little tour of my room. You can see my TV. This is the main screen that I use to put things up for students, but I also have a projector up there that projects onto that wall. That's very handy as well. And I usually have things on both screens when I'm teaching.

And if you wonder what subject I teach, well normally I teach French. You can see the flag there. But this coming semester I'm going to be teaching a business class, just a little bit different than what I just did this semester, which was to teach French. And I taught some computer studies. So anyways, yes this is a typical Canadian classroom, a door, a TV screen. Not every teacher has a projector as well. I think maybe I'm spec

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO TAKE A STAND and TO HAVE A STANCE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to take a stand. When you take a stand on something, it means you say your opinion out loud and publicly. Maybe in your town, they're going to build a new bridge, and you don't like where they're going to put the bridge, so you might take a stand. You might go to a city council meeting and read a list of reasons why they shouldn't build a bridge there. You're going to take a stand. You're going to express your opinion publicly so that people know what you think. When you take a stand, it usually has to do with something that's happening in the world, some sort of issue or some sort of something that's going on that you oppose or you agree with, and then you take a stand if you disagree with it.

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Which is different than the phrase to have a stance, slightly. When you take a stand, you have a stance. Let me clarify. Someone could say to you, "What's your stance on this new bridge they're gonna build?" and you could say, "You know what? I don't like it, and I'm going to take a stand." So I'm kind of confusing you a bit here. You have a stance on something. What's your stance on the new bridge they want to build? You know what? I don't like it. That's my stance on the new bridge, and you know what? I think I'm going to go to a meeting and oppose the new bridge. I'm going to have a stance, and my stance is that I'm against it and I'm going to take a stand by expressing that. But hey, to review, when you take a stand, sorry, I got distracted, because there's a vehicle coming towards me. I'm not on the road.

But to review, when you take a stand, it means that you have an opinion on something and you express it to people, and when you have a stance, it simply means that you have an opinion on something. So I picked this road because I thought it would be very quiet and different from my previous videos where I'm in town, but yep, there's still people out here.

Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from Dhiraj. "Teacher Bob, recently I came across this phrase, take a stance, but there is also another phrase, take a stand. They both sound alike to me. Would you mind making a video on this, too? I'm eagerly looking forward to it." So yes, and my reply, "I'll do it in the next video."

So you can see there's a slight correction there, Dhiraj. You would have a stance on something, but you would take a stand on something. That would be the difference between the two. So yes, slight difference. And by the way, for those of you that sometimes submit comments asking me to do lessons, you can do that, and I will usually try to make a lesson about it if it's a good suggestion. So Dhiraj, that was a great suggestion.

So yes, I'm out here in the middle of nowhere. I'm out here by the woods. We might call this a forest, but I would just call it the woods. We might actually just call it the bush in Canadian English. I thought I would come out here so that there would be a bit of a juxtaposition between my previous video and this one. A juxtaposition is when something is completely different. So the last few videos I made in town, and I do plan to do more of those, and this video I'm making out here in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it's kind of funny, because even though I'm in the middle of nowhere, one of my neighbors is way there in the distance, walking towards me.

I was trying to make a video where no one would see me, where I could say, look at this wilderness that I live clo

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases NONE OTHER THAN and NONE OF THE ABOVE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, none other than. This is a phrase we use when we introduce someone somewhere where it might be a surprise to people but you do know who the person is. Let me explain a bit better. If I was doing a live stream and I said, "I have a surprise guest, and it's none other than, none other than Brent from Speak English With This Guy," it would be a surprise, but you do know who he is. Maybe you're watching a show and there are police officers. I think there's a police officer behind me again, There seem to be cops following me around. On the show, they might say, "We've captured the thief, and it's none other than the mayor of the town." That would be a surprise, but you do kind of know who it is.

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The second phrase I want to teach you today is the phrase none of the above. This is a phrase you'll see when taking a test that has multiple choice questions, a question and then A, B, C, D, and maybe the answer is actually D, none of the above. But we use this in conversation as well. I could say to you, "Are you having a good day or a bad day or an okay day or none of the above?" I could actually say that in a conversation. You could say, "Yeah, it's kind of none of the above."

So to review, when you use the phrase none other than, it's something you use to introduce someone where it's a surprise, but the people do know who it is. By the way, it's none other than the local police officer. And when you say none of the above, you mean that there are a number of possible responses, but none of them are actually what you're talking about.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I printed this one really big today. It's huge, but this comment is from Roman, "Thank you for the tour of new places. The building is so huge that I thought it was a shopping or business center," and my response was this, 'Our old arena was just that, an arena, one skating rink.' This new one is more of a multipurpose building. I like it a lot because it has a walking track around the ice rink for people to exercise, a place to walk that's nice and cool."

So yeah, when you walk around the top part, it's awesome because... If you're wondering what I'm doing, I'm throwing the papers in my van. When you walk around the top part, you're actually in the arena. And when you're in the arena, it's nice and cool because there's ice, but it's fun to walk. By the way, I just happen to come here because it's the fire station. I didn't realize there would be another police officer in one of my videos. I don't think they're following me around. Anyways, it is a beautiful building. I'm very happy that our town built that building. It's kind of cool to be able to see, to have a building where you can go to the library, you can play some basketball, you can go to the arena, you can go for a walk, et cetera, et cetera.

But yeah, this is our local fire station. So it's kind of cool because in our local town, we have what are called volunteer firefighters. So they are people who have normal jobs, but when there is a car accident or a fire... Let me turn around here so you can see one of the fire engines. When there is a fire or when, I'm not sure if you can see through the glass, or a car accident, they will leave their jobs and they will drive very quickly to the fire station and then they'll jump in the fire trucks and they'll head out. So our firefighters in our town, they.. They're volunteer but they do get paid a little bi

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases GO YOUR OWN WAY and MAKE YOUR OWN WAY

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to go your own way. When you go your own way, it means you do something the way you want to do it. A lot of teachers will create lessons, and they'll make handouts, and they'll give 'em to their students, but sometimes I decide to go my own way. I think of a creative way to teach that's a little different than the normal way to do it. So when you go your own way, it means you do something in a way that is unique to how you do it. Maybe there's a traditional way of learning English where you take a night class, but you've decided to go your own way. You've decided to learn English by using YouTube videos and by using an app. So you've decided to go your own way.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to make your own way. Now ,this looks very similar, but it's not. When you make your own way, it means that you have a job, and you earn money, and you can pay for the things in life by yourself. We often hope that as our children get older they will eventually decide to make their own way in life. I would say to one of my sons, as they get older, "It's time for you to make your own way in life. It's time for you to get a job, pay your rent, it's time to stop living at home and eating my food, It's time for you to make your own way."

