Comprehensible Podcast

In this episode, I talk about England. There are two versions of this episode - a beginner-level version and an intermediate-level version. This is the beginner-level version. --- Hello and welcome to episode three of the comprehensible podcast. I'm an Englishman living in South Korea. The last episode was about Korea, this time, I will talk about England. I haven't been to England since I came to Korea, fifteen years ago. I planned a vacation in England in 2020, but it was cancelled because of Covid. I planned a really nice trip, too. My wife is Korean and she hasn't been to England. So, I chose a few interesting places to go. I booked an Airbnb in each place. I found some really nice places to stay. The places I chose to go were: London, Manchester, The Lake District, Oxford and The Cotswolds. I chose these places because they were culturally significant or beautiful. I wanted my wife to have a wonderful time and see many interesting things. I also wanted her to have personal experiences of English things she reads about or sees on TV. I even made a website and wrote about all the places we would visit. I spent about two weeks planning and researching the vacation! But I wasted my time because the trip was cancelled about six weeks before it started. I can barely remember what it is like to live in England! And I'm sure it has changed a lot. In fact, I know it has. So what can I say about England? Ummm... It has bad weather! It rains a lot. The sky is often grey. Grey is not a good color for a sky. In Korea, the sky is usually blue - it is usually sunny. There is a monsoon season and it rains every day for a month or six weeks. This is quite annoying. But most of the year it is sunny almost every day. Even in winter, it is cold, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining. Not in England. In England, winters are miserable. And in England, in winter, it gets dark at four o'clock in the afternoon and it gets light at about eight in the morning. Scotland is even worse. But in summer, the days are really long. In the middle of summer, in England, it gets light at about four thirty in the morning, and it gets dark at about nine thirty. That's really nice. I remember being a kid and playing outdoors until late, in the summer. It's a really nice vibe. Robert Louis Stephenson wrote a poem about a child going to bed while it is light outside in the summer in England - well, Robert Louis Stephenson was Scottish, but it's the same in England. That poem brings back memories. It's a strange feeling, going to bed in summer as a child when the sun is shining. What else can I say about England? Well, there's some very nice countryside. I remember driving home from Manchester Airport and driving along some narrow country lanes, through hills and fields. It was very different from Florida, where I went. And I realized how unique and beautiful the English countryside is. Florida is beautiful, too, of course. America has some very beautiful places. But the English countryside is unique and beautiful. Many people say the food in England is bad, but I don't know why. England is very multicultural. Especially London. 40% of people in London were not born in England. When people move to a new country, they often open a restaurant and serve food from their home country. It's difficult to find an English restaurant in England. I think that if the food is bad in England, it is not our fault! How can the food be worse than other countries, when the food is FROM the other countries?! England probably also has the most famous chef in the world - Gordon Ramsay. And it has the seventh highest number of Michelin stars. Anyway, Indian restaurants are the most popular restaurants in England. Chinese was the most popular, but now Chinese is third, behind Italian. Thai, Japanese, Greek and Mexican are also very popular. I love Thai food. My favorite restaurant in London is called Thai Square. They have a dish that is roast duck in sweet tamarind sauce, served on crispy, baked seaweed. It is SO good! I had it every time I went to that restaurant. I didn't see that dish in Thailand, though - or anywhere else. Maybe that is the only restaurant that makes it! Anyway, if you go to Angel in London, I highly recommend it. People cook Italian and other foods at home, too. In Korea, people usually eat Korean food, but in England we rarely eat English food. But we sometimes eat English food on Sundays. The Sunday Roast is a traditional English dish. It consists of roast meat - chicken, pork, beef or lamb - with roast potatoes, parsnips, and boiled or steamed vegetables, with gravy. This used to be the big meal of the week. On Sundays, the whole family would get together and share this food. The vegetables were plated in the kitchen, and the meat, potatoes and gravy were served separately. The meat is carved and given out by Mum or Dad, then people help themselves to potatoes and gravy. This used to happen every Sunday, but it is getting much less common, nowadays, because people are so busy and family is not so important. A lot of pubs sell Sunday Roast on Sundays. I think