Bob's Short English Lessons

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English expressions SOUNDS GOOD! and SOUNDS BAD!In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English expression sounds good. Now this is something we say to people when we are agreeing with them. If a friend of mine said, hey Bob, do you want to meet at the restaurant tomorrow at 08:00 in the morning for some breakfast, I might say, sounds good, I'll see you then. Sometimes Jen needs help with some work when I get home from school. And if Jen says, hey, when you get home tomorrow, can you come out and help me with something? I might say, sounds good. As soon as I get home I'll put my farm clothes on and I'll come out and help you with that. I usually don't wear my school clothes when I'm working on the farm. They would get muddy and my shirts wouldn't last as long. I'll talk about that more in a moment.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today, or term or expression actually is sounds bad. And we also sometimes just say, that doesn't sound good. And this is something we say when something isn't good. So if I knew someone who went to the hospital and they needed to get x rays, I might say, oh, sounds bad. Do you think they broke a bone? If someone says to me, I wrote an English test a couple weeks ago, I haven't got my results back yet, but I don't think I did very well, I might say, oh, that sounds bad. Notice sometimes we put that in front that that sounds bad. Hopefully you did okay.So to review, when you say sounds good, it means you're happy about something, you're looking forward to something, you think it's good. Hey Bob, can you make a video next week for us? Sounds good. I'll get right on it. And if someone says, sounds bad, it usually means you think a situation isn't good. If someone says, there was a windstorm the other day and lots of trees fell over, you might say, oh, sounds bad there. I hope things will be okay. Sometimes the electricity goes out too and it sounds worse than it is, so. But you still might say, ooh, sounds bad. I hope the electricity comes back on soon.So to review... Oh, did I review already? I think I did, didn't I? Oh, I'm losing track of what I'm doing. Let's look at a comment from a previous video. Let's do that instead. And if I did forget to review, then, oh well, I didn't do it this time. I think I did though. Anyways, it's been a long week. This is how my brain works. This is from Ünsal and Ünsal, I shortened your comment a bit. I hope that's okay with you. It was a great comment. I just didn't have time to read all of it.Ünsal says hi teacher Bob, all your shirts look brand new. How do you manage to preserve to preserve your shirts for many years? I'm saying the word wrong. How do you manage to preserve your shirts for many years without fading or wearing out? If you don't have several of the same ones, can you share the secret? And my response? I have slowly cycled through some of them, but I do have shirts that are 20 years old. This one is in fact that old. They are good enough to wear underneath a sweater, but not quite good enough to wear by themselves because I usually wear blue plaid, many of them might look similar in my videos. So thanks Ünsal for that.Yeah, my blue shirts. So one of the things I've noticed is that because I work inside and I'm not in the sun, and because as a teacher, I don't do any physical labor. Like, I'm not lifting things or moving things throughout the day, I think my shirts just last longer. My clothes that I wear on the farm do not last as long as the clothes I wear for work at school. And also, I'm not in Support the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms SPACED OUT and SPACE CADETIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English term spaced out. Now you can have things spaced out. You can see these trees here are spaced out. When Jen and I planted those willow trees years ago, I think they're about three paces apart. We spaced them out. You can also see along my driveway here the little markers so people don't drive in the snow are spaced out. But when you say someone is spaced out, it means that they're not paying attention. It means that things are happening in the world and they are not aware of what's happening. They're kind of thinking about other things. They're a little bit spaced out. So two meanings. One meaning that things are set out in an orderly fashion the same distance from each other. When we put plates on the table, they're spaced out. And then it can also mean kind of daydreaming a lot and not really knowing what's going on.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the term space cadet. This isn't used a lot anymore, but you might hear it in an older tv show or movie. When you say someone is a space cadet, it means that they again aren't really aware of what's happening around them. A student who's sitting at the back of class and doesn't know there's a test or quiz that day could be called a space cadet. Oh, that person's such a space cadet they never know what's going on.So to review, when things are spaced out, they're orderly. When a person is spaced out, they are not orderly. They're kind of disoriented and unaware of what's going on. And if you call someone a space cadet, it simply means that they don't... they're not really aware of what's happening around them.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from MRfisheri. Nice sunglasses, coach Bob. And then my reply. Thanks, I like them too. So these sunglasses have lasted a while. I'm quite happy that I haven't lost them. I haven't sat on them. Sometimes I leave sunglasses on the seat in my van. Again, as all of you know, I buy cheap sunglasses from the dollar store. So I'm just very happy that these have lasted so long and they work well on days like this.This would have been a great day for an eclipse. Unfortunately it was a little cloudy yesterday. Today it's just bright sun. It's a beautiful day. You can see I'm outside in my short sleeved shirt. So that is a big change from a few weeks ago. It's definitely... feels like we're jumping ahead to summer instead of having spring. So hopefully it cools off a bit now, but it is nice to feel the sun on my skin. It's nice to be outside and just enjoy the day. Jen is loving it because she's getting lots of work done on the flower farm and I will be helping her as well a little bit. Anyways, as I was mentioning in my other video, my busy time was last week and a little bit of this week. It's slowly coming to an end and hopefully life just goes back to normal.I did notice this though. One of my kids must have put extra weights on the basketball net. The basketball net fell over a few weeks ago, in the wind and it's not quite a circle anymore. I'll have to straighten that out when summer comes and it looks like in order to prevent that from happening, this bottom is filled with sand so it should be heavy enough to prevent it from falling over. But perhaps.... Well, it was really windy. I don't see any damage other than the bend like nothing's broken. So that's good. Yep. So I'll just have to straighten that out in the summer when I'm more in farm work mode. The basketball net counSupport the show

So today's English lesson is going to be a little different. I'm going to tell you a joke, and the joke is this, how does the moon cut his hair? I'll let you think about that for a bit. You'll understand why I'm asking this joke in about 3 seconds. How does the moon cut his hair? Eclipse it. And this is kind of a little bit of a play on words. An eclipse is when the moon goes across the sun, which is happening in a few days here. But it sounds like, he clips it. So when you say eclipse it or he clips it, it almost sounds the same. So the joke is just a little play on words. How does the moon cut his hair? Eclipse it.Hey, I don't have a comment to respond to today. Sorry about that or a second phrase. I just thought I'd pop out and talk to you for a bit about things that are happening. So yes, I am going to try and do a live stream on my other channel on Monday, April 8 about the eclipse. So hopefully you can make it to that. It's not the best time of day for most of you. It's at three. I'll probably livestream from about 03:00 until 04:00 the eclipse will have already started, but I think we have total darkness from 3:20 until 3:24, something like that. So I'll try to start at a good time. I might start a little earlier than 02:00 but it's happening right here. So I'm really looking forward to that. Why don't I have a comment to reply to?And why don't I have two phrases today? Well, because if you ever listen to my... when I describe my year, this is another busy time. If you want to guess. Why is Bob busy right now? It's midterms. So midterms would be the middle of the semester. That means that I just spent