تفسیر درس

Long Way – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin Dodds, one of the directors of Learn Real English, and welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Long Way. So I wanted to start off this talking about the Camino. It was mentioned, if you remember, in the conversation. And I didn’t really describe it much in my vocabulary lesson because I said I would be talking about it in the commentary.

So the Camino, or as the full name is, El Camino de Santiago, I believe it translates…that’s Spanish…and I believe it translates as The Way of the Saint. It’s a long pilgrimage or a long hike. It starts in France. So I think you’re in France maybe only a day or two and then the rest of it is going across the northern part of Spain over to a town where there is a big cathedral. A big building, I actually saw a picture of it on the internet, it looks like a church, where the body of St. James the Great is supposed to be buried.

So traditionally people would do this long walk to go to, to go to this holy place where St. James the Great is buried. St. James the Great was actually one of, he was one of the 12 disciples, or followers, of Jesus Christ. So people who are Catholic or even maybe Christian, if that’s their religion, this traditionally was a pilgrimage for them to do. Pilgrimage just meaning like a journey to, y’know, a journey that someone takes to go somewhere to pay their respects. Y’know, specifically going to like a holy place or very special place.

So AJ and Joe are planning to do this trip. This is going to be a huge adventure for them. And they’re not Christian, so for them it’s not about specifically going to, y’know, making this long walk…which by the way I haven’t said how long it is. It’s actually, it takes, I’ve read varying things but, on the internet, but I’ve read it can take anywhere from 30 to 40 days. It probably depends on how slow or how fast you walk.

But people walk all day and they stay in hotels or hostels at night and they do this every day for 30 to 40 days until they get to this town where this cathedral is where St. James the Great’s body is supposed to be buried. But going back to Joe and AJ, they are not Christian. They’re not Catholic, they’re not Christian. They’re just doing this as many people now, I think, do. They’re just doing it for fun.

They thought it would be a really nice thing to do. It would be a good bonding experience and it’ll be challenging. It’s going to be really tough walking, I don’t know, eight hours a day, maybe a little less, but carrying on your back…they’ll have backpacks…they’ll be carrying probably sleeping bags, something to sleep on and their clothes, toothbrushes. Everything that they’ll need for 30 to 40 days they’ll have on their back.

Except for food, they’ll be able to get that in the villages. It might be a little more difficult for Joe. He’s a little concerned about that because he has a vegan diet. Vegan meaning he doesn’t eat anything that comes from animals. But anyway, they decided to do this. They asked me if I wanted to do it but I said no thanks. I thought it would be a good thing for the two of them to do together, plus I tend to walk a little slowly so I didn’t want to keep…I didn’t want to prevent or keep them from going at a faster pace.

And, yeah, so they’re going to be, they’re going to be doing this within a year, not so long. They’re going to have to start training for it. And I think it’ll be a lot of, a lot of fun for them. But you know I was sitting here thinking of some adventures that I’ve done. This is something that they’re planning to do. I don’t have any adventures coming up myself.

But I was thinking of some adventures I’ve taken, y’know, done in the past. Of course, if you have bought the Real Conversation lesson set, the original lessons that Joe, AJ and I did, there is a conversation in there called Nepal where Joe and I are talking about separate experiences of doing a long like 10- to 12-day hike or trek in the Himalayan mountains. So for me, I know for Joe, too, that was a big adventure.

But if you have those lessons you’ve already listened to that. I didn’t want to talk about that again.

So I was thinking, hm, what’s some other adventures I’ve done. And something that just came to my mind, I don’t know why, this was probably 12 years ago maybe. It was a little adventure I did. I did this with my boyfriend at the time and we decided, I was living in Georgia at this time, he was living in South Carolina. So those are two states that are right next to each other in the southeastern part of the United States and we decided to go canoeing and camping.

So we chose to go to an area in the southern part of Georgia and also the northern part of Florida. So Florida is a state directly below Georgia. And it looks like a thumb on a map. So we drove down there and we…to this area called the Okefenokee Swamp. And this is actually a national wildlife refuge so I believe that that means it’s a protected area for the land, for the animals there. And it, it gets funding or it gets money from the American government, the national government.

So it is a national wildlife refuge. It’s beautiful. And it’s…so Okefenokee, this is a Native American name.

Native American meaning it comes from the original people who lived here in American before European, Europeans started coming. So it is a long name, Okefenokee. And a swamp is an area where there is usually water and it’s…it’s got a particular kind of tree.

It’s got particular kinds of trees and plants growing because of the type of weather. So I tend to think usually of swamps as being in really hot and humid environments. Humid meaning there’s a lot of water or moisture in the air. So swamps can have these trees with these low-hanging leaves. And they…the swamp, the water, it can usually be like a darker color so you don’t even see the bottom. And there can be lots of plants growing up through the water.

So it’s a little bit different than going to a lake, for example. A lake’s usually clear. You won’t see plants coming up in the middle of the lake. And if you’re closer to the land, a lot of times you can maybe see the bottom of the land through the water. Your legs can be clearer. But a swamp is usually, the water is murky or…or not clear. Murky means not clear.