more people eat these than cook it at home. Pubs are very important in English social life. Pubs are like bars, but more relaxed. Bars are more exciting. Bars are also more cosmopolitan, and pubs are more traditional. People go to the pub on Friday night, after work, with a few colleagues, and on Saturday night with freinds, and sometimes on Sunday afternoons for a pint and a Sunday Roast. Beer comes in pints, in England. A pint glass is a very traditional and distinctive shape. When English people go abroad and drink beer, they miss drinking from a pint glass! A liter is too big, and half a liter is too small. If Goldilocks drank beer, she would use a pint glass! Other traditional English foods are fish and chips, which can be fantastic, and the Full English Breakfast, which consists of fried bacon and eggs, sausages, mushrooms and baked beans. And toast. A good full English breakfast is fantastic. England has a lot of fish and chip shops. Fish and chip shops have no chairs or tables, just a long counter full of fish and chips. Chips are like big, fat French fries. The fish is usually cod or haddock. You go into the fish and chip shop, order your fish and chips, wait while they prepare it. They used to wrap it in newspaper, but now they use special paper. Sometimes, fish and chip shops have chairs and tables, though, or they have a restaurant upstairs. They only sell fish and chips, plus battered, red, sausages called savaloys, mushy peas and perhaps onion rings. People put salt and vinegar on fish and chips, or sometimes a special curry sauce. They also sell fish and chips and Full English Breakfasts in pubs. What else can I say? Oh - Christmas is our biggest festival. Christmas is huge in England. Korea is probably more Christian than England, but they don't really have Christmas. Christmas Day is a public holiday, but it is not a big family event like in the west. When I was a kid, a lot of workplaces closed for a couple of weeks. Everyone took paid vacation time, so Christmas was a long holiday. The world is busier nowadays, and workplaces don't close for so long - maybe just a couple of days. But the shops put decorations up in October, now. It is ridiculous. Christmas should be special, but having decorations up for 25% of the year makes it less special. What if 25% of people dressed like policemen? We couldn't trust the science if 25% of people dressed like scientists. The circus would not be the same if 25% of people wore clown costumes every day! Anyway, that is it for today. Maybe I will say some more about England another time. Have a great day! Take care. Bye-bye!

In this episode, I talk about England. There are two versions of this episode - a beginner-level version and an intermediate-level version. This is the intermediate-level version. --- Hello, and welcome to the... episode three of the Comprehensible Podcast. So, I am an Englishman living in South Korea, and in the last episode I talked about coming to Korea and living in Korea, so I figure this time I will talk about England. Actually, I haven't been back to England since I came to Korea, 15 years ago. I did plan a three week vacation in England in 2020, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you what happened to my travel plans in 2020! It was a really nice trip I had planned, as well. My wife is Korean and has never been to England, and so I picked out a bunch of interesting places all around the country for us to visit and spend a few days in each. And I booked an Airbnb in each place, and I found some really nice places to stay. So the places I picked out to visit were: London, Manchester, the Lake District, Oxford and the Cotswolds. I chose these places because they were either culturally significant, or because they were beautiful, or somehow otherwise representative of England. So, there were two things that I wanted my wife to get out of the trip: One, I wanted her to have a wonderful time and see as many interesting things and beautiful places as possible. And secondly, I wanted her to have personal experience of places in England that she would hear about, or read about, or see on TV, or that could come up in conversation, or whatever - to give her more context of these places and more of an understanding and a personal relationship and background knowledge of them. I even made a little website for her, and wrote little articles about the history and significance of all the different locations that we would visit in each place. All in all, I must have spent about two weeks planning and researching the vacation, but that was all wasted time, because about six weeks or so before we were supposed to get on the plane, all the flights were cancelled and I had to unbook all of the accommodations and events that I had booked. So, I can barely remember what it's like to live in England, and I'm sure it's changed a lot since I was there. In fact, I know it has. So what can I say about England? It has bad weather! It rains a lot. The sky is grey too often. Grey is not a good colour for a sky. Possibly my favourite thing about Korea is that the sky is usually blue - it's usually