this week making sure all my students had everything graded. I put grades in for midterm grades. I had to write a little comment for every student. That's done as well. So it makes my week a little busy. It's not overwhelming, but it was busy enough that when I got to this point in the day, I thought, you know what, I'll just go outside and tell a joke and kind of explain my busyness.I used to apologize when I'm busy. I don't do that anymore because many of you have said, don't apologize, Bob, you make lots of really good lessons for us. And sometimes having one or two lessons late or sometimes skipping a lesson isn't a big deal. I don't really like skipping them. But anyways, I hope you're having a good week. I hope you have a good Friday. I hope that you understood the joke and hopefully you can tell it to someone else. And I hope to see you on Monday in the chat. I'll have my eclipse glasses on so I'm not sure if I'll be able to read the chat, but hopefully I see you there. I'll probably schedule the live stream sometime... I'll schedule it Sunday with the exact time that I'm going to start on Monday and be prepared that I might start a bit early. I don't know a lot about eclipses so I'll have to kind of play it by ear. There's a good phrase for you maybe look that one up. I have to play it by ear.Anyways, thanks for watching. See you in a couple days with another short English lesson. Bye.Support the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases FAIR SHARE and NO FAIR!In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase fair share. When you get your fair share, it means something has been divided up and everyone got an equal amount. Let's say I'm sitting in my kitchen and I'm about to eat a piece of pie, and all of my children come into the kitchen. I might cut the pie up into exactly eight pieces so that everyone gets a fair share. But that wouldn't actually be a fair share because that would mean I still get a piece tomorrow because there's only seven people in my family. But when you divide something up so everyone gets a fair share, it means they all get an equal amount. If I had a class of 30 students and I brought 90 candies to class, I would give every student three candies and everyone would get their fair share.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"✅If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase no fair. And we sometimes say, not fair. This is a complaint you make when people don't get their fair share. So if I brought 90 candies to class and gave all 90 candies to one student, the rest of the students would probably yell, hey, no fair. Or they might say, hey, that's not fair. Notice we sometimes use no or not. It does mean the same thing. If I was to bake a pie and sit down and eat half of it, my kids might say, no fair. We wanted some pie, too. Why did you eat half of it? Hmm. That'd be yummy. Apple pie is good, by the way. I don't think I would eat an entire apple pie or half an apple pie. Sorry, I'm getting a little distracted here. Let me get back to the phrases.To review, when you get your fair share, you get an amount that you think is good and equal to the other people who are getting an amount. And when you say no fair or when you say not fair, it means you don't think people were given what they should have been given. Things weren't equal. Things weren't fair.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Judit, also known as Aerosmith77. Thank you for the small lesson. It was a nice walk. And my response, it's not the safest area to walk. Lots of big trucks and no sidewalk. But it's pretty quiet, so I wasn't too worried. And I was referring. Thanks, Judit.I was referring to the industrial park that I was in when I made my last video. And another viewer made a comment, too that I found interesting. They said in their country there would be sidewalks and bike paths in an industrial area. In my industrial area, there are none, which is kind of too bad. It would actually be kind of nice if there were bike paths and sidewalks in that area.It looks like a goose flew over, and the goose seems to have lost its feather. So I'm not sure when that happened. I'm sure. Oh, maybe this is the goose. Oh, you know what this is actually, you probably can't see it. I think that's actually a bald eagle flying there. It's just a tiny dot in the sky. I'm supposed to report that we have a bald eagle living close to our farm because they're... they're kind of rare. I think they're endangered. I'd have to look that up. Maybe they're not, but I'm supposed to let people know so that they can record that on a map that there's a bald eagle living close to us. But that's pretty cool.Anyways, goose feathers, bald eagles flying by. There's also some smaller birds flying by, but that's not a big deal. I was going to show you this. You saw this in the video on my bigger channel. My son cleaned up someone's yard for them, and they had all of this wood, by the way... like, this is giant. Like, it's up toSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms TO TAG ALONG and TO PLAY PHONE TAGIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to tag along. When you tag along with someone, it means you go with them. If Jen said that her and her brother were going to see a movie, I might say, hey, can I tag along? I'd like to see that movie as well. So it does have a positive sound to it. When you tag along, it can be a positive thing, but we sometimes use it to talk about a little more of a negative situation when we talk about kids. Sometimes your little brother or sister wants to tag along every time you go somewhere. And that's a situation where you might not like that. If you think back to when you were 16 and if you said to your mom and dad, when you were 16, I'm going to go see a movie with my friends, they might say, hey, can your little brother tag along? Can you take him with. And you might think, no, I don't want my little brother to tag along. I just want to go out with my friends. Maybe that was your situation. Maybe you let your younger siblings tag along. I don't know.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to play phone tag. So I think I might have taught this. Sorry, did I just say lesson? The other phrase I want to teach you today is to play phone tag. I probably said it correctly. Who knows? It means to call someone and leave a message, and then they listen to the message, and then they call you and leave a message because you didn't answer the phone. And then you listen to their message and then you call them and leave a message. So when you play phone tag with someone, when you have a little bit of phone tag going on, it means that you're calling, leaving messages, calling the other person, leaving message, and it just goes back and forth because you never quite connect.So to review, to tag along means to go with someone. A couple of weeks ago, I made a video at the mall and you were able to tag along virtually. You were able to come with me. And to play phone tag means to phone someone and then leave a message. And then they phone you and leave a message. And then you phone them and leave a message. I think you get the point about what phone tag is.Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from ksenom. I... I just wave to people. I don't know who that was, but I thought it would be nice to wave. The phrase a regular haunt was new to me. It sounds like a place where ghosts go frequently. These words I had to look up in the dictionary, toboggan is a sled, finicky, demanding divot, a torn up piece of turf, like from golf and then some life events in my past have also come back to haunt me in the present. But that's another story. And my response, this is a great example of making your own homework after watching a lesson. Great work.So thank you. ksenom, sorry I didn't read the whole comment. I don't want to take up the whole video. But it was a great comment, and that is a great example of making your own homework. What I mean by that is, when you're done watching a lesson, it's a good idea to do other things to help you practice what you learned. So you made a comment, you made some notes, you looked up some other words. That's all awesome, and I hope a lot of you do that. Anyways, thanks for that comment.Where am I? I'm in the industrial park. So in our towns, we have different areas. We have residential areas where there are houses. We have commercial areas where you find stores, and then we have what we would call industrial parks. So this is an industrial park. TSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A REGULAR HAUNT and TO COME BACK TO HAUNTIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase a regular haunt. So, haunt is a word we use to talk about ghosts. Like, ghosts can haunt a building, but when you say something was your regular haunt, it means it's a place you used to go to a lot. So this used to be my regular haunt. 