So to review. When you go your own way, it means you do something in a way that you thought of. So you've decided you're gonna go your own way and you're going to walk to work, instead of driving like everyone else. And when you make your own way, it means that you have a job, you earn a living, you can pay for all the things you need to pay for in life yourself.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from, I believe, Vladimir. "You reply to the comments of the same people." And my response, "Yes, sometimes, but I do try to pick at random as well. There are a few people who are regular commenters, so I do like to pick those a bit more often. Either way, I do try to reply, in writing of course, to all the comments. I just might not feature it in the video."

So yes, people have mentioned this before. They've said, "Hey, Bob, you always pick the same comments when you're making the video. You always choose the same people." And it might seem like that sometimes, but there are a few people that I do pick more often than others, possibly because they comment more often than others. If you were to keep track, there are what I call regulars. People who come to this channel, watch these videos, and leave comments almost every time I make a video. And I really like people who do that because I get to know them a little bit, as they ask questions and as they share a little bit about their own life, I share a little bit about mine and we become more of a community. So thank you to all of you who do that, who comment regularly. I do appreciate it. It makes this a little more fun for me.

So I'm here at what's called the Community Center, but it's also the arena and the library, and there's a basketball court if you want to do that as well. You can come here and hang out. Jen and I were actually here last night. We came to the library to get a few books. So that was kind of fun. And if you look over there, I think a couple of the police officers in my town are having a little meeting. They're parked over there, I guess, just briefly to talk about what's happening in the town possibly. Maybe there's something going down

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO DEAL WITH and A GOOD DEAL

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to deal with. When you need to deal with something, it means you are going to take care of it. You are going to take responsibility for maybe solving something or doing something. Here are two examples. Let's say at school there's some students, a teacher sees some students far away that are misbehaving. I could say, oh, I'll walk over there. I will go deal with it. That means I'm going to go talk to those students and tell them to stop doing whatever they're doing. Let's say at work there's a huge pallet of things that needs to be kind of put in different parts of the store. Sorry, I'm trying to think of an example. You work at a store, there's a big pallet with things that need to go on the shelves. You could say to your boss, oh, I'll deal with that after lunch. So when you deal with something, it means you decide you're going to do it. If I say I'm going to deal with it, it means I'm going to take care of it.

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The second thing I wanted to teach you today is the term a good deal. Now, this has two meanings. I could say this. I bought a car the other day for $500. It was a good deal. That means that I paid less than what the car was worth. I benefited in the transaction. You can also use this to mean a lot. I could say we've had a good deal of rain this year. That means that it's rained probably more than it normally does.

So to review, to deal with something means to take care of something or to do something. And a good deal would be anytime you pay less money than you think you would have to. When you buy a bouquet from Jen, I think it's a good deal. I think she should charge more and we can use it to say a lot. If you buy a bouquet from Jen, you get a good deal of flowers in the bouquet.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I put it in one of these pockets. I should just get shorts with one pocket, shouldn't that? This one has 1 2 3 4. I should get a one with a few less. This is from Ruslan. Thanks for a great lesson, teacher Bob. The flower fields are beautiful and the whole landscape really looks like the Shire from Lord of the Rings. And my response, no hobbits here, though, at least none that I've seen. And I think I've actually made that comment before. I think Ruslan or someone else has mentioned that this area looks a little bit like the Shire. There was another comment as well, by the way. Thanks, Ruslan, for that comment. There was another comment as well, saying people would like to see more of the flower fields in the next few videos.

So here are the dahlia beds. They're not quite blooming yet. They'll be blooming soon. A lot of our flower beds look like this because when you grow flowers, you harvest the flowers and then you sell them. Over here, you can see the Lisianthus are starting to bloom, though. I'll get you a nice shot of these. I don't know if you're familiar with this flower. I usually show them every year. They look a little bit like a rose. And they are starting to bloom nicely as well. You can see a few pink ones down there. And these front ones here are a little bit more like an antique look. But yes, things have been growing well. We have had a good deal of rain. It's been nice. Here we have some sunflowers.

Let's have a look at these as well. Bit of a garden tour. These are sunflowers that haven't bloomed yet. Although if we go far enough along, you will see one bloom right here. There you go, one bloom. This is more of like a lemon

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases CAN'T BE BOTHERED and NOT A BOTHER

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase can't be bothered. When you can't be bothered to do something it means you don't want to do it. It means you don't see the point in doing it. So you don't do it. It means you have no desire to do it. When it snows here a lot and if the weather forecast says that it's going to be above zero the next day I can't be bothered with cleaning the driveway. I don't want to do it. I don't see the point. Sometimes students when they are preparing for exams they can't be bothered to study. That means they don't want to study and they have no desire to study, but they should study. They should definitely study when they have an exam coming up. If you have an English test coming up in the future and you can't be bothered to practice your reading, writing, listing and speaking, you should make sure you do that. It's always good to study.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase not a bother. When you tell someone that something's not a bother, oh, that's not a bother. Nope, it's not a bother. It means that you are willing to do it and it's not annoying to you. If one of my kids said I need to stay after school late tomorrow because I have a practice, is that okay? I would say, yeah, it's not a bother. I'll pick you up at five or 5:30 whenever you're done. So when you say to someone, not a bother, nope it's not a bother. It simply means that you're okay with it, you're happy about it, you're not annoyed about it.

