ENGLISH CONVERSATION I TOOK MY FAMILY ON A ROAD TRIP
Are we there yet?
Today we’ll study phrases and idioms and we’ll do a little listening comprehension quiz
as we study conversation that came up on a road trip I took with my two kids,
my husband, and our friend Steve.
Alright, let m buckle up.
Did everybody buckle up?
Yup!
Steve?
We’re buckled in.
I did buckle up.
Buckle up – that’s a phrasal verb that
means to put on your seatbelt.
I noticed with my kids’ car seats, sometimes I use the phrase buckle in.
Hold still so I can buckle you in. Then I’ll buckle up.
Did everybody buckle up?
Yup!
Steve?
We’re buckled in.
I did buckle up.
Buckle up, buckle down.
The meaning of the phrase buckle down is completely unrelated.
It means to really focus on something, to work hard on it.
I need to buckle down and study for this exam.
I don’t feel like doing my homework.
Just buckle down and get it done.
Now, about 4 minutes into the car ride, Stoney started asking if he could watch a video.
He knows he gets to watch one with his headphones when Sawyer needs to take his nap,
to help keep the car quiet.
The next 20 seconds of video won’t have subtitles, so see if you can understand what we’re saying.
There’s going to be a one-question quiz at the end of the 20 seconds: How long is the car ride?
Ok, do you know the answer?
How long is the car ride? David said it once, more clearly, and then I repeated it, less clearly, I said it faster.
Two hundred and seventy one, that’s all.
So 271 miles. So that’s why we’re going to
be driving after lunch.
271 miles.
Oh, I hope this slow down doesn’t last too long.
One thing you hope you never have on a roadtrip with two small children is a delay.
I hope we don’t hit many delays.
The GPS says that it’s clear sailing. Knock on wood, it’ll stay that way.
Okay, clear sailing. Knock on wood, guys.
David used two phrases there. ‘Clear
sailing’ and ‘knock on wood’.
‘Clear sailing’, we use this not just with sailing, but also driving to mean nothing in the way, no obstacles,
nothing to delay us on a trip.
But we also use it in general to mean no problems or obstacles with a situation.
It doesn’t just have to be transportation. It could be with something like completing a project.
For example, now that we got the new budget approved, it should be clear sailing to finish the project.
That is, we foresee no problems, no issues, and no obstacles arising.
The other phrase he used was ‘knock on wood’.
Both of these phrases are really common.
Have you heard them before?
‘Knock on wood’ is a superstitious expression.
If you comment out loud on something that’s going well, you might say ‘knock on wood’
as a way to say: And I hope things keep going well.
I hope my having mentioned it doesn’t mean it ends! For example, Hey Rachel, how’s the baby sleeping?
He sleeps through the night, knock on wood.
I’ve run out of gas more than once on a road trip.
Actually, years ago, I made a video on another road trip where I did run out of gas.
I’ll link to that video at the end of this video, there’s a lot to learn about American English in that lesson.
David and I have also run out of gas on a road trip before.
Run out is a phrasal verb with more than one meaning.
It can mean to do an errand that won’t take very long.
Can you run out and get some milk? Or, I’m going to run out and pick up the kids from school.
But it also means to deplete something, to have nothing left. I ran out of time, I couldn’t finish the test.
We ran out of gas on the highway.
So now, I pay more attention to how much gas we have.
How we doin’ on gas?
Just over 3 quarters.
How we doing on.
I dropped the word ‘are’ there.
This is somewhat common in casual English after ‘how’.
How you doing?
How we doing on gas?
How we doing on time?
How we doin' on gas?
Have you ever taken a road trip with two small kids?
So, Stoney’s asking when we’re getting out of the car. How long have we been in the car?
We’ve been in the car for about 12 minutes.
Ten?
Ten minutes.
We have about 5 hours.
5 hours?
Mmhmm.
Yup.
It can get long.
But really, the boys did great.
Some of you have asked about English books, videos, songs, and so on to expose your kids to English.
One thing that Stoney loves to do is to listen to audiobooks.
So now is a great time to talk about Audible who has so kindly sponsored this video.
I’ve really gotten into audiobooks lately and they do have a selection for kids.
You can choose by age so Stoney’s just 3, and there are so many fun audiobooks.
Stoney, what are we listening to?
Laurie Berkner.
Do you like it?
Yeah!
The one we listened to in the car was Laurie Berkner’s song and story kitchen.
If you have young kids and they love music, this would be audiobook to listen to with them.
Audible is giving to you your first audiobook FREE, plus 2 FREE Audible Originals when you try Audible for 30 days.
Visit audible.com/rachelsenglish or text Rachels English to 500 500 in the US.
Audible Originals are exclusive audio titles that you can find only on Audible, created by celebrated storytellers.
They’re really fun, I’ve enjoyed listening to them.
And when you’re an Audible member, you get 2 FREE every month.
So again to try audible for 30 days and get a free audiobook, plus two audible originals,
visit audible.com/rachelsenglish or text Rachels English to 500 500 in the US.
After “Are we there yet?”, maybe the most common thing a kid says on road trip is: I’m hungry.
I’m hungry. I’ve got to eat lunch in here?
No, we’ll probably eat lunch somewhere outside of the car.
Mom, where are we going to eat? Because I’m really hungry.
You’re very hungry? Well, we’re probably not going to eat for about an hour, and it will be a quick,
quick bite so we can get back on the road.
Quick bite.