sunny. There's a monseason, haha... a monseason... a MONSOON SEASON, where it just rains every day for about a month or six weeks, which is kind of annoying. But the rest of the time you can expect sunshine every day and usually not be disappointed. Even in the winter - it gets pretty cold but the sky is blue and the sun is shining. It's not like that in England. Winter is miserable in England. And in England, also, in the winter, it gets dark at four o'clock in the afternoon and it doesn't get light again until eight o'clock in the morning. And Scotland is even worse. But on the flip side of that, of course, the days are really long in the summer. In the middle of summer in England it gets light at about half past four in the morning and doesn't get dark until about half past nine at night. That's really nice. I remember being a kid and staying out, playing until late during the summer, it's a really nice vibe. There's a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson about going to bed while it's still light outside in the summer in England. Well, Robert Louis Stevenson was Scottish, so it's probably about Scotland, but it's the same thing in England. That poem brings back memories. It is a strange feeling going to bed in summer when you're a young kid and it's still, like, fully light outside. What else can I say about England? There's some really nice countryside. There are some really beautiful landscapes and natural areas. I remember driving home from Manchester Airport, after coming back from America one time, and I ended up driving through the countryside around there, along these narrow country lanes, through the hills and fields, and it was very different from Florida, where I'd been - totally different landscape, very different environment, and it struck me how unique and beautiful the English countryside is. It's really something else. Florida's beautiful too, of course. Florida is incredible. America in general has some mind-blowing landscapes. But there really is something unique about the English countryside. It has an atmosphere and a beauty all of its own. I hear a lot of people saying that the food in England isn't very good, but I can't understand it. For me, the food is one of the best things. England is a very multicultural city, especially London, and there are people from all over the world there. In fact, 40% of London's population, now, were not born in England, and I guess that one thing people do when they move to a new country is they open a restaurant and serve food from their home country. It's actually difficult to find an English restaurant in England. I think if the food is bad in England, then it's literally everyone else's fault but the English! I don't see how the food can be worse than in other places, the food is FROM all the other places. Plus England also probably has the most famous chef in the world, Gordon Ramsey, and has the seventh highest number of Michelin starred restaurants. So I can't understand it. Anyway, Indian restaurants are the most popular restaurants in England. It used to be Chinese until fairly recently. Chinese is now the third most popular, behind Italian. Thai, Japanese, Greek and Mexican are also popular. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Thai food. There's the chain of Thai restaurants in London called Thai Square, which was my favorite restaurant when I was there, because they had a dish that was roast duck in sweet tamarind sauce, served on crispy baked seaweed - it was so good! I had it every time I went there! I don't know quite how traditionally Thai that is. I never even saw it in Thailand, or anywhere else. That could be literally the only restaurant - the only place in the world that makes it. I don't know. Anyway, if you ever find yourself in Angel Station in London, I highly recommend it. It's a chain, but they only seem to have that dish in the one at Angel. So, anyway, yeah, people tend to cook and eat Italian and stuff at home, too. England is very different from Korea in that respect. In Korea people pretty much just eat Korean food every day and then go to a foreign restaurant when they're feeling super adventurous and cosmopolitan. I think we only eat English food in England when we're feeling super nostalgic or something. Or sometimes on Sundays. Sunday roast is a traditional English dish, I guess. It consists of roast meat - either a chicken or a joint of pork, or beef, or lamb, with roast potatoes, and sometimes parsnips. I've never seen parsnips in in Korea, I don't think. And boiled or steamed vegetables, with gravy. So a joint is basically a chunk of meat big enough for several people. I guess the word joint originally refers to the joints in your body, like your knees and your elbows. Farm animals don't have arms, so I guess a joint would technically be a chunk of beef or pork leg, with a knee on the end of it. But I think "joint" can also refer to meat from other areas, such as the ribs and what have you. So this used to be a big family meal of the week... THE big family meal of the week. On Sundays, the whole family would get together and share this