So to review, when you say you can't be bothered it means you don't want to do something. You can't be bothered to do it. And if you say something is not a bother, it means that it doesn't annoy you and you're quite happy to do it.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Mohd. Mohd Ags says when you said this is from the last video, when you said I don't have a lot to talk about, I was like, no way. That doesn't sound like Bob the Canadian Babbler. By the way, a babbler is someone who talks a lot. Haha, but it makes me happy to see you relaxed like this and in a good mood, all the best to you and your students. And I like the emojis, happy face pizza bird 'cause we were kind of joking about birds, banana and donut. I do like donuts too. My response, the day I run out of stuff to talk about will be the day I stop doing YouTube. So like probably never.

I, interestingly enough, am a very quiet person. Thanks for the comment Mohd. I'm actually a very quiet person, but for some reason when I'm teaching and I do consider making these videos teaching I do talk a lot. I do like talking to my students at school and I do like talking to the camera. I do like talking to all of you. In my mind, I can kind of picture some of your names. The live streams help a bit on my bigger channel because in some ways in the chat get to know some of you a little bit. But yeah, I said I like talking to the camera but I very much like talking to you. I feel like I'm looking in a lens, but I'm actually talking to all of you. So anyways, yes, I'll keep talking. So I'll keep making YouTube English lessons for you.

Hey, with the continuing saga of the internet I'll just show you now. They came again yesterday and yesterday they put another antenna on my silo and now my internet is way better, way better. I can't tell you how many letter A's I put in the word way when I say way better. In fact, it was so good that yesterday I tried a new piece of software. I did a little

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms HIGH POINT and LOW POINT

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English term, "high point." When you talk about something you've done and you mention the high point, you're talking about the best thing that happened while you were doing it. Let's say you went on a trip to France. You could say, "The high point of my trip was that I got to see the Eiffel Tower." Let's say you're talking about your career, you're talking about your job. You could say, "You know, the high point in my career so far was when I got that promotion five or six years ago." So, when you talk about the high point of something, you're talking about the best thing that happened while you were doing it. "One of the high points that Jen had while flower farming was that she got to be in the local newspaper. They came and took a picture of her, and they wrote an article. And that was certainly one of the high points of her time as a flower farmer."

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Now, the other phrase I wanna teach you today is the opposite, and it's "low point." And I think you can probably guess what this means. The low point would then be the worst thing that ever happened to you, or one of the worst things that happened to you. So if you were talking again about your job, you could say, "The low point in my career was when I got fired." Or "The low point of the trip was when Joe fell getting off the bus and twisted his ankle." So, low point is then the not nice thing that happened in an event or an experience that you had.

So to review, when you talk about the high point of an experience, it's the best thing that happened during that experience. And when you talk about the low point of that experience, you're talking about the worst thing that happened during that experience. High points are definitely better than low points.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. Let me see if I can dig it out here. This comment is from Janith. "Hi Bob, sir, how do you pronounce 'gauge'?" And my response, "I'll mention it in the next video." So I just did. I have to kinda gauge how much time I have left here. Oh, I have two minutes left, so that's good. But yes, that's how I pronounce the word gauge. I think that's the only pronunciation. I know there's a couple of different spellings. I think you can spell it without a "u" as well, but I spell it the way you just saw it on the screen in Janith's comment. So thanks for that comment, and that's how I would spell or say the word "gauge." Ha, and that's how I would spell it as well. And I did give you an example sentence. Every once in a while, I look at the time on my camera because I want to gauge how much time I have left. I wanna kinda get a sense of how much time I have left.

So I don't have a lot to talk about for the last minute of this video. That's not true. I always have lots to talk about. It is January, and what that means for me at work is that things are winding down for this semester. I think some of you know this but maybe not all of you. In Canada, sorry, in my part of Ontario, I should say, we have a semester system in our high schools. That means that we teach for about four and a half months, almost five months, and then the semester is over. Students take four classes a day. And then when the semester's over, they write exams at the end, and then they start the next semester, and they take four more classes.

So for me, I have about eight days left as of today. In eight days, regular classes are finished, and then we have a week of exams. And here's a little secret.

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO STOP AT NOTHING and STOP-AND-GO

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "to stop at nothing." When you say that you will stop at nothing to do something it means you'll do anything you have to to get that thing done. It's raining right now, but I will stop at nothing to get a video made for all of you. So even though it's raining and it's a little bit cold, I don't mind coming out to get this done because I like to get the English lesson done. It's just something I like to do so I will stop at nothing to get it done. You could use this to describe other things as well. Maybe someone really likes to visit people at Christmas and they will stop at nothing in order to make that visit happen. That means even if there's a snow storm or the electricity isn't working, they will still visit someone at Christmas.

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The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "stop-and-go." Now, we usually use this to talk about traffic. If you're driving and you're on a highway and you stop and then you go and then you stop and then you go because there's a little bit of a traffic jam, we would call it stop-and-go traffic. But you can describe anything as stop-and-go. You could say the rain today has been kind of stop-and-go all day. It was raining this morning and then it stopped for a bit and then it started again. The rain has been stop-and-go.

So to review, when you will stop at nothing to get something done, it means no matter what obstacle is in your way you will get that thing finished. I hope that you stop at nothing when you keep when you are learning English. I hope nothing stops you from getting it done. And when you say something is stop-and-go, it means it starts at one point and then it stops for a bit and then it starts again. Sometimes my English lessons are like that, but not this one. This one isn't stop-and-go. I talk for the whole four minutes.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous lesson. This comment is from Stanislav and Stanislav says, "it is great weather in Canada. We have a lot of snow too today." And my response is we did have a lot, but unfortunately it's all melted now.

And you can probably see that behind me already. Let's go for a little tour. Things are very different than the last video. So the last video was actually shot a few days ago, but since then things have warmed up quite a bit here in Ontario, Canada. In fact, the other day, two days ago, it was 11 degrees. Everything melted. You can see that everything behind me, it kind of looks like spring again in some ways. And then today is four degrees. I was out earlier this morning shooting a video for my other channel, my "Wednesdays with Bob" video, and yeah, it certainly doesn't look like this. Here, I'll put a little clip in of what it looked like during the storm a week and a half ago. I'll start that right now.