25 years ago, I played soccer. I didn't play a lot of soccer, but I played on a soccer team, and this was one of my regular haunts. That simply means it was a place where a couple of nights a week, you could find me here, either, practicing my soccer skills. I played defense when I played soccer. I'm making it sound like I played all these sports when I was younger. I didn't play a lot, but I did certainly play on a soccer team when I was.... I think I was 30. It's when I started to feel old. But this soccer field here was one of my regular haunts, a place where I could be found.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianWhen you say to come back to haunt, we use this phrase to talk about something you did in the past that might bother you in the future. A good example would be this. When I played soccer, I ran really hard, I played defense, and I was always trying to stop the person. And I think now it's come back to haunt me a bit because my knees and ankles get sore sometimes. So things that I may have injured in the past have now come back to haunt me a little bit. Not in a major way. I do know, though, that I used to go tobogganing a lot, and I think from jumping over little snow ramps with my toboggan, it hurt my back a bit. And I think that's going to come back to haunt me someday. It's basically something that you did in the past that might negatively affect you in the future.So a regular haunt is a place where you go a lot. Maybe there's a restaurant that you go to every Friday, and it's one of your regular haunts. And when something comes back to haunt you, it means that it's something you did in the past that may affect you negatively in the future.I'm just going to move a little bit before we look at a comment. I'm going to try and get out of the wind. I hope the microphone's working pretty good. I'm going to stand by this sign. I don't know if that will help. We'll see. It might be worse. Who knows? Anyways, this comment is from an anonymous user. I hope you don't forget your tripod. After this short lesson. And I replied, thankfully, it was still there when I got back. Someday I think someone will swipe it. That's another word for steal, by the way. But little do they know it's a bit broken, and only I know the little tricks to make it work right.So, yeah, that's from the last video. I was in town and I just kind of walked away, right? And as I'm doing right now, I just randomly leave my tripod somewhere as I walk away and talk a little bit to you. So maybe someday someone will swipe it, but it is a little bit finicky. That's a word we use for it. Oh, I'm going the wrong way. I was going to show you something else. Well, we'll go this way and I'll show you. It's like a $30 tripod. It was a super cheap tripod, and if you don't quite know how to use it, it doesn't work properly. But I kind of know how to turn certain things so they click right and stuff like that.Anyways, I was going to show you this. This is the lock that keeps the park. That's a nice sound, I guess... that keeps the park closed in the winter. So our parks, especially our parks that have a lot of grass and soccer fields, they're usually locked in the winter because you can damage the soccer fieSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms YOU'RE ONE TO TALK! and LOOK WHO'S TALKING!In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, you're one to talk. This is kind of a sarcastic phrase that we use to kind of make fun of someone when they're being critical of other people, but they are doing the thing, they're being critical of themselves. That sounded a little confusing. Let me explain. If I was eating a doughnut and if I said to you as I ate the donut, those people eat too much, and I pointed to some people across the street, you could then say to me, You're one to talk! You're eating a donut. If I was to say, people in the world should eat healthier food, and then I started on my second donut, you could legitimately say to me, you're one to talk, to kind of make fun of me because I'm judging other people, but I'm doing the same action myself.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, Look who's talking! This means exactly the same thing. The two phrases are identical today. Well, that is a loud truck, eh? Let's have a look at that. A big truck full of chips. People eat too many chips. And then you could say, look who's talking as I sit at night and eat a big bowl full of chips while I watch a basketball game on TV. That was kind of timely to have a chip truck go by. It's hard to believe a whole truck is just full of chips.But anyways, to review: You're one to talk! or Look who's talking! are both phrases we use to kind of make fun of someone when they are expressing an opinion that they are guilty of themselves.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Konstantin. Great time, Bob. We say free cheese is only in a mousetrap. Our mowing season is yet to come, but we're getting our trimmers ready, too. And my response, I like that phrase. I'm going to start using it. Yeah, free cheese is only in a mousetrap. That's related to my lesson the other day about how there's no such thing as a free lunch. So I'm just out in town. Oh, by the way, Konstantin, thanks for that comment.I'm just out in town. Once again, pop out of work. I guess I could show you things like this. This is a sketchy alley, which you may have seen in a previous video. Behind me, though, is a really old building. I'm not sure if that building is going to last. I don't know if it's going to be torn down. This whole area here, let me give you a little bit better. Look at it. Let me spin you and let me cross the street safely here. We'll look this way and then we'll look this way. Look safe. Here we go.This whole area here, there was a sign up here that they're going to build something here. I don't know if they're going to build some houses or if they're going to do something else, but I think this building, this old building did have a little yellow sign in the window, which usually means that it's going to be torn down. So usually in Ontario, Canada, if they're going to tear a building down, especially in town, they have to tell everyone so that you have time to complain about it.So let's say I loved this building, and if it was scheduled to be torn down in a year, there would be a process where you could write letters to the town to kind of say, hey, I like that building, please don't tear it down. Or my friends and I have lots of money, we'll donate it to the town to keep that historic building open. So again, I'm not 100% sure. I'm not sure if it's going to be torn down, but I do think I remember seeing that little yellow notice sign in the window a couple of months ago. So mSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO DO LUNCH and THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCHIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to do lunch. If you say to someone, hey, do you want to do lunch tomorrow? It simply means you want to have lunch with them. You want to go to a restaurant and order some food and sit and eat it together. You could also say, hey, do you want to go have lunch tomorrow? It means the same thing. But do lunch is usually something you say to a colleague, like I don't ever say to Jen, hey, do you want to do lunch tomorrow? But if I'm at work, I might say to someone, hey, we need to talk about this new project. Maybe we can do lunch tomorrow and we can talk about it while we eat. So to me, at least, it's like asking someone if they want to have lunch, but you're kind of talking about work, like a work meeting at lunch.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can say this other ways, like, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The way I say it is there's no such thing as a free lunch. And this simply means that nothing in life is actually free, even if it says it's free. If I get a letter in the mail and it says that I'm going to be given something for free from a business, generally there are strings attached. That means they want me to buy something. So when we say there's no such thing as a free lunch, we simply mean, even when something is said to be free, nothing in life is actually free. There's usually something else going on.So to review, to do lunch simply means to have lunch with someone. And when you say there's no such thing as a free lunch, it simply means that nothing in life is actually truly free.