food, and the meat is carved off the joint and served at the table. So, I guess the vegetables would be plated in the kitchen, then the meat and potatoes and gravy would be brought in separately, and then the meat would be carved and distributed by Mom or Dad or whatever, and then people help themselves to potatoes and gravy. I figure that used to be a ritual that happened every Sunday, but I guess it's getting less common nowadays, as people get busier and less family oriented, and less ritual oriented, and less oriented, Maybe. Arguably. A lot of pubs sell roast... Sunday roast on Sundays, and I guess more people go out to eat than cook it at home, now. So, pubs are quite important to social life in England. I guess that's the most popular place to meet friends and socialize. People go down the pub. That's what they do. They go down the pub! I figure... I find it difficult to put my finger on the difference between a pub and a bar, but I definitely know them when I see them. I guess pubs are more relaxed places for just sitting and relaxing with friends or family or work colleagues and having a drink, while bars are more about going out and getting drunk and having an exciting time. I think pubs tend to focus more on selling different types of draft beer, and have a few different whiskies and stuff, while bars tend to sell more bottled beer, and then spirits, alcopops, cocktails, and that kind of thing. Bars also tend to have more of a cosmopolitan vibe, while pubs have a more traditional atmosphere, I think. So, yeah, the pub is undoubtedly the most popular place to go on a Friday night after work with a few colleagues, on a Sunday night... a Saturday night with friends, and I guess on a Sunday afternoon for a pint, and a Sunday lunch. I suppose there are people who go to the pub every day, but I wouldn't recommend it. Beer comes in pints in England. There is a very traditional and distinctive beer glass shape, and it holds a pint of beer. A pint is actually the perfect size for a beer container. When English people go abroad, they find drinking beer much less satisfying because of the the glass sizes! A liter is too big, and half a liter is too small. I think if Goldilocks drank beer, she would definitely drink it by the pint! So, other traditional foods worthy of note are fish and chips - which is fantastic if you get a good one - and the Full English Breakfast, which consists of fried bacon and eggs, sausages, mushrooms and baked beans. And toast. A good Full English Breakfast which is a fine thing. So there are a lot of fish and chip shops in England, these are usually small shops with no chairs or tables, just a long counter with a big glass cabinet full of battered and fried fish, and a thing full of chips, which are like big, fat French fries. So, the fish is usually either cod or haddock, and you go in, you order your fish and chips, and you stand there while they take the fish out of the big glass cabinet, and scoop up some chips, and wrap it up in newspaper, and give it to you. Well, traditionally, traditionally they used newspaper. Although nowadays I think it's usually, like, purpose-made sheets of this off-white paper, purpose-made paper. Possibly health and safety rules say that they're not allowed to use newspaper any more. I don't know. So, sometimes fish and chip shops have tables and chairs, though. And they're more like restaurants, or they have restaurants upstairs or whatever. Anyway, so, they usually pretty much sell only fish and chips, plus battered red sausages called "savaloys", mushy peas, and perhaps onion rings or something like that. Traditionally, you would put salt and vinegar on fish and chips, and most people do that, I guess, but also there's this special kind of curry sauce that's also quite popular. They also often sell fish and chips and Full English Breakfasts in pubs, too. What else can I say? Oh, so Christmas is undoubtedly our biggest festival. Christmas is huge in England. Korea is about 50% Christian and it's a much more religious country than England. Everybody goes to church in Korea - not so in England. But they don't really have Christmas in Korea. I mean, they kind of do... Christmas Day is a public holiday, but there's no tradition around it, to speak of. It's considered a day for couples, I guess, as far as Koreans are concerned, for some reason. Probably just because couples don't have to go to work, maybe? I don't know. But it certainly isn't a big family event like it is in England, though. And the rest of the Western world, I guess. When I was a kid, a lot of workplaces would shut down for a couple of weeks over Christmas. Everyone would take a chunk of paid vacation, and so Christmas was a much longer thing than just Christmas Day. I mean, it still is like that to a degree, but in today's busy world I think that workplaces don't shut down for so long - just like a few days, maybe. But the shops start putting Christmas decorations up in October now, which is ridiculous. Christmas is supposed to be a special time of year, but I don't know how it can feel special if the decorations are up for 25% of the year. What would it be like if 25% of people dressed like policemen? How could we trust the science if 25% of people walked around wearing lab coats and goggles everywhere they went? What would the circus be like if 25% of people walked around dressed as clowns, and drove around in tiny cars, putting water down each other's trousers? It wouldn't be the same. Anyway, that's about it for today, I think. Quite possibly I will have some more to say about England in the future, but, for now, "have a great day", or "enjoy the rest of your day", or "enjoy your evening", or "good night", depending on your current temporal situation! So, thanks for listening. Take care. Bye-bye!