It's like this outside right now. I'm not sure if you can see behind me. It is just coming down out here and it is windy out here.

And then I'll come back again. So you could see in that clip that we were getting hammered. That's how I would describe it. We were getting hammered with snow, but it certainly slowed down quite a bit. But yeah, it's just kind of weird. Like, I'm wearing a winter coat, but I don't really need a winter coat right now. I could probably come outside in just a light jacket. In fact, Jen and I went shopping the other day and I just wore a jacket. Yesterday, actually. So yes, kind of disappointing. You know Bob the Canadian lo

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A PIECE OF MY MIND and IN ONE PIECE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "a piece of my mind." Now, we usually use this phrase with the verb to give and I could say, "I'm going to give someone a piece of my mind." That means I'm angry with them and I'm going to tell them exactly what I think. If you were angry with your boss at work, you could say, "Tomorrow I'm going to give my boss a piece of my mind." I'm going to tell him or her exactly what I don't like about my job or exactly what I don't like about how things are going. I'm going to give them a piece of my mind. So again, it means you're angry, it means you're upset and you're going to tell someone exactly how you feel.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "in one piece." Now, this is kind of a weird phrase. "We just had a storm here, but we made it through in one piece." "The other day I heard on the news that someone had a car accident, but they made it through in one piece." So what I mean by it being a weird phrase is it kind of sounds weird if you think about the alternative. We don't think about that when we use it in English, though. We use it to mean when something bad has happened and we are still feeling good and no one was hurt. "So we had a bad snowstorm, but Jen and I made it through in one piece." The alternative, I'm not gonna talk about the alternative. We made it through in one piece. And again, when we use this in English we aren't thinking about something gruesome. We're just saying that everything is okay.

So to review, "a piece of my mind", if I was to give you a piece of my mind I would tell you exactly what I think about something and I might even be angry while I'm doing it. And when you make it through something in one piece, it means that everything went well and everyone is doing okay.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Judit. "Nowadays, I drink a cup of hot chocolate every day. I love it too. Snowstorm? Wow, I hope you and Brent will survive." And then I said, "We all made it through intact." And when I replied to this comment, Judit that's when I thought of the phrase in one piece. We all made it through intact. We all made it through in one piece.

Let's have a look around though. You might be surprised to know that we went through what they were calling a blizzard, but we don't actually have that much snow on the ground. The snow was everywhere. You couldn't see across the river, you couldn't even see across the road. I went out to check our mailbox that day and there was so much snow blowing I couldn't see in either direction. So I actually decided to just not cross the road. It was far too dangerous. But if you look, you'll see that you can still see little blades of grass sticking up. You can see that we did get snow, my camera, my camera doesn't like the cold. We did get snow, but not an outrageous amount.

Let's spin this way a bit so you can see the farm yard a bit better. So you can see my tracks, you can see the grass, you can see the peonies still sticking up, the little stubble from the peonies. If you look in the distance you can see an ominous sky, though, the sun above, but this very very dark cloud. It's not coming this way. When I looked on the radar this morning that storm is actually moving that way, so it's not coming here.

But yep, we had two days of really really bad weather the day before, so it was the 23rd and the 24th, yes. Our power went out. We ran the generator for a bit, so we

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO PARK IT and TO HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK

In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, to park it. When you park it somewhere, it can mean that you're parking your vehicle, but it can also mean that you're going to sit somewhere. I could say to Jen, "I'm gonna drop the kids off at the mall and then I'm just gonna park it on a bench for a little bit." That means I'm going to sit on a bench. It doesn't mean I'm gonna drive my vehicle and try to put it on a bench. That doesn't even make sense, does it? But when you say that you're going to park it somewhere, it means you're going to sit somewhere. We also use this as a command. Sometimes parents will say to kids who are misbehaving, "Okay, just park it for a sec, and I'm going to talk to you about why your behavior is bad." That means you want the child to sit down if you tell them to park it, 'cause kids don't have cars, do they?

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Hey, the second phrase I wanted to teach you today is to hit it out of the park. Now, I may have taught this phrase in the past. I can't remember. It is a very popular one. When you say someone has hit it out of the park, it means they did something and they did a really, really good job. Maybe a friend of yours had to play a musical instrument in front of other people and they did an amazing job. You could say, "Oh, you should have seen Patrick play the violin. He hit it out of the park." This means that during the performance he played every note perfectly and he just did an amazing job. He hit it out of the park.

So to review, when you say you're going to park it, it can mean that you're just going to sit somewhere. When I go to the mall, sometimes my kids shop and I just park it. I sit on a bench and I wait for them to finish their shopping. And when you hit it out of the park, it means that you do a really, really good job. I hope that whatever you're doing next, whether it's a performance or a test or something like that, I hope that you hit it out of the park.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Denis, which in English we would say, Dennis, by the way. "Bob, when it's cold outside and it's snowing and you're sitting in your comfortable chair and look out the window, what kind of drink are you prefer to sip? Or what kind of drink do you prefer to sip? Hot cocoa, mulled wine, or maybe grog." And my response, I prefer hot chocolate. It's especially good when you come in from the cold and need to warm up. So yes, hot cocoa, hot chocolate, that would be my favorite drink. We more commonly call it hot chocolate here, although hot cocoa is also a correct term. So thank you, Denis, for that comment and for that question. I definitely like when I come in from the cold, I like to have a nice cup of hot chocolate. That's my favorite.