So anyway, this was a bit of an adven…a bit of an adventure because we went in the springtime and it was during alligator mating season. So we knew this ahead of time. We didn’t think too much about it.

We went and we knew also that we would be camping, we would be sleeping in a tent on a platform. So what I thought that that meant was that it would be on, a platform to me, I was thinking, would be a wooden, a wooden area built up from the ground where we would put our tent.

So we would be up a little bit from the ground, protected from alligators, for example, because we knew we were going during mating season. So this was what I was thinking, that the platform where we would put our tent to sleep would be up from the ground where alligators couldn’t come up and get us. So we get there and we get…oh and by the way, I said we were going to canoe.

A canoe is a boat. It’s got a big open area and it sits very close to the water. So you can have a few people in the canoe but then you have these…these wooden pieces called oars and you paddle. You paddle off each side of the boat. So we go, we drive down and…it was a several hour drive. And we get our canoe and we get everything packed into our canoe, our food, our tent, y’know, everything for sleeping.

We were just going to stay one night. I think we just stayed one night. So we canoed all the way in. It was, we were…we were canoeing all day until we got to our spot where we were…where the platform was where we would put our tent up. And there were alligators everywhere.

Now, if you don’t know what an alligator is, I can try and explain a little bit but you may want to look it up in your language. An alligator is a green animal. Can get to be pretty big, like as tall as…or as long as I am tall. And they look, if you know what a lizard is, they can look like a really big lizard. So they can be dangerous. They could, they…alligators have been known to eat people.

So we’re paddling our canoe and there’s alligators everywhere in the water. And remember, I said our canoe, a canoe sits really close to the water. So I remember at one point we stopped the canoe to eat lunch. And we’re sitting there eating and the alligators, the way they are in water, you’ll…many times you’ll just see the very tops of their head, just their eyes, and the rest of their body is under the water.

So we stopped to eat lunch and several alligators around us noticed this and started swimming over to the boat. I was getting a little scared, thinking “Shit. If these, y’know, I can’t see the body.” Again, remember a swamp, swampy water, it’s really…it’s not clear. So I couldn’t see. I could just see the eyes and a little bit of the head. But I was thinking, “If this alligator’s really big he could almost tip our boat over.” Y’know, knock the boat over and we go into the water.

Well, that didn’t happen and we ate kind of in a hurry. And then we started paddling more. And another interesting thing, because this was mating season for the alligators, I…I guess it was the males, well it makes sense probably, the males are the boy alligators, the men alligators were calling to the female alligators. And it was this really loud noise and this was going on all around us because there were a lot of alligators. And so they’re wanting to mate with each other.

I didn’t explain mate. Mate meaning they wanted to have sex to have babies. It was that time of the year, springtime. So they’re, the men are calling to the ladies with these really loud noises and we’re just paddling. We’re hearing all this and we’re seeing them. It was, it was quite…it was very exciting. A little, little nerve-wracking at times. Nerve-wracking means I was a little nervous at times.

So we finally get to where we’re going to put our tent up on the platform and the platform ended up being some pieces of wood on the ground. So I don’t quite understand why…and we had to put our tent there.

Maybe so we didn’t disturb the ground, but it was not for protection, that’s for sure. Looking back now, thinking back, it was probably so that, y’know, people wouldn’t put their tents in and start making impressions or like holes in the ground from their tents or just from a lot of use.

So we had to put our tent on these slats or pieces of wood. But they were laid right next to the ground.

So we put our…we got there in the evening-time, it was starting to get dark. And we put our tent up. We had dinner and we went in the tent to go to sleep. You tend to go to sleep pretty early when you’re camping. There’s not a lot to do. And you kind of get in the rhythm of nature. And I was scared.

I was still hearing the mating calls, the male alligators calling to the females. I was hearing it all night.

And sometimes it sounded like they were even coming up right to our tent. Now if you’ve never camped, a tent is just really thin material. So there’s just…we’re in this, it looks like a little house but it’s just thin material. So there’s only thin material between me and my boyfriend at the time and these alligators.

But obviously I survived and he survived. So we, we had a good night. I didn’t get a lot of sleep but then the next day we…we paddled back. Y’know, we…we rowed our canoe back to where our car was and where we had rented the canoe from and it was, it ended up being a really good experience. It was, it was quite a little adventure.

So adventure, this…y’know, adventure, an adventure can be something small like that or something bigger like AJ and Joe doing the El Camino, walking this, this trail for 30 to 40 days. Y’know, and adventure basically is something that’s exciting. And it may be a little dangerous but it’s…it’s an exciting experience or activity. And also, too, an adventure is usually something that you’re doing. You’re going into unknown, an unknown area, unknown territory, an unknown area.

Alright, if you’ve had any adventures you’d like to share on the Ning site, please do. That’s all for this commentary for this month and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.