In this episode, I talk about coming to, and living in, Korea. There are two versions of this episode - a beginner-level version and an intermediate-level version. This is the beginner-level version. --- Hello, and welcome to the second episode of the Comprehensible Podcast. If it's your birthday today, happy birthday! If it's your husbands, or your wife's, or your moms, or your dad's birthday, tell them Dan said happy birthday. If it's your dog's birthday then... awww! If you just got married or engaged, congratulations. If you just had a baby, congrats as well... and happy birthday to the baby! If you're Korean, 안녕하세요? If you're French, bonjour! If I stepped on your foot at a train station recently, I'm sorry! If I beat you in business, well, that's life! Actually, there's a very small chance that I beat you in business, to be honest. Anyway, this episode is about Korea and living in Korea. I've been living here for 15 years. I'm married, no kids. I came here in 2008. I had jet lag for about a week or two afterwards. I didn't sleep much, and most of my sleep was during the day, at work! I couldn't find coffee for the first few days, which made it harder. When I first came here, there were no coffee shops. Now there are many coffee shops. I live in a small city in a rural area so maybe Seoul had more coffee shops but certainly things have changed a lot in 15 years. I traveled for two days to get to Korea. I took three flights. I got in at 2pm. My manager picked me up. He took me to my new apartment. Then he took me back to work for an eight hour shift until 10.30pm! That surprised me! I didn't plan any lessons, so I had to very think very quickly. Honestly, I probably didn't think very quickly. I had very bad jet lag Like, as I said. Korea is nine hours ahead of England, so my body clock was all messed up. I lay awake all night, then I got up when the sun came through the windows. I had no coffee, I drank water instead, which is not the same. Then I planned my classes, and then I went to explore my new neighbourhood. At lunch, I went to a restaurant near my apartment. I studied some Korean, but I couldn't read the menu. I pointed at something, then five minutes later I got a plate of raw fish and vegetables and a bowl of broth. The waitress put them on a portable gas cooker and left. I was quite surprised. The fish was on the table and the broth was on a gas stove and I had to cook it myself. It wasn't difficult but it was surprising and felt like a challenge. I suppose these were my first few culture shocks. But I studied anthropology at university and spent three years reading about anthropologists living in much more difficult conditions. So my experience was probably quite mild, in comparison. After a few weeks everything just seemed normal. Things were different from England but they felt normal. There are differences as I say. One big difference is the language. And Korean is not just different words in a different order, but it also has respect-fullness built into it. Age is very important in Korea. You use different words for older and younger people. 친구, which is usually translated as "friend" in English, really means person of the same age. You can't have a 친구 from a different generation, so it doesn't really mean friend. At work, staff must also use respectful language to managers, but managers do not have to use the same respectful language back. This is hard, I think, for many Westerners. It is certainly quite hard for me. After 15 years, I still struggle with this, while other things in Korean culture just feel normal now. Another thing is the work culture. Koreans work long hours. They have few holidays and they work hard. In offices, staff don't leave before the manager. Workers often go out and drinking and eating with colleagues, so work life is quite busy. But Korea is a peaceful place, the people are generally laid back and very friendly, which I like. Another great thing about Korea is the nature, there are mountains everywhere. I live near a mountain and I go hiking most days. This is very good for the soul. There is a river and a park the other side of the mountain near me. It's very, very nice indeed. In fact, I might go hiking now. It's spring and the weather is perfect. Summer is very hot and humid in Korea, but spring is amazing. I will talk more about living in Korea next time. If you want to know something specific, leave a comment. Alright, until next time, keep on trucking.