Have you ever heard the word ‘bite’ to mean meal or snack?
A bite is singular, it’s a noun.
Mmm, this is so good.
Do you want a bite?
It’s also sometimes a verb, I have to tell my one-year-old: Don’t bite me. But we also use it to mean food in general.
I said: It will be a quick bite so we can get back on the road. a quick bite.
A meal that you hope doesn’t take long. I’m going to grab a quick bite and then stop by.
You might also hear it in the phrase: A bite to eat. Hmmm it’s almost lunch time.
Do you want to get a bite to eat? I don’t mean one bite of food, of course. I mean a meal.
David, do you remember when we were in Italy?
And you couldn’t figure out the gas pump?
What was the deal with that?
It’s just different from what we’re used to in the– finally, some other guy pulled up to fill up the–
Yeah, yeah. Pity on me. But I don’t remember what was so different.
I don’t either, but we should, we should take the camera out when we will up and explain how it works.
Because that’s intimidating I feel like, when you’re in another country, you’re not
totally sure how something like that works.
Yeah.
Ok, so a quick rundown about getting gas in the US.
Rundown, one word, this is a noun. It means an analysis, a summary.
As two words, it’s a phrasal verb with various meanings.
But I said, let’s do a quick rundown about getting gas in the US. Let’s do a quick summary.
There are 2 kinds: self and full. Self means you pump your own gas.
And full means someone else pumps your gas for you and you don’t have to get out of your car.
It’s short for full service.
And the gas pumps will be marked ‘self’ or ‘full’.
Now, almost everywhere in the US is self serve. Except for New Jersey where it’s all full
and also some spots in Oregon and a few towns elsewhere.
If you’re at a self-serve spot, and you use a credit or debit card,
you just insert it, you’ll usually have to enter your zipcode, select the grade,
that is the quality or purity of the gas you’re using, and sometimes you have to flip up part of the pump.
If you’re paying cash, you usually have to do that before you start pumping.
So you’ll find the cashier inside, tell them how much you want and what is your pump number.
You can say something like “Twenty dollars on four.”
Now, when you’re on a long road trip, there’s a chance you’re going to have to stop for food.
We found a service plaza, that’s something that caters only to people coming on and off the highway,
and the idea is that it’s faster than getting off at an exit and driving to a restaurant.
But it’s pretty easy to get pretty terrible food there.
Are your beans and rice good?
How’s your burrito?
Honestly, the first bite was really bland.
Oh no. Okay.
Bland.
That is, tasteless, not flavorful, not very good.
You can also use this to describe a person. He’s got a bland personality.
That means he’s not very interesting, pretty boring.
Luckily, I made Sawyer some really tasty corn puree so he was happy.
Now, if we’re not eating food, often, we’re
talking about food.
We tried to go to Loco Pez last night and it was so on fire.
It was like it– I don’t know.
But it was something.'
They were slammed.
So we had to bail and we went to Cedar Point which was totally empty.
Did you enjoy it?
It was okay. I didn’t think it would– we were not blown away, were we, babe?
What’s that?
We weren’t blown away, were we? I wasn’t.
No.
Loco Pez, that’s a local restaurant in Philadelphia, Mexican inspired food,
Spanish inspired name with the old American twist and pronunciation.
Did you hear some of the words we used to describe this restaurant?
And it was so on fire.
On fire. No, the restaurant was not burning down, it was very busy, very popular.
We can use this term to mean really good.
Maybe you’re at a family wedding and your uncle is dancing all night, he’s got great moves, you could say,
he’s on fire.
You could say this in sports too, basketball, someone just keeps making shot after shot, you could say,
she’s on fire!
We tried to go to Loco Pez last night and it was so on fire.
It was like it– I don’t know. But it was something.'
They were slammed.
David said, they were slammed.
So that means really busy.
Actually, you may have already learned that in the video I did earlier this month on ways to say you’re busy.
That was one of the terms we learned! Slammed.
So we had to bail.
I said we had to bail.
That means we had to give up, we had to do something different than what was planned.
We were going to eat there, but it was so busy, we had to bail and go somewhere else.
And we went to Cedar Point which was totally empty.
Did you enjoy it?
It was okay. I didn’t think it would– we were not blown away, were we, babe?
What’s that?
We weren’t blown away, were we? I wasn’t.
No.
And the place we went, we were not blown away.
Blown away is a good thing.
You get blown away by something that exceeds expectation.
Just dropped off our friend, going to head home, the final 3 minutes of the drive. It went well.
Everyone’s in one piece. No blown out tires. One tipped camera, however.
Was that..what’s her name?
Yeah.
What is her name?
If you can’t think of someone’s name, you can call her what’s-her-name, notice I’m dropping the H in there.
What’s her– what’s her name? Or what’s his name? Again, dropping the H, what’s his– what’s his name?
What’s her name? What’s his name?
Was that..what’s her name?
Yeah.
What is her name?
We made it! Good roadtrip, everybody? Yay! That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English!
That’s not even my ending anymore, I don’t know why I did that.
I was being crazy.
Next week’s video was also shot on this road trip, and it’s driving vocabulary.
It covers terms like blind spot, shoulder, tailgate, and back seat driver.
Be sure to join mere here next Tuesday to see it.
Now, I promised you the video where I ran out of gas on a road trip, and that’s a fun one, do check it out.
If you’ve already seen it, please watch another Rachel’s English video from the suggested videos.
I love teaching you English, thank you for joining me here.
Now I will say it: That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.