So, guess what is going to happen here. It is Thursday today and they're calling for a blizzard. They've actually updated the term that they're using. When I say they're calling for, it means the weather people are forecasting that we are going to get a lot of snow starting halfway through the day tomorrow. They originally said it was going to snow. Then they said lots of snow. And just this morning they have now said it's going to be a blizzard. If you don't know what a blizzard is, a blizzard is a gigantic snowstorm. This snowstorm is so big that I think Brent from Speak English With This Guy and myself will be getting the same storm, even though he lives hundreds of kilometers away from me. So it's supposed to last for a

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO WORK AWAY and ASK AWAY

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, to work away. When you work away at something, it means you're working on something that will take a long time to finish and you're doing it little by little. A great example of this would be if you are doing a jigsaw puzzle. If you have 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, you need to work away at it. You're not going to finish it in 10 minutes or in 15 minutes. When you open the box and you dump the pieces out, you need to work away at it. You need to take some time to put every piece in slowly. At school, it's the week before Christmas and parents keep sending big boxes of chocolates to the staff, to the teachers to eat and we work away at each box of chocolates. We don't eat them all at once, but there's so many that we have to work away at it until the box is empty. I've eaten way too much chocolate lately, by the way. I need to slow down.

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But the second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, ask away. This is a phrase that we say sometimes as teachers when someone asks if they can ask us some questions. If a student says to me, "Can I ask you a few questions about my project?" I'll respond by saying, "Sure, ask away." This is simply giving the person permission to ask you lots of questions. Maybe a friend is visiting you and they say, "Hey, can I ask you a few questions "about what it's like at work for you, "what your job is like?" You could say, "Sure, ask away. "I'm happy to talk about work."

So to review, when you work away at something, it means you get it done slowly but surely. There's another English phrase for you. A jigsaw puzzle is a great example. You just need to work away at it, and eventually it's done. And the second phrase, ask away, is something you say when you're giving someone permission to ask you a lot of questions. A politician might be walking along and a journalist or reporter might say, "Can you stop and answer a few questions for me?" And they might say, "Sure, ask away." Or they might run because they don't wanna answer any questions. That could happen too.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from U Bean. Hi, Bob. I heard that Canadians don't like to use umbrellas when it rains. Is that true? And my response, it's an interesting thing and there might be some truth to it. I can only speak from my own experience, though. I don't use one. I own one, but I rarely use it.

So I know that umbrellas are these amazing things. They're really cool. When it rains, you open your umbrella and it keeps you dry. I own two umbrellas, actually, not just one. And we sometimes use them when we're at market. We sometimes use them when we go somewhere where we will be forced to be outside in the rain for a while. But we don't use umbrellas quite, we don't use umbrellas regularly to walk from our vehicle into a building. When I say we, I mean Jen and I. I think there are Canadians that do use umbrellas. But yeah, I don't take one with me every day. If I drive to school in the rain, when I get to work, I just run from my van to the front door. I don't use my umbrella. So, interesting. I might have to go to the city sometime and see how many Canadians actually use their umbrellas. We'll see.

Hey, it's not snowy here. It's a little disappointing. Christmas is only a few days away, and most people who live in Canada really like it when we get lots of snow. But it sounds like we might get some snow this weekend. It sounds like Friday and S

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A ROOKIE MISTAKE and AN HONEST MISTAKE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase a rookie mistake. Now, this is a term we use when we're talking about someone who's new at something and then they make a mistake. At school, oh, by the way, a rookie is someone who's new at something. When you play a sport, you can be a rookie. It means it's your first year. But we use this in other things as well. At school, sometimes we hire a new teacher and we call that teacher a rookie for the first year. And a rookie mistake as a teacher would be to try and use the photocopier right before the school day starts. That's the busiest time. If you need to photocopy something in a school, don't do it right before school starts because there will be a lineup of teachers all making the same mistakes, including the rookie. So anyways, a rookie mistake is a mistake that someone who is new at something ends up making.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase an honest mistake. Now, an honest mistake is just a mistake that anyone would make, and it's a mistake that doesn't really harm anyone. A good example would be this. Sometimes I'll teach a student and then a few years later, I'll teach their brother. So I'll teach two brothers, and then a few years later, again, after they've graduated I'll meet one of them somewhere and I'll use the wrong name. And that's just an honest mistake. Sometimes brothers look a lot alike, especially after they graduate from high school. If you meet two brothers in their 20s, they can sometimes look quite a bit alike. So it's just an honest mistake if I use the wrong name when I run into one of them.

So to review, a rookie mistake is a mistake made by someone who's new at something. A rookie mistake for a farmer is to try and work up the soil before it's dry enough. That's a rookie mistake. And an honest mistake is just a simple mistake that anyone would make, and it's not a mistake that harms anyone or costs money or anything like that. So I make a lot of those, actually.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Judit. "Thanks for the video. It was quite short, as usual. "Christmas is coming as well as the eagle season "in North Florida, check them out." And my response, "I'll have a look."

And I did, I actually just spent a little bit of time reading about bald eagles. And I wanted to show all of you something as well. So the bald eagle is native to North America. It's an eagle with a white head. I think it's the national bird in the United States. But if you look behind me here, there's a really tall hydro pole right there. We call 'em hydro poles in Canada. And at the very top, sometimes in the summer we'll see a bald eagle. There is a bald eagle that lives on our farm. I'm sure it's gone now, though, because I'm sure it's gone south for the winter where it's a bit warmer. But interestingly enough, Judit, thanks for that comment. I did read a little bit about bald eagles, and again, there's one that sometimes perches right at the top of that hydro pole. You might call it a utility pool if you are in America, or something like that.