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Francisco Brainiac is also a supervillain in the DC Comics. He's the enemy of Superman and the Justice League. His name is a portmanteau of the words brain and maniac. And my response? Ah, yes, I just looked him up. I didn't realize that. So I didn't realize that. I think I talked about Lex Luthor the other day in one of my videos as being the arch enemy, but I didn't know that there was another one.By the way, portmanteau is when you put two words together, probably the best example I can think of is brunch. So you take the word breakfast and lunch, and you combine them. Breakfast is in the morning. Lunch is at noon, but brunch is around ten or 11:00 a.m.So anyways, not sure if you can see the gentlemen working across the river. I will zoom in. But every year they come out with their four wheelers and a little trailer and their chainsaws and they cut up all the wood that kind of floated onto their land. In previous videos you've probably seen the river flooded onto that piece of land and they're out there today chopping up all the little pieces of wood. They'll probably end up using them as firewood.And it's another beautiful day here, so it's a great day to do that. Jen and I will probably clean up parts of the yard this morning as well. We'll probably try to get things in tip top shape before the grass starts growing soon. Not really soon, but soon we will have to start mowing the lawn. So we do like to clean up all of the sticks and everything else that's kind of fallen onto the lawn so that it's nice and clean when we do start mowing. We actually had our lawn mower serviced. Our riding mower is all ready to go. Blades are sharpened, oil has been changed. It starts up really well and runs really well. So we'llSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English terms A NO-BRAINER and A BRAINIACIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English term a no-brainer. When we say something is a no-brainer, it means it's very obvious, it's very easy. There's not a lot of thought that needs to go into the decision to do it. Here are a couple of examples. Jen loves growing things. Jen loves flowers. So it was a no-brainer for her to decide to start a business where she grows and sells flowers. She didn't have to think about that a lot. She didn't have to stress about whether she was good at it. She already knew that she was good at it. So it was a no-brainer. For me I always loved computers and still do. And I've been talking in front of people in a classroom for a long time, and I am a language teacher, so it was a no-brainer for me to decide that I should start making English lessons on YouTube. So when something's a no-brainer, it means it's a really easy decision, because everything's fallen into place already for you to make that decision.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other term I wanted to teach you today is the term a brainiac. Now, this isn't an insult. It is informal. It's not always flattering, but it's used to refer to someone who's really, really smart. So I have a cousin who's a brainiac. I hope they're not watching this video. Someone who's just really good in school, someone who gets 100% on every test, someone who goes to university. We would describe that person as a brainiac. Someone who is really good at thinking.So, to review, a no-brainer, by the way, did you notice both these terms have the word brain in it? And I think I taught this one a couple of years ago, maybe four years ago. But a no-brainer is something where you don't really need to use your brain much to make a decision. And a brainiac is used to describe a person who's really, really smart. Yeah, I have some really smart cousins on my mom's side of the family. My dad's side of the family has some smart people, too, if you're watching. But there are certainly some brainiacs, a few university professors on that side, I think even some crazy stuff like that.Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video from Qiu Park. Amazing spring day. I can feel it even through the screen. Thanks, Bob. And then my response, it certainly is starting to feel that way. If you listen, there's actually birds chirping right now. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be quite nice, like today and tomorrow. I'll use your comment in the next video to remind myself to talk about it.So yeah, it's really nice out here today. I have a sweatshirt on and I don't think I need it. By the way. I feel like I do get a little repetitive in my videos. I feel like every spring when the daffodils come up, I come out here and show you. So here are the daffodils. They are popping out of the ground. They will start blooming in a few weeks. And then, as I mentioned, if you listen, you can hear some birds chirping. I'm not sure if you can hear it. I hope you can. So all of that together makes it feel like spring.I'm trying to get closer to this bird here. It's actually up here in the tree. See, how, uh.... How close can I get to it? It's up there on the branch. I would say it's a robin, but I'm not 100% sure. It kind of looks like one. I'm not... I'm not 100%... I'm not a tree expert necessarily. So it's spring. Soon we'll have to clean all the sticks up off the ground. Soon the trees as well.... I'm not sure if I can get to a close branch, but you can see that the trees will soon leaf out. They're budding aSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO EYE SOMETHING and TO HAVE AN EYE FOR SOMETHINGIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to eye something. When you eye something, it means you look at it usually because you want it. It can have other meanings as well, but usually when I eye something, it means I want it. If I'm sitting in a room and there are cookies on a plate, I will eye the cookies while I'm talking to people because I'm thinking, hmm, those look yummy and I want to eat one. So I will eye the cookies. This happens sometimes at school as well. Sometimes we're having a staff meeting and there will be treats for us to eat when we have our coffee break and I will eye them during the meeting. I'll think, do I want a cookie or a doughnut when we have our coffee break. So when you eye something, it means you look at it.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianNow, the second phrase is to have an eye for something, and it's slightly different. And I think I explained this one in a previous video. When you have an eye for something, it means you're good at it. And we're usually talking about something visual. Some people have an eye for home decorating. Some people are just really good at choosing paint colors and making a room look really good. They have an eye for it. As I said in my previous explanation of this phrase, I think Jen has a real eye for making bouquets. She knows what flowers to put together and how many of each flower and what colors look really good together. She has an eye for it. So when you have an eye for something, it means you're good at something, but it's usually something visual. You have an eye for decorating a room. You have an eye for making bouquets. You might have a real eye for something like art. You might use that phrase as well.So to review to eye something means to look at it because you want it. And to have an eye for something means to be really good at something visual, something that people can see. But anyways, let's look at a phrase from a previous, uh... let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from Mohd Ags. Back to where it all started. Under the backdoor of your van on a rainy day after seven full years Learn English with Bob the Canadian has come full circle. Good phrase by the way. Man, so many amazing memories came flooding back to me. Very cool. My response. Yes, except this time I actually got really wet. When I went back to work, a few people gave me a funny look. I guess I should start to carry an umbrella with my video gear in the spring.So that's something I don't do. By the way, Mohd. Thanks for the comment. I don't carry an umbrella with me. I should start doing that. I think it's really common in Britain to carry an umbrella. In Canada, umbrellas actually aren't that common, I think, because we're just used to if it's bad weather, you just get in your car as quickly as possible and then you get into your house or get into your building at work as quickly as possible and just try to avoid the weather. Maybe Canadians don't walk as much as they should and so we don't tend to always have umbrellas with us.What was I going to talk about today? It is spring break for me. As you watch this, I'm making this video on a Thursday evening. I just finished my last day of work and I am now on break. So it's Friday. If you're watching this, that's when this video will come out. My first day of spring break. I'm really looking forward to it. Some people go away during spring break. Jen and I will be going away for a couple of days, but most of spring break we willSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO MAKE EYE CONTACT and TO MAKE CONTACTIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to make eye contact. When you talk to someone, you can look directly into their eyes. You can make eye contact when you talk to them. But often when you're having conversations, you do look away occasionally as well. There's a little bit of lightning there. I hope I can get this video done safely. Anyways, when you make eye contact, it means you look at someone. If you look straight at my eyes right now we're making eye contact kind of through the Internet, I guess. In North America, it's okay to make eye contact when having a conversation with someone. In some cultures, it might not be, but where I live, it's common. The way I talk to you on the camera is the way I talk to people normally. Sometimes I look away. Sometimes I make eye contact for a little bit. Sometimes I look away again. So what you see when you're watching these videos is how I actually talk to people.