In this episode, I talk about coming to, and living in, Korea. There are two versions of this episode - a beginner-level version and an intermediate-level version. This is the intermediate-level version. --- Hello, and welcome to the second episode of the Comprehensible Podcast. If it's your birthday today, then happy birthday. If it's your husbands, or your wife's, or your moms, or your dad's birthday, then tell them Dan said happy birthday! And if it's your dog's birthday, then... awww! If you just got married or engaged, then congratulations. If you just had a baby, then also congrats. And also happy birthday to the baby! If you're Korean, then 안녕하세요?. If you're French, then bonjour! If I've ever stopped stepped on your foot at a crowded train station, then I'm very sorry. And if I've ever beaten you in business then them's the brakes, kiddo! Although really there's a very slim chance that I've ever beaten you in business, if I'm honest. Anyway this episode is going to be a bit about Korea and living in Korea. As I mentioned in the last episode, I've been living in Korea for the last 15 years. I'm married, no kids. I came here in 2008, just at the tail end of summer. I had terrible jet lag for about the first three years - well it felt like three years at the time, actually it was about a week or two - which is long enough. And I didn't get more than about an hour or two of sleep per night for all of that time. And most of that was during the day while I was at work! I didn't find anywhere to buy coffee for the first three or four days, either, which made things even worse. When I first got here there weren't really any coffee shops, which you'll find difficult to believe if you know anything about Korea now, but it's true. I live in quite a small city in a rural area. So I maybe Seoul had more coffee shops, but certainly things have changed a lot here, just in the decade and a half that I've been here. So I spent like the best part of two days traveling to Korea, took three flights including a layover in Hong Kong and an internal flight from the international airport to the local one. I got in at about two o'clock in the afternoon and my new manager picked me up at the airport, took me to my new apartment to drop my stuff off, and then told me to get back in and come to work my eight hour shift until 10.30pm! That surprised me. I wasn't expecting that. Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody told me the same story today. Academy jobs in Korea are not terribly hard work and honestly foreign teachers have it much easier than Korean teachers, but I guess the owners do like to get their money's worth out of you. Anyway, it was quite an uncomfortable day. I was really tired. I had been looking forward to chilling out for the day before starting, and I hadn't planned any lessons or anything, so I was having to think pretty quickly. Actually, I probably wasn't thinking particularly quickly. Anyway, as I said before, I had terrible jet lag. Korea is 9 hours ahead of England, so my body clock was all messed up, and I just lay awake all night and then dragged myself out of bed when the sun started streaming through the windows. I had no coffee, so I drank some water instead. Not the same. And then I went about planning my day's classes. When I finished that, I went out to explore my new neighborhood. At lunchtime, I went into a restaurant near my apartment. I'd been studying some Korean for a couple of months before I left England, but I sure as heck couldn't read this menu at this restaurant and so I just crossed myself, called the waitress over and pointed at something. Five minutes later, she brought back a plate of chopped up raw fish and vegetables and a serving bowl full of broth. She put the fish on the table and the broth on the portable gas stove and then she left. Now this is not much of a puzzle really but it was a little surprising, as I'd never encountered such a situation before. I think every time that I had ever bought food in a restaurant until that point, they'd cooked the food first and then brought it to the table. So this was quite unexpected, and although it didn't feel like an IQ test exactly, it certainly did feel like some kind of a challenge. So, I guess those were my first few culture shocks. But I did my BSc. in Anthropology, and spent three years of my life doing nothing but reading about anthropologists turning up in the middle of a jungle somewhere and living in a tent among nearly naked tribes-people who hunted their food with blowpipes and had