By the way, I'm out here in the rain. It's a little bit slippery out here. Let's see if... So I actually ended up staying home today. We had, I guess we would call it technically, we would call it a snow day, but it's actually more accurate to call it an ice day. We woke up to freezing rain. It was very, very dangerous to walk outside. It was very, very dangerous

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BACK OFF and TO GO BACK ON

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to back off. Now, when you back off, it means you stop arguing with someone. It means you stop trying to convince them that you are right. Let's say that Jen and I are having an argument. At a certain point, I might back off because I might be starting to say things that are a little bit mean. Maybe we're trying to decide what to have for supper and I really want pizza, and Jen really wants hamburgers and I just keep saying things like, "We should have pizza. We never have pizza. Pizza is the best thing in the world." Eventually, Jen might get a little bit tired of my behavior and it might be important for me to back off. When you're arguing with someone, if you don't back off or if the other person doesn't back off, sometimes, you can start to have hard feelings for each other. You can start to be annoyed with each other. So, sometimes it's just good to back off.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to go back on. Now we usually use this phrase when talking about a promise. Sometimes, you can go back on something that you've said and it means, you don't do it anymore. Let's say I promised Jen that I'm going to put gas in the van today and then when I get home, I say to Jen, "You know what? I promised to put gas in the van, but I didn't. She could say, Hey, you went back on your promise. Notice I had to go to the past tense here. You went back on your promise. That's not fair." When people go back on their word or go back on their promise, it's not a nice thing. If you promise to do something, you should do it, I think. I think that's always the best thing to do.

Anyways, to review, to back off means to stop arguing or stop fighting with someone. Sometimes, it's important for you to back off so that your relationship is good and to go back on something, to go back on your word or to go back on a promise simply means to not keep it. It means that you say you're going to do something and then you don't.

Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Lorenzo. "Hi, teacher Bob, still no snow in Canada and my response just a tiny bit now, hopefully more in the weeks ahead."

So yes, thanks, Lorenzo. What's happening here is at night, it goes below zero. So every night, the temperature goes down to minus four or minus five, and sometimes it snows. But if you look around me, you'll see that there isn't any snow on the ground at all. There is no snow to speak of, we might say in English. So, yeah. Oh wait, I think I found some. Let's look. If you look the back of this bench down here, you could see a little bit of snow, so we do not sure what my lens is doing. It's going crazy now. Let me see if I can get it to, there we go, my ca- Apparently my camera's not used to making English lessons either, but yes, so there's a little bit of snow on our vehicles in the morning. There's a little bit of snow on the ground sometimes but then by midday, it's plus three or plus four and most of it has melted, so just kind of sad.

Hey, you know what I was gonna talk about for the end of this video? This is something I mentioned every, every December I think. I can't wait for school to be done. I have over a week and a half left of school and I can't wait for Christmas break. It is one of my favorite times of year. I get to slow down a bit. Obviously, I don't have to work, but I should stay focused. I should stay focused, do my job well, and eventually, it will be next week, Fri

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO TAKE SOMETHING FOR A SPIN and TO SPIN YOUR WHEELS

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, "To take something for a spin." Now, usually, this refers to a vehicle. Maybe a friend of yours has a new car. You could say, "Hey, could I take your car for a spin?" That means you want to drive it for a little bit. Maybe a different friend bought a brand-new sports car and you've never really taken a sports car for a spin. You could say, "Hey, could I take your sports car for a spin? Could I go and take a little drive around town and see what it feels like to drive it?"

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is, "To spin your wheels." Now, I'm having a funny feeling I may have taught both of these phrases before, but I'm gonna reteach them anyways because it's been a little while since I've made one of these videos. When you spin your wheels with a vehicle, it means they go around really fast and you don't move forward. Maybe you're in mud or something, but in life, you can also spin your wheels. This simply means you're not making progress on something. Maybe you're working on a project at work with some colleagues and you haven't made very much progress. Your boss could come and say, "Hey, are you guys going to keep spinning your wheels? I think you guys need to get something done, so please start getting more work done. Start to make some progress. Stop spinning your wheels." Sorry, I'm not using the exact phrase, but I'm a little out of practice on this.

Anyways, to review. To take something for a spin is to go and drive it for a little bit. You can take a car for a spin. You could even ask someone if you could take their new phone for a spin or their new computer, although that's less common. And when you spin your wheels, it simply means that you are not making progress. Whatever it is you're doing, you're not making any progress. You're just kind of stuck in one spot.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video if I can find it. Did I put it in a pocket? It's not in that pocket, it's not in that pocket. What did I do with it? I don't think I have it with me. I'll be right back. Okay, I'm back, and I found it. This is from Ok. Hello, Bob. All the expressions are interesting, but there are too few examples. And my response, I'll see what I can do about that.

So yeah, I try to describe... By the way, thanks for the comment. I try to describe and explain the current expression or term in about a minute. Sometimes, I give one example, sometimes I give two. I will try my best to give more examples in the future.

Anyways, I'm back. I'm back at it. I know I took a little bit of a break there. Life was busy, but I was also not feeling well. I was close to losing my voice a few times, and I thought I just need to rest it for a few more days. I need to make sure that I don't overdo it because if I lose my voice, I can't make YouTube videos, I can't go to work, I can't do what I'm supposed to do. So I was able to rest my voice. I basically just took some Advil, went to work, didn't talk too much at work. I tried to rest my voice as much as possible. And even though I was a little bit sick, I did get better.

So it is nice to be feeling a lot better now and it's nice to be doing this again. I have to admit, taking a week and a half off from making short videos, I kind of forgot how to do it. Obviously, I forgot to bring my comment out with me. I haven't actually even prepared in my mind what to talk about for the last two minutes. I'm jus

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases ON THE FAST TRACK and FAST-FORWARD

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, on the fast track. Now, there's two ways to learn English. You can study at home on your own time or if you wanna be on the fast track, you can move to an English speaking country and live with an English speaking family, then you would definitely be on the fast track. So, this phrase then means to take a route that's faster. Sometimes someone starts working at a company and they do a really good job, and they work extra hours, and they just really want to get a promotion, you would say that they are on the fast track if they manage to do that. They impress their boss by working long days, doing things successfully and just making the company better. You would say, "Oh, they're on the fast track to getting a promotion." So, anytime you're on the fast track, it means you're going faster than other people.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase fast-forward. Now, this is a button that you use to speed up a video but we also use this when we talk about our lives. I could say this, five and a half years ago, I only had a few subscribers, but fast forward a few years and I had a hundred thousand subscribers. Fast forward again and a few years later, I had over a million. This is on my other channel, by the way not this channel, this channel is cool and small and that's the way I like it. So, you can use the word fast-forward to talk about events in your life as well.