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe second phrase I wanted to teach you today is to make contact. When you make contact with someone, it means that you call them or you text them or you send them a letter. Maybe you have an uncle who moved away and you want to make contact with him to invite him to a family event. You might send him an email. You might send him a quick text on the phone. You will make contact however you can so he knows that something's going on.Anyways, to review, to make eye contact means to look at someone directly in the eye. Eye to eye. And to make contact means to contact someone.But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Konstantin, and it is... Duplex. Looks like a townhouse, but only for two families. Thanks for showing around and keep having a nice, warm weekend. My response? Yes. When there are more than two units, we usually call them townhouses. I'll try and make a video in front of some of them.... ...in front of some next time.I'm having trouble reading English today, so that's where I am. And the rain has stopped a little bit, so we can go on a little tour. These are townhouses, so every house is very similar to the house beside it, and it's probably a little hard to see, but there are four separate residences in each building. There's a little gap down here that you'll see in a minute, but there's a door here. Number 67, number 65, number 63, and number 61. This whole building, actually, I think there's six in here. Did you see the lightning in the sky? I should get back in my van, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.... There's actually eight in this one. So there are eight separate families or eight separate people, sets of people living in this house. They don't have to be families, of course, and each one has their own residence.So we would call this a townhouse. I think it might be called row housing in some places, but we would call them townhouses. This one's for sale. If you're moving to Canada, you could move into this townhouse right here. I have no idea how much it costs. I'm going to guess it probably costs around $600,000 or maybe a bit less. I might be on the high side with that guess. So, yeah... Townhouses. There's a whole street of them here. They're considered one of the cheaper ways to buy a house. I know I just said $600,000, but when you're looking to buy a house, often you will buy a townhouse if that is the first house you're buying, because they're on the cheaper side of what houses cost here in Canada.So, anyways, townhouses. I'll let you see them iSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BUGGER OFF and TO DO BUGGER ALLIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to bugger off. Now, this is definitely an informal phrase. You wouldn't use this in a formal situation, but when you say someone is going to bugger off, it means that they are going to leave, and it usually means that you probably didn't want them to leave. A good example would be this. If I had a car accident, if someone hit me, I wouldn't want the other guy to bugger off. I would want that person to stay until the police come. And this does sometimes happen. Sometimes people have a car accident and the person who hit them will bugger off. They'll just drive away. And if the police do catch them, they'll get in lots of trouble. I think having a dash cam is a good way to catch people on camera after a car accident before they bugger off.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to help you learn today is the phrase to do bugger all. So if someone does bugger all, it means they haven't really done anything. And again, this is a very informal phrase, but if I came home from work, let's say I'm working on a project with another teacher and we are supposed to be doing it together and I do all the work, I might come home to Jen and say, oh, today, Joe didn't do bugger all on the project. He just sat around and talked while I did all the work. So when you do bugger all, it simply means that you aren't doing anything when you're supposed to be doing some work.So to review, to bugger off means to leave. And the accident example is probably the best one. If I was to get in an accident, I wouldn't bugger off, and I wouldn't want the other person to bugger off either. And to do bugger all simply is a very crude way, a very informal way to say someone is doing nothing. Jen would get really mad at me in the summer if she was working hard and I didn't do bugger all. She would be like, get to work. We got to sell these flowers.But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Gabriella. I hope I'm remembering that right. Hello, Bob. This way of teaching by telling your life story is simply fantastic. Thank you. And then a big wave. And my response. You're welcome, Gabriella. So thank you for that comment.Yeah, I do enjoy talking about myself and I'm glad that you all enjoy listening to me. So, first of all, I wanted to mention something about, again, my life. Can you hear the wind chimes? I don't see them, but there's definitely wind chimes here.Anyways, the other day, I was bringing my son to a friend's house. That friend lives way down this road. You can see my van there. But that was the other day, and I noticed on this side of the road that there was all kinds of new houses that I had never seen before. So I feel like this subdivision just showed up. I swear. First of all, I don't think I've been down this road for two or three years, and I think that the last time I drove down this road, I don't think these houses existed. I think they were all built probably during the pandemic or maybe a year after it, but they looked really new, and I wanted to show you.This is what we call a duplex. So one house is on this side, and one house is on the other side. So this garage door belongs to one person. This garage door belongs to another person. And they aren't attached between. So it's one building right here, but there are two houses in this building. So there's a wall down the middle separating the two houses. And you would either live on one side or the other side of the duplSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BE OFF and TO BACK OFFIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the phrase to be off. Now, this has a few meanings. The one I'm going to focus on today simply means to leave. If I said to Jen, I'm off. I'm going to go to town and buy some gas. It means that I have my keys in my hand. It means that I'm about to go out the door and I'm going to drive to town. So when you say that you are off, it means that you are going somewhere. The other day, Jen said, well, I'm off. See you at 4:00 and then I responded by saying, oh, where are you going? And she said, oh, don't you remember? I said I was going to go pick up the kids from school, so I'm off to go get them. So it simply means to leave.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to back off. Now, this can mean to physically back off from someone, but we also use it to talk about if you're talking to someone and it's obvious they're upset, you might back off a little bit. Especially in situations where as a parent, sometimes if I'm talking to one of my kids and it's obvious they're upset about something, I might back off a little bit. Instead of saying, why did you come home so late? I might say to them, oh, you're obviously upset. We'll talk about it later. So I might back off. Instead of saying, you're supposed to be home by 11:00 p.m. You broke your curfew, you're grounded. You can look all those words up, by the way. Instead, I might think, oh, my child seems a bit upset. Maybe they didn't have a good evening. I'll back off. Instead of being a harsh dad, I'll back off. And then maybe Jen will go talk to them about it.So anyways, to review, to be off simply means to leave. Like after this video, I'm off to town to go have supper with my family. And to back off means to kind of step back a little bit, either physically or just in a conversation so the person has some time to think and calm down from the situation.