axe fights at dawn. So I guess my experience of distant shores was relatively mild. But honestly, it's quite amazing how quickly you can get used to a new situation. I originally intended to stay in Korea for a year before moving on elsewhere, and I imagined my whole time here to have the exotic feel of a wild adventure to it. But after a couple of weeks, everything just seemed normal. Things were different to in England, but they didn't feel all that different, really. But like I say, there are differences. One big one is obviously the language. The language is not only different because that uses different words and a different order, but because the Korean hierarchical culture is baked into it. Korean culture emphasizes social hierarchy much more than in English speaking cultures, or Western cultures in general, I guess. The most prominent and pervasive hierarchy is age. Koreans use different words for older and younger siblings, and even for uncles and aunts of different ages. 친구, the Korean words that is normally translated as "friend" in English, is not really the equivalent of "friend". It's really closer to meaning a person of the same age. You can't have a 친구 from a different generation. You have to conjugate verbs differently and use different words for people younger or older than you. So the most prominent and pervasive example of this is putting the suffix "요" at the end of all your sentences to show respect when you are speaking to somebody older than you. You should also use this with people the same age as you if you don't know them very well, but if they're older than you, then you should do it however well you know them. Although this is not normally required for family members nowadays. At work, as well, staff members have to use respectful language to their managers and directors and what have you, while it is not necessary for the managers and directors to use the same respectful language when speaking back. I think this is probably one of the most difficult things for Westerners living in Korea to get used to. It certainly is for me. In fact I think It's probably the one thing that I really struggle with after 15 years of living here. Most other respects of Korean culture are just simply a case of doing things a little differently and seem pretty much normal after a decade and a half. One thing that I probably would struggle with if foreigners were not somewhat shielded from it is the work culture in Korea. Koreans work a long hours, have few holidays and a lot is demanded of them. In offices, general staff are not supposed to leave the office before the manager, and everywhere workloads are quite heavy. On top of this, workers are often expected to go out eating and drinking with colleagues a couple of times a week. So life... work life, can be kind of all consuming. But Korea is a pretty peaceful culture, despite all the bull horns and tannoys everywhere, and people are pretty laid back generally and friendly, which I like a lot. Another great thing about living in Korea is that the whole thing is just mountains and cities are built around the mountains, wherever there's space. I say mountains because this is how the word is usually translated into English, but really they're big wooded hills. Anyway, whatever you call them, they're wonderful and they're everywhere. So, you always have a place to go to enjoy the trees and nature nearby, even in the middle of a city. In the place where I live, there is one about five minutes walk away, if that. I go hiking there most days and that's really good for the soul, and what's more, there's a river on the other side of the mountain and they've made the whole area into a kind of park that looks like, kind of like a Sunday on La Grande Jatte. They have exercise machines on the mountain, so I walk up and around the mountain, through the woods, do some pull-ups and stuff, and then go down the other side of the mountain and walk along the river. It's so nice. In fact, I might go and do that now. It's spring here and the weather is just perfect. The summer gets too hot and really humid. It's very uncomfortable, actually. But the spring is amazing. It's sunny and warm nearly every day, and not humid at all, at the moment. So yeah, that's it. I'll probably talk more about living in Korea another time. There's plenty to say about that, I guess. If there's anything that you would specifically like to know, then leave a comment and I'll probably say something about it in the next one. All right so until next time, keep on trucking!