So to review, when you're on the fast track, it means you are progressing in a faster way than other people at something like learning English or getting a promotion at work. And when you use the phrase fast-forward, you can use this to talk about different parts of your life. When I was a kid, I didn't like pumpkin pie but fast forward a few years and it became one of my favorite kinds of pie. So you can just use the phrase to talk about an advancement in time.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video, this comment is from Giovanni. "Yeah, I'm pulling for Canada this year, since I was born, Canada hasn't been qualified and this year you guys did. Sure thing, I'm stuck to the sofa this afternoon to watch the match, and then I'm responding a little while later saying I was sad when we lost to Belgium yesterday, oh well, c'est la vie."

So, thanks Giovanni for that. Yes, the World Cup is happening. Yes, I did actually watch a little bit of it yesterday. We watched it at school. So, we were able to get the match on the screen. We watched a little bit of the match between Canada and Belgium and we were sad when they scored a point on us and then we were sad at the end of the game when we lost. But hey, it's nice that, I think they're in Round Robin play right now, where you play a number of teams in your pool. So, hopefully when Canada plays its next game, we can have a little more success.

So anyways, I don't have a lot more to talk about today but I will just reflect on my week. My week so far has been really busy, but as of today, I don't have as much to do. But the funny thing is, when I'm busy, I get more work done and when I don't have a lot to do, I get less done. I sat and talked to Jen this morning for half an hour instead of getting this video done right away. I kind of moseyed outside. In English when you say that you mosey somewhere, it means you go there really, really slowly. For some reason, on days where I have a million things to do, I get up, I get at it, I start early, I g

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English saying TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME and the term TWO-FACED

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English saying, two can play at that game. This is a phrase we use when someone does something, maybe not a nice thing, and you think to yourself, hmm, two can play at that game. And then you do something similar. Let's say you're playing a game of hockey and it's non contact. That's when you're not supposed to check or hit each other. And then someone checks you a little bit, you could think to yourself, hmm, two can play at that game. And then you start to hit or check the other player as well. And this doesn't have to just happen in sports. Maybe at work, someone starts doing something to get their work done quicker. Maybe they're cheating a little bit or something, and you can think, hmm, two can play at that game. And then you start to do a similar thing. So you also have an advantage.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is, well, not a phrase, but term is the term two faced. When someone is two faced, it means sometimes when you talk to them, they're nice, but then sometimes they talk to other people, and maybe you hear them not being nice to you. So when someone's two faced, it's like they're nice to you when you talk to them, but, you know, when they talk to other people, they don't speak kindly of you. So they're kind of two faced, right? They have a nice face when they're talking to you, and then they have a mean face when they're talking to other people. They're two faced.

So to review, two can play at that game is usually not something you say. It's kind of something you think like, hmm, two can play at that game... And then you start to do what the other person was doing to you. And then if someone is two faced, it simply means that they kind of have two personalities. They're nice to you when you're talking to them. And then later you might hear from someone that they were saying really mean things about you because they're two faced.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from June. This is true here in Korea, too, especially during the rainy season, super humid, sticky and muggy. And my response, hot and muggy are two of my least favorite words. So that comment from June. Thank you, June. Is in response to the video last week where I talked about how hot and muggy it was here. It was definitely hot and muggy.

I don't like hot and muggy. I love this. It's just raining a little bit. It's about 23 degrees celsius out here. I probably should go in in a bit before my camera gets too wet. But it's just a beautiful day. I love being able to show you things like these zinnias. I'll give you a spin around view.

We are just experiencing a really nice year on the farm. Things are just growing really well. A lot of it is because, of course, Jen really knows what she's doing. She's a really good farmer. She's a really good grower. But also because it just rains a lot. And plants really like rain, they just grow really well. So the zinnias are just abundant. When you say something is abundant, there's just lots of them. And the leaves are a really nice green color. We can tell from the color of the leaves when a plant is healthy. So we are just experiencing a really, really beautiful, nice year here on the farm. We're very thankful.

Some years it. It doesn't rain as much and I have to irrigate a lot. So I've had more time to do things I want to do because I haven't had to irrigate as much. And then the other thing that has allowed me to h

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases C'EST LA VIE and DÉJÁ VU

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase c'est la vie or is this actually a French phrase? By the way, there are French phrases that we use in everyday English and c'est la vie is one of them, and it means, that's life. Sometimes you have a situation where something goes a certain way and there's no real way to explain it. So in an English conversation you would just shrug and say, "Well, c'est la vie." And basically what we're saying is, "That's life." Life has its ups and downs. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes it's hard to understand why those things happen and then we just say, c'est la vie.

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By the way, there's another French term we use and that's deja vu. In English, people often forget to put the accents on it, by the way, but deja vu is a situation where you feel like you're experiencing something that happened before. In English, you would say, "Oh, I just had deja vu. I felt like I've already done this." Maybe you're reading a news story, and you feel like you've read the story before or maybe you just have a weird moment in your day where you think, "I think I've already done this." In that situation, you would say you're experiencing deja vu. By the way, in French, this actually is the past participle of the verb voir, and this means already so it kind of roughly translates as already seen.

Anyways, enough of the French lesson. To review, in an English conversation, you may use this phrase, c'est la vie. You can also say that's life. Either one will work and people will understand what you're saying. You just say, "Hmm, c'est la vie." Or, "Oh, that's life." And if you experience deja vu, it means you have had a situation in life where you feel like you've already lived that moment that it's already happened to you. It can be very, very strange to experience deja vu.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Ruslan. Thank you for the lesson, dear teacher Bob. I love that nice, quiet neighborhood you were walking around in this video. Everybody has such a small fence around their houses so I guess house robbery does not happen in this area. And my response, it does happen, but not too often. It is a very peaceful neighborhood.