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Ruslan. Thank you for the cool lesson, dear teacher Bob, so much snow, it looks like you went beyond the wall, Bob Snow. And then my response, I showed the clip to my mom and she laughed. She loved the snow piling up on my head. By the way, nice Game of Thrones reference.So Ruslan there, thanks for that comment. Made a little reference to Game of Thrones. I don't know if you've watched that. It was a TV show a few years ago. It's a fantasy show, and part of the show was in the northern parts of that area, there was a large wall made of ice. And then if you went beyond the wall, it was a very scary place. I think there were. Were they called White Walkers? I can't remember. It's been a while since I read the books and watched that show.But anyways, I'm out here. I'm going to cross the road safely once again, looking both ways twice. Before I cross the road, I wanted to show you that there are tractor tracks here. Farming has begun in Canada. Just a little bit of farming. If you look behind me as I walk, you'll see that every few feet there are tractor tracks. What they've done here is they've done some frost seeding. They probably planted clover in this field. Clover is a seed that you can plant this early in the year and it will eventually grow. I don't think you'll be able to see any. I can see some on the ground here. I don't know how close this camera will go, but there should be some little, almost like freckles on the snow if you can see them. And what those are, are most likely clover seeds. And they will sink throughSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BLOW OFF STEAM and DON'T BLOW IT!So I thought we'd start this video by watching the sander truck go by backwards. We're getting a little bit of snow here, so that's a little bit of fun. So I'll start the lesson in just a sec. Let me get set up. I wasn't quite ready.Well, there's a little bit of snow on my lens, but hopefully you can see this. In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to blow off steam. Now, when you need to blow off steam, it usually means you go do something physical to relieve some stress you might be experiencing. Here's a great example. If I have a really stressful day at work, I might go for a walk to blow off steam. Let's say at work, I'm not getting along with my boss, and I really like playing basketball. That night I might go and play some basketball to blow off steam. So it's an activity you do, usually a physical activity that helps you to reduce the amount of stress you're feeling. Have you ever exercised when you're stressed and when you're done, you're usually not as stressed. Hey, is the snow the same color as my hair? It probably is. So anyways, to blow off steam means to do a physical activity to help yourself relax, help to reduce the stress that you are feeling.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase don't blow it. So when you blow something, it means you mess it up. So sometimes when you're going to do something that takes some skill, someone might say, don't blow it. It's not a nice thing to say. Basically they're saying, don't mess up. Don't screw up. Don't blow it. When you do that. The very first time I did a live stream, I was a little bit worried. I thought I was going to blow it. I thought I was going to mess up, and it wasn't going to go very well, but it ended up going okay. And the way I look at it is you got to do one so that you can get better at doing the ones that you do later.So to review, to blow off steam means to physically exercise or do something to relieve anxiety and stress. And when you say to someone, don't blow it, you're basically saying, don't make a mistake for whatever the thing you're doing. Don't make a mistake.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I think this is the most snow that's fallen during a video. I'm kind of cracking up. This is from Tammy. I am prone to eating too much, so I avoid going to the kitchen. And my response that's a good strategy. We try to not buy the bad food so it isn't in our house. But it doesn't always work with kids. Have you ever noticed that? I don't know if some of you are in the same situation as me, but when you have children you tend to buy a lot of snack food. And then at least in my situation, I tend to eat lots of that snack food. But hey, anyways, thanks for that comment, Tammy. That is something I'm prone to do as well.Anyways, again, I hope you can see this. I see little flakes of snow landing on the lens. We are finally in a winter wonderland again. And you know that this makes Bob very, very happy. I really enjoy a good winter. I was starting to get worried that maybe we wouldn't see snow again. It certainly is nice to get a little bit of snow so it can land on my head and on my face, I guess a little bit. But yes, certainly appreciating this. It isn't so cold that the creek is frozen. You can see some ducks swimming over there.Actually, you can see one right down here. I think there's a few more coming through, but it's certainly cold enough for us to have a little bit of snowfall insteadSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BE WIRED FOR and TO BE PRONE TOIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to be wired for. We sometimes say to be wired to, but I actually use for more often. When you're wired for something, it means you're naturally good at it. If you think about a professional hockey player, they're wired for skating on the ice. It just seems like their brain already knew how to do that. Like, if you can picture wiring in your brain that tells you how to do certain things, they're wired for it. They're just very, very natural at it. I think Jen is wired for growing flowers. She really likes caring for things that are living, like plants and animals. She's just wired for it. So it means that you're good at something in a very natural way. Like you didn't necessarily just learn how to do it. You already had a natural ability to do that thing.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to be prone to. Now, to me, this phrase sounds similar, but I usually use it to talk about negative things. So to be wired for is about positive things. To be prone to can be negative. Like he's prone to falling off his bicycle. He's prone to eating too much food. When you're prone to something, it means you're likely to do it. And it's sometimes a mistake. Like he's likely to come to class with no pen or pencil to write with. So he's prone to. He's likely to. It's something that will probably happen.So to review to be wired for something means to have a natural ability to do that. Hopefully you're wired for learning English. That will help you a lot. And to be prone to means to regularly make mistakes. I'm prone to making mistakes when I speak French. Quand je parle français, je fais des fautes. Hopefully I said that right? But I am prone to making mistakes.Anyways, let's look at a comment from a previous video. It's a little colder out here than I expected, and I didn't wear my gloves or coat. This is from Dhiraj, I think. Dhirajlama. Very useful phrases. Thank you, teacher. Actually, I have a request for you to make the next video on. Somebody is wired to and somebody is prone to. I hear them a lot, but slightly confused with them. Sometimes they seem similar to me, or maybe I don't have any idea about these two. I would be very delighted if you could work on this request, please. And my response? I'll do that today. Wait, I'll do it today. Not that I'll do it today. See, I'm prone to making mistakes when I speak English as well. Well, thanks for that comment, Dhirajlama. Yes, I did it. I'm done. I made that lesson and hopefully my explanation made some sense to you.Well, hey, like I mentioned, I'm out here today without my coat on. I probably should have worn it. I think I've just gotten used to mild weather and I just leave the house now with no coat on. But I should have worn it. Anyways, some of you have seen this place before. This is my local community center. I'm sure in your country you have things that are similar to this. Our community center has a walking track. It has an ice rink. It has a basketball court that you can also play volleyball or pickleball on. I don't know if you know what pickleball is. It's a new sport that people are starting to play in Canada.It has... this section here is actually the library. I'm not sure if I've ever shown you the inside of that, but it is a very nice place. It took a while for them to get all the money together to build it. And they did have to take down the old arena, which is back. It was back there behind me where thSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases GIMME A BREAK! and GIMME A SEC!In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase give me a break. Which is the short, informal way of saying give me a break. This is a sentence or phrase we use in a couple situations. One is when you really need a break. Let's say Jen and I are putting flowers in the van and Jen is trying to get me to work faster. I might say to her, give me a break. I'm working as fast as I can. I'm expressing my frustration a little bit. I'm expressing that I want to go slowly and methodically. I don't want to go fast because I might make a mistake. So I might say, oh, give me a break. You also use this phrase when someone tells you something that just annoys you. So let's say your cousin likes to borrow things and your cousin hasn't returned all of the things that they borrowed from you and they call to borrow something again, you could say, oh, man, give me a break. You still haven't returned my saw and my hammer that you borrowed last week. Give me a break. This is really frustrating.