节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-07-03
难易度:High
关键字:getaway, filthy, wrestle, raft, bungee jump, scratch the surface
We're on the second day of our article Exploring South Korea.
And today we have been talking all about a great summer getaway that Jo and her
friends enjoyed.
They went to the beach, which was not very far from where she was staying.
She was able to enjoy a very filthy mud festival as well in another part of
South Korea.
And it sounds like she is having a really great time.
There are many more activities and things that she enjoyed that we can read
about in the next part of our article today.
Exploring South Korea.
In August my friends and I drove up into the mountains for a weekend of rafting.
A Korean friend helped us book a private bus and an overnight stay at what
Koreans call a "pension." Another weekend in August,
my friends went bungee jumping off a bridge high up over a river.
I watched from the shore!
Each summer weekend seemed to hold a chance to see and do something new.
But I only lived there for a year, so I barely scratched the surface.
I look forward to returning one day and exploring more.
Well, if you live somewhere for just a short period of time, you really do just
scratch the surface.
Well, friends, we're talking about Jo's experiences in South Korea; and this
section begins:
In August my friends and I drove up into the mountains for a weekend of rafting.
Well, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Have you ever been rafting, Carolyn?
Well, I don't think I've actually been rafting, but it is a lot of fun.
My sister loves to do it; and it is a word from our Word Bank today.
If you go rafting, then you sit in a raft and you go down the river.
It can be very exciting depending on which river you are in.
That's right.
Now rafting is uh... when you use something called a raft.
And you can sometimes make rafts yourself.
You use long pieces of wood, you put them together or tie them together so that
they float on the water, and you can go rafting down the water.
Usually, though, when we think of rafting, there are already tubes or big boats
that you can use and sit in with a lot of other people, and you go floating down
the river.
It's a lot of fun.
I especially love going rafting when there's just been a big rain and the waves
are a little bit big and kind of scary.
That's a lot of fun.
I love rafting.
It is a lot of fun.
It's important to be careful when you're rafting.
But she was able to go rafting with her friends.
And she says that a Korean friend helped us book a private bus and an overnight
stay at what Koreans call a pension.
So she was able to have her own bus with her friends.
It sounds like she had a really great trip.
And they were able to stay at a place called a "pension," Gabe.
That's right.
Well, if you're confused about this, "pension" usually means something else.
But if you look on page 15 in your magazine, you can see what a pension is
there.
It's what Koreans call a pension here.
Let's take a look at that phrase: what someone calls something.
So maybe it's not common knowledge, maybe not everybody knows that it's called
this, but this is what someone calls it.
Carolyn, how else could you use that phrase?
Well, I was actually a little bit confused when I first came to Taipei because I
wanted to order toast.
And in the United States, toast is a piece of bread that has been toasted or put
in a toaster.
And here it's a little bit different.
It's a very thick piece of bread that might have something on top of it or
something inside it, but it doesn't have to be toasted.
So it's what people in Taipei call "toast," not what Americans call "toast".
That's right, so something that somebody else might call it something different.
Uh, yesterday I shared about culture shock and about reverse culture shock.
It's what I call or what some people call reverse culture shock when you leave a
foreign country,
and you go back to your own country, and it just seems a little bit different.
So here we're learning about what Koreans call a pension.
And we continue.
Another weekend in August, my friends went bungee jumping off a bridge high up
over a river.
Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, Carolyn.
Well, it sounds like a very exciting thing to do to go bungee jumping.
And it's not something I have done, and it's not something I think I'm going to
do in the future.
But it says that her friends seemed to really enjoy it since that was what they
wanted to do during this weekend in August.
Jo, however, did something else, Gabe.
That's right.
And maybe you would have done the same thing, Carolyn.
Jo says: I watched from the shore.
Well, if we ever go bungee jumping, Carolyn, I guess it will be me going bungee
jumping and you watching from the shore?
Uh, that is probably true.
I will take lots of pictures for you.
Great! I love that.
We always need someone to take pictures.
All right.
Well, friends, now it's time for us to learn something new with Steve and Ken in
the Information Cloud.
Today let's continue looking at how English month names came about.
Picking up from yesterday, our next month is July.
July is named after the Roman ruler Julius Caesar, who was born in July.
It was Caesar Augustus, Julius' successor, who decreed the month be named in
honor of the dead leader.
The same honor was later given to Augustus himself; and that explains the name
of the eighth month August.
OK. Now things get a little tricky because the original Roman calendar had just
ten months, January and February were added later.
Meaning the new year started on March 1.
Right.
Under that system, September, with its S-E-P-T prefix, meaning seven, was the
seventh month.
October, with its O-C-T-O prefix, indicating eight, was the eighth month of the
year.
November was the ninth.
And you'll recognize the Latin D-E-C prefix in December, which was the tenth
month.
But you'll notice these months no longer correspond to their positions on the
modern calendar.
October isn't the eighth month anymore.
It's the tenth month.
And that's because when the old calendar was modified, the addition of January
and February pushed forward the other months two places.
(Chinese).
We do always learn interesting things in the Information Cloud.
Now continuing in our article, Jo writes:
Each summer weekend seemed to hold a chance to see and do something new.
So now that she is finally getting out of her apartment, no longer watching TV,
each weekend held the chance to see and do something new.
Yeah. That's a great way to phrase it, to hold the chance, or to hold the
opportunity to do something.
And she continues:
But I only lived there for a year, so I barely scratched the surface.
Let's take a look at that phrase there: to scratch the surface of something.
Well, lots of things are very deep, not like the surface of this clipboard.
Lots of things are very deep.
And so when you just scratch the surface, you're not really getting to know much
at all.
That's right.
So she feels like she didn't have enough time to really experience everything
there was to do in South Korea.
She continues to write:
I look forward to returning one day and exploring more.
So there's still a lot more that she wants to do and see in South Korea.
That's right.
She looks forward to doing this.
Sometimes you can use the phrase "I look forward to something" as if you've
already planned it.
But I don't think Jo has planned another trip to Korea yet.
Still, she looks forward to a day where she can go back and experience a little
more than just the surface.
Well, it's time for us right now to learn something else with Michelle in the
Language Lab.
(Chinese).
And let's get back to our teachers now.
Well, I've had a lot of fun learning from Jo's experiences in South Korea.
And I especially enjoyed learning about the mud festival.
I think that would be so much fun to just be free from worrying about staying
clean and... and not getting filthy.
Of course you're going to get filthy at a mud festival.
But what kind of festivals do you like?
Are there any unique festivals that you know about from your country or around
the world?
Carolyn?
Well, there was a festival in my hometown called the Water Festival.
And we didn't throw water at each other, but it was a big celebration because
there are a lot of rivers and lakes in my hometown.
And there would be boat races and rubber ducky races and pageants - and it was a
lot of fun - all themed with water.
That's so cool.
I think there's something similar in Thailand.
And in Spain, there's like a tomato festival where people throw tomatoes at each
other.
There are so many different kinds of festivals.
Thank you for joining us today.
And we will see you next time right here on Studio Classroom.
Bye-bye.