ESLPodcast 47 - A Trip to New York City

Welcome to English as a second language podcast number 47. Welcome to English as a second language podcast number 47. I'm Dr. Jeff McQuillin from the Center for Educational Development, coming to you today from Los Angeles, California. Go to our website to find more information about this podcast at www.eslpod.com

Today's topic is taking a trip to New York. Let's go. Hello? Hey Lucy, it's Jeff.

Hey, welcome back. How was your vacation? Oh, it was great. The seven days in New York was a blast.

Oh yeah? Did you do any sightseeing or just visit with friends? I got to do both actually. First, I saw my friend Ed Mundo, who just moved there.

He hadn't seen much of the city himself. So we went to all the tourist spots. We got a guide book and went to the major museums, saw a play, went to a concert in Central Park,

and took the Staten Island ferry. We did all of this in a day and a half. It was a whirlwind, but we got to see a lot. A day and a half, you guys must have been exhausted.

Yeah, we were, but the rest of my trip was pretty low-key. My friends, Pat and Billy rented a car and we took a road trip to upstate New York to visit some other friends of ours. Did you have to stay over in a hotel along the way or did you drive straight through? We didn't bother with booking hotel rooms, so we just drove straight there.

It wasn't that far. How long did you stay there? We were only there two days, and we drove back, and got back last night. My flight was this morning at 8 a.m.

The worst part of the whole trip was that my flight was cancelled. I was rebuked onto another flight that had a three-hour layover in Chicago. That was a major pain. It sounds like it.

Well, I'm glad you made it back okay. And you even have the weekend to rest up before work on Monday. Yeah, I'll need it. I've got to catch up on my sleep.

We just listened to a telephone conversation between Lucy and me about my trip to New York city. Lucy answered the phone by saying hello, which is the standard or common way to answer a phone in English. Hello, and I said, hey, Lucy, it's Jeff. The expression Hey, here means the same as hello.

And informally, a lot of people now, particularly younger people will say, hey, instead of saying hello. Not when you first answer the phone,

you would not answer the phone by saying, hey, you would still say hello, But the other person could say, hey, Bob, or hey, Julie, instead of hello, Bob, or hello, Julie. I said that my trip to New York City was a blast. A blast means it was a lot of fun. It was very, very fun.

Blast here is sort of an informal expression, but we use it to describe a party or a trip or an event that was a lot of fun. Lucy says after I tell her about my trip being a blast, she says, Oh, yeah. That expression is very common in a informal conversation.

It shows the other person that you're listening. It means the same as really. Someone says to you, for example, the price of gasoline is now $3 a gallon.

and you say, oh yeah, meaning really. It's very common in conversation to hear that. I told Lucy that I went to visit my friend Edmondo and that we went to all the tourist spots. A tourist spot is a tourist place. The term spots here just means place or places.

I said we had a guide book. A guide book you probably know is a book that tells you where the hotels are and the restaurants are. and the tourist spots that you will want to see. It's also called a travel book or a travel guide book.

We went to some museums, which you know, of course, are places where you see art and other things. We went to see a play. A play, of course, is a performance in the theater.

And we went to a concert in Central Park. A concert, of course, is music that you listen to in a public place. Central Park is the largest park in New York City, very famous park Central Park. It's in the middle of Manhattan, the island where New York City is located in part.

I also said we took the Staten Island Ferry. There are five different sections of New York City. The main or most important downtown area is what we call Manhattan. that's the name of the island, but there's another island that is also part of New York City called

Statin Island and there is a famous fairy that goes between Manhattan and Statin Island. A fairy then is a boat that takes people and usually cars between two small or short distances. In Hong Kong, for example, there's a ferry between the island and the mainland, or main part of it. And many countries have theories that go out to an island that's close.

I said that my trip was a whirlwind. A whirlwind here means it went very quickly. And we did many things in a small amount of time. Because it was a whirlwind, Lucy said that we must have been exhausted.

She says, you guys must have been exhausted. We use guys here not to mean men, but to mean you all, you people, me and my friend.