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase give me a sec, which is short for give me a second. This is simply a way to tell someone to wait. If I was doing something and I felt like I needed to sit down for a bit, I might say, hey, give me a second. I'm just going to sit down and maybe have a drink of water. In the summer when it's really hot, you might hear me say this to Jen, hey, give me a sec. I just need to have something to drink. If you're on the phone and someone says, hey, can you tell me how many flowers someone ordered last week? You could say, okay, give me a sec. I'll look up that information. So it's just another way of saying wait.So to review, give me a break is a phrase you use to express frustration in any certain situation. And give me a sec simply means that you need a second or two to do something. You need that person to wait.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from.... I think it's from Natalia. Let's see here. Yes, Natalia, this is my guess. The barbed wire is tilted towards the park. By the way, I'm there again, if you want to look, the barbed wire is tilted towards the park, probably protecting the road from animals that might run out of the park. And my response, possibly Jen thinks there might have been a train station there. There used to be train tracks, but they were removed years ago. Maybe I'll go back and investigate.And so that's what I'm doing right now. If you're wondering what that loud truck noise was, there's a water truck right there that's leaving. Anyways, I am back here, and I think I do have it figured out. I'm not sure what was behind this fence, but it probably was related to the fact that there used to be train tracks here. If you look across the road, you see those big rocks over there? That's where the train track used to be. And years ago, they removed the train track. And if you look behind me, where these houses are, that's where the train track used to go. So I hope I'm not confusing you.That's why I think we have this really tall chain link fence here. I think it's because there was either a train station or a train refueling station or something here. And obviously a long time ago, because if you look, you'll see that the tree has grown into the fence. And there's another one down here. I'll show you, which is basically part of the fence. So obviously this fence has been here for a very long time. I'm gonna make sure I don't step in any dog poop. TSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases A TWO-WAY STREET and THE WORD ON THE STREETIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase a two-way street. Now, the street behind me is a two-way street. You can drive that way on that street or you can drive the other way. But this phrase also has a different meaning. It's used to describe a relationship or situation where things go both ways. Let's think about respect. When two people respect each other, it's a two-way street. I respect to Jen and Jen respects me. In order to be respected, you have to respect other people. It's a two-way street. I think this happens as well with trust. In order to trust someone, they need to trust you. It's a two-way street. You can also use this to describe a situation like this. Sometimes Jen doesn't have enough flowers, so we get some from another flower farmer, but it's a two-way street. When they don't have enough flowers, we sell them flowers as well. So we help each other out.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, the word on the street. This is what we use when we talk about information that we've heard from someone else. It doesn't have to be information you heard while walking along the street, but you could say to someone, hey, word on the street is you're expanding your business. Or you could say, hey, word on the street is you took an English test and you passed it. So when you hear something from someone else, you would say, it's the word on the street. It's what people are talking about, about that person.So to review, a two-way street is that street behind me, but also any relationship or situation where things go both ways. And the word on the street is a phrase we use to talk about information we've heard or things we've heard about other people.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Andres. Oh, volunteer firefighters. Interesting. If you were a firefighter, were you allowed to interrupt your lesson at school, jump in your car and go to the accident/fire? Will this affect your performance as a teacher? And my response? I'm pretty sure volunteer firefighters have an agreement with their boss that they can leave. It's for the greater good, after all. So thanks, Andres, for that comment.And I did actually look this up, and it's actually a law in Ontario, Canada. Let me read a little snippet of the law to you. It says, no employer shall without good cause prevent a person who is a volunteer firefighter from leaving for work to attend any kind of fire or accident or other firefighter related incident. They may either leave work or fail to appear at work for those situations. So it's the law. If you're a volunteer firefighter, it means you can get out of work when you need to.Hey, I'm going to cough for a sec. It's just a little cold out here.I wanted to show you this fence. I find this fence interesting. We're actually at a park. Okay. But this park has this really tall chain link fence. We call this a chain link fence. And at the top it's kind of bright in the sun there. It actually has barbed wire. This is the kind of fence you would more likely find at a prison. You don't normally find a fence like this at a park. Now you can just come in the park down there. I'm not sure why this fence is here. I have a funny feeling that maybe this used to be something else. Maybe this park used to be some sort of power station or some sort of small water pumping station for the town. And then maybe the park part came later. But yeah, Support the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases AN OPEN MIND and IN THE OPENIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase an open mind. When you have an open mind, it means that you're willing to listen to other points of view. It means that even if you've decided you think something is a certain way, you're willing to listen to other people say that they think it's different. Here's a good example. When I was young, I remember that we had garbage day, but we didn't have recycling day and the town decided that we were going to start recycling. But before that they wanted everyone to come for a special meeting. And I remember my dad saying, I'm going to go to the meeting. I don't think recycling is going to really be a good thing. He was wrong. But I'm going to keep an open mind. I'm going to have an open mind when I go to the meeting and I'm going to listen to what other people say, because maybe it is a good idea. So when you have an open mind, it means you think one thing, but you are willing to discuss an alternate thing as well with other people.