In this podcast, I introduce myself and talk a little bit about my reasons for making this podcast, where the name comes from, and what to expect in future episodes. I offer some advice on how best to listen and use the subtitles to improve your English skills, and ask you to be understanding while I get used to talking to myself into a microphone! --- Hello and welcome to the Comprehensible Podcast. This is the first episode and today I will just introduce myself and tell you a bit about the podcast. So, my name is Dan Luba. I'm an English teacher living and working in South Korea. I've been living here for about 15 years. I didn't originally intend to stay here for this long, but, I don't know... after a couple of years I got married to a Korean woman... you know how it is! Of course, I speak some Korean, and there are a few nice podcasts online for Korean learners like me. My favorite ones are Didi's Korean podcast and Tayoni's podcast. Shout out to you! They're not lessons. The podcast just... the PODCASTERS just talk about everyday things in Korean, in a way that is easy to understand for learners. I couldn't find very many podcasts like these in English, at all. So, I decided to try and make one myself. So, this podcast is not English lessons. It won't teach you explicitly grammar or vocabulary like many podcasts do. Here, I'm just going to talk about everyday things to give you listening practice in English that is not too difficult to understand. I will talk about life in Korea, life in England, where I'm from, news, current events, music, movies, technology, and many other topics. So the name of this podcast comes from Comprehensible Input Theory, which is a theory of language learning by a linguist named Stephen Krashen, way back in the 1970s. The theory says that people learn languages by understanding language that they read and hear, not by speaking and writing. I think that speaking and writing are definitely useful, but I agree that reading and listening are the most important For improving your overall language skills. They give you the most bang for your buck, as we say, sometimes. But the language needs to be comprehensible. It needs to be understandable. It should be just a little above your current level. So I will try to make a few versions of each episode, each version for a different level, and you should choose the level that has some words and grammar that you don't know, but that you can mostly understand. So, what I do when I listen to Korean podcasts is I listen with my phone in my pocket and try to listen to the whole thing without looking at subtitles. Then if there's a sentence that I understand, but there's a word or some grammar that I don't recognize, I will look at the subtitles to see if that helps, and then if I still don't understand, I will look it up with Google Translate or whatever. Sometimes the whole thing is just way too hard for me, and in that case I sit and read the subtitles for each sentence before I listen to it - sometimes the host is just speaking too fast or mumbly and so that helps. In that case I listen to each sentence a few times so that my ears get used to those sounds. Sometimes though, it's just that I don't understand the grammar or the syntax, and then I Google it, and I work it out, and then I try to make some new sentences with the same grammar using Google Translate or ChatGPT to check that I'm that I'm doing it right. So, that is how I would recommend you approach this podcast, although obviously you know you do you. I think episodes will usually be five to ten minutes long. They might sometimes be longer or shorter depending on the topic, and I guess depending on my mood, maybe. I don't normally speak to myself through a microphone and so this is a little strange and uncomfortable for me right now. I mean, I talked to myself. all the time, so I guess it's the microphone that's the problem, really! So anyway, please understand if I sound a little wooden at first - hopefully I'll get used to it and later podcasts will sound a bit more natural. Of course, it might never feel natural for me and maybe I'll always sound like this. That's my biggest fear. Perhaps I'll spend so much time speaking like this into a microphone that I actually just start to speak like this all of the time! I'm starting to wonder if this is a good idea... Anyway, that's about all for this episode, so thanks for listening, and don't forget to like and subscribe if you're listening on YouTube or Rumble. Or if you're listening on a podcast feed then I guess just subscribe so that you get a notification whenever I put out a new episode. So, well, keep calm and keep studying English. See you next time. Bye-bye.