So thanks Ruslan for that comment. Let's talk a little bit about crime in Canada. We do have crime. Houses do get robbed. We are like every other country in the world. We try our best to keep our crime rate down, but there are still bad people and things still do happen. So yes, people do have their house houses robbed from time to time. We don't tend to have a lot of fences, but a lot of houses have security alarms or alarm systems and we probably in smaller towns have a very low crime rate. It's probably more of a worry in the bigger cities like Toronto or Edmonton or Calgary. So yes, we do have crime. It's even sometimes dangerous out in the countryside where I live, although people steal different things when they're out there. People tend to steal things like snowmobiles and four wheelers and farm equipment. So yes, there is crime. We do our best to stop it.

Hey, I'm out here at our local soccer fields because as I understand it, the W

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrase I OWE YOU ONE and the French Phrase Merci beaucoup!

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase I owe you one. This means the same thing as saying thank you, and I want to say to all of you, I owe you one. I had a lot of fun reading all of the comments on the last video, where I asked you for ideas. Sorry, I said all the comments. I haven't read all of them yet, but I think as of this morning, there's 144. I've read many of them. There's far too many for me to respond, but I've certainly enjoyed reading them, so I owe you one. Thank you for your thoughts. Thank you for your ideas. It's a lot of fun to read through and to kind of see what you guys were saying, so thank you so much for that. So once again, when you say, "I owe you one," it means the same thing as saying, "Thank you."

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today isn't an English phrase. It's merci beaucoup, which is just a French way of saying thank you as well. So thank you very much, I owe you one, merci beaucoup.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. Let me see what I have in my pocket here. I did respond to one of the 144 comments, and I said, oh no, wait, let's read what Judit had to say. "Yes to all of your questions, and the length, when I have time, it is too short. When I don't have time, it is too long, but I manage. I miss you responding to my comments, though." And my response. "I miss that, too. It's one of my favorite things about this channel." Don't worry, I'll resume doing that with this video.

So yes, I've been a little slow to reply to comments, haven't I? And I'll try to make sure that I get on that. And it isn't a burden for me. I do really enjoy responding to all of your comments. It's a lot of fun to read them. I think my response average is pretty good. I do usually find the time to respond to most of them, and it helps that there's only 30 or 40. When there's 144, like there were on the previous video, it gets a little challenging to be able to do that. So anyways, thanks once again. I will get back to that, Judit. It's a lot of fun, and it helps me connect with all of you.

Hey, as you can see, there is a skiff of snow. I don't know if you can see on all the roofs here, but let me spin you around. You can see that the roof on some of these houses is white, and if I walk over to this park, you can see that we've had, I guess you could call it our first snowfall. I mean, it's not huge by any stretch of the imagination. Let me spin you back around. But certainly we have had snow. It's been snowing on and off, but the snow hasn't stayed on the ground. Early in the fall, the the ground is quite warm, and so sometimes we'll have snow, but as soon as it hits the ground, it will melt. But this time, we had snow during the night and it seems to have taken the time to remain, so we can see that it has not melted yet, so that's really cool.

Anyways, I'm not sure what else to say. It's only three minutes, and I usually talk for four minutes, don't I? I must have done the beginning part of the lesson very, very quickly. So let me go on a little bit more about some of the comments yesterday. Most of you said everything's just right. I like it when people say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That should be the phrase maybe that I teach you today as well. That's a saying we use when something is working well, and then when someone wants to modify it or change it, sometimes we'll say, "Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it," meaning nothing's broken, everything's w

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 Well, hello and welcome to this not a short English lesson with Bob. Don't worry, it's not bad news. I'm not quitting or anything like that. But I did want to make a different sort of video for this channel because I wanted to ask you a few questions.

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I'm also not feeling very well, so I took some Advil. I feel better now. I thought I'd come outside and make a couple videos quick. It's nothing serious, by the way. I'll be fine by tomorrow.

But I wanted to ask you a few things about the lessons on this channel. Number one, do you like them? That's a pretty general question. Let me be more specific. Do you like that I teach two phrases? Do you like that I walk around for a minute or two at the end? Do you like that I respond to a comment each week? Do you like the length? Do you wish they were shorter? Do you wish they were longer? I can't promise major changes because it kind of works for me. It's a really easy video to make, an easy lesson to make for you. But I am curious. I would like to know what would you like to see different if I was to add something or remove something.

And you won't hurt my feelings In English when you hurt someone's feelings, when you say you hurt their feelings, you make them feel sad. I like being incredibly analytical about the things I make, and I'm not very emotional about it. So if you all overwhelmingly said, "Ah, we don't like it when you reply to a comment," I would maybe think about not doing that or doing it differently. Or if you said, "Two phrases is too many, just teach one and make the video three minutes instead of four." I would think about that. Or if you said, "Make the video 30 minutes long." I probably wouldn't do that. That's too long. I don't have time for that.

Part of the beauty of the lessons on this channel is that I do them in one take. They don't need to be edited. So you'll notice even if I make a mistake, I just keep going. I usually correct myself. And four minutes is about the right length, I think. I can teach a couple things, I can respond to a comment, and I can kind of walk around. So anyways, if you have ideas, let me know. If you have things that you don't like, let me know. If you have things where you think if I change something a little bit, let me know, and let me know all of this in the comments below. I'll be happy to read through them.

I do wanna apologize that I have not been replying to comments as much as I normally do, but I'll explain all of that towards the end of the month. I've been busy for a number of reasons. One of them, I'll tell you now, my mom is moving. So that's one of the reasons I've been a little extra busy with my life right now because my mom is moving. So my brothers and sisters and I, we've been spending a lot of time helping her get ready to move, so that that takes a bit of time. You should always help parents move when they decide to move. So I've been doing quite a bit of that lately.

So anyways, if you have any ideas, let me know. If there's something you don't like, let me know. If you don't like this channel at all, if you're like, "This is a waste of time, stop doing it," then maybe this isn't the channel for you. Maybe there's other things that you could watch, but I think most of you who are here are quite regular viewers. So once again, let me know what you think, and I'll get back to the regular lessons in a little while. You'll have a new one by Friday, like in a couple of days. I'll do the traditional paper one as well.

And if there's specific topics you want me to cover, if you're like, "Bob, just do phrasal verbs. Stop doing all these oth

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