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is in the open. Sometimes people do things in secret, but sometimes they do things in the open. A good example of this would be when Jen and I are working at market. We're working in the open. People can see us make the bouquets while we're at market. But the night before, Jen works at home in her flower studio and then she's not really doing it in secret, but you can't see her make the bouquets. Sometimes people do things in the open so that people can see it. Sometimes when they count votes, after a vote, they will do it in the open so that it's all done fairly and correctly.So to review, when you have an open mind, when you keep an open mind, when you go somewhere with an open mind, it means you're willing to hear a different point of view. And when you do things in the open, it means other people can see you doing it. There's some things you shouldn't do in the open, by the way. There's some things you should always do in secret.I'm not going to go into too many details, but let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Natalia. Hi, Bob. Do your dogs have their own dog houses or kennels? It should be relatively warm there. And my response, they sleep in the garage at night and on days when it is too cold.So yes, our dogs, they don't actually have.... well, we had a dog house, but it blew down or it blew away. And we don't have a kennel for them, but they are allowed to go in the garage at night. We often have our dogs in the garage at night. In the winter especially... actually year round, they just sleep in the garage and they both have their own little crate, we call it, which is like a little pen, I guess they could go in, but we don't close the door. And they also can go in the barn sometimes. So it's not the nicest place to go. But we will take the dogs out to the barn and then that's a little warmer for them.Hey, I'm at the fire station. I've been here before, but I haven't been here for a while, so I was just going to walk up. You can see me in the window. You can sort of see in, in our town, the fire trucks are red. In some towns, in some cities, the fire trucks are actually yellow, but ours are red. And it looks like they're ready to go. If there was a fire or a car accident, that's when our firefighters actually go out. Now, we operate in this town with volunteer firefighters. We don't have full time firefighters, so if there's a fire, they are notified and theySupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS and TO JUMP THE GUNIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to jump to conclusions. When you jump to conclusions, it means you think something is true before you actually have all the facts or know for sure that it is true. Let me think of an example. Let's say you came to school and you went to my classroom and there were no students there. You might jump to conclusions. You might think, oh, Bob must have kicked all his kids out of class and he's not teaching them today because he's angry. You might jump to conclusions and think that maybe all of my students are on a field trip, but the reality is, the truth is there just wasn't any school today. So when you jump to conclusions, it means you see some evidence or you know some facts and you think something is true before you know all of the details.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe second phrase I wanted to teach you today is to jump the gun. When you jump the gun, it means you do something before you're supposed to do it. Let me think of an example. Let's say Jen was harvesting flowers and she had 100 Lisianthus sitting in buckets here. I might jump the gun and start selling them to people without talking to Jen. So I might do something before I know I'm actually allowed to do it. Another example would be, let's say I was making an invitation to a party and we hadn't quite decided on the date, and we had a draft version of the invitation, and I decide to print it and send it to everybody before actually talking to the people organizing the party. I would be jumping the gun. So when you jump the gun, you do something before you're supposed to do it.So to review to jump to conclusions means to think something is true before you have all the facts. And to jump the gun means to do something before you're supposed to do it. I don't often jump the gun. I'm pretty good at doing things when they're supposed to be done.But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from Aquiles. At minute 4:05. Wow, the cat is running outside with that weather. He's not even wearing a sweater. And my response, our cats are quite furry and well adjusted to the winter weather.So, yes, sometimes people voice their concerns when they see our dogs or cats outside in the winter when it's -15C or even -20C but rest assured, our cats all have an extra thick layer of fur. Our cats grow lots of hair when the winter is approaching. I think it's a very natural thing for animals to do Oscar and Walter as well have winter coats on right now. They grow extra fur, they're furrier and it just helps them be outside. Now we are cautious with our dogs outside when it's really cold because their paws. You don't want their paws on frozen ground if it's -20C. But the cats do live in the barn. They have lots of cozy places in the hay and straw where they can hang out. So it's not too bad.So anyways, guess what? As you are watching this, I am teaching as you watch this. It's Tuesday today, but you'll be watching this on a Wednesday. It's the first day of classes and someone asked me today if I was nervous for tomorrow and I just said, I'm not nervous for tomorrow, I'm nervous for the day after. The first day of school is rather easy. You hand out textbooks, you learn the students names. You kind of get them enrolled in the different online software packages that you use. The first day of school is actually quite easy and the classes are also a little bit shorter because we meet as a school in the morning just to have an assembly, we would caSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO FREEZE TO DEATH and TO BE FROZEN IN TIMEHey, I'm going to start this lesson by showing you how Canadians put gloves on with one hand. You have to use your mouth.Anyways, in this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to freeze the death. To freeze to death. Sorry, I'm having trouble talking because it's so cold. We use this phrase sometimes to exaggerate. I mean, to use the word death to exaggerate something isn't very nice, but we do often use it in this phrase. For instance, if my son was going outside today without a winter hat on, I would say, put a winter hat on, you're going to freeze to death. I don't actually mean that he's going to die. That would be horrible. And that's something that I don't even want to think about. But we do sometimes use the word death when we exaggerate. If my son was going outside wearing shorts today, I would say, put some pants on. You're going to freeze to death if you don't.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to be frozen in time. When something is described as being frozen in time, it means that it hasn't changed. Probably the best example I can think of is that when my parents lived here, the house was frozen in time. They built the house and then they never painted any rooms, they never bought different furniture. The house was literally frozen in time the whole time that I lived here as a kid. It's hard to hold these with big gloves on. By the way, I'll explain why I'm wearing my big gloves in a moment. But yeah, the house was frozen in time. I think the same was true when I think about my grandparents' house. They lived in a house in town after they retired from farming, and that house was frozen in time. It had old brown wallpaper and all kinds of other things that just made you feel like they never changed anything. My grandpa had the same chair the whole time when I was a kid. I think I'm doing the same thing now. I think my studio office in the house is frozen in time a little bit, too.Anyways, to review, when you say someone is going to freeze to death, one of the mean it can literally mean freeze to death. But we do sometimes use it as an exaggeration to talk about how cold it is. And when something is frozen in time, it means that it doesn't change.Now let me see if I can find the comment from the previous video. It's right here. Get my glove back on again. The commemt is from Konstantin. Nice shades Bob, my son's just finished reading Two Against the North. Farley Mowat, Canadian author by the way. And there's an episode where the guys suffer snowblindness due to not wearing sunglasses. Cool story. And the sequel isn't bad too. Keep yourself warm. And my response it can get so bright. Sun in the sky, sun reflecting off the snow. So much light. So yeah, thanks Konstantin for that comment. It can get that bright. It can get so bright. It was actually that bright when I first came outside and it might get that bright again. We'll see as I finish making this English lesson.Anyways, why the big gloves? Well, it's -17 today and it's windy. This is about as cold as it gets. If it gets colder than this, then I would probably be making the English lesson inside. This is cold enough that when I went for my walk this morning, I wore my balaclava, I wore my ski mask. I'll put a little picture here of what that looks like. And I wore multiple layers this morning. Man, it was a chilly walk. But what was I going to show you? Oh yes, this is a day where it's actually hard to move my fingers.Support the show