每日英语听力 Day13

Welcome to the listening time podcast. Hey everybody this is corner and you are listening to episode 112 of the listening time podcast. i hope everybody is doing great. I’ve been traveling a lot recently and I’m gonna travel today to be honest, i think it’s been a little too much traveling in a short period of time so i’m excited for this trip that i have but i’m also excited that after this trip i’m probably not gonna travel for a while and i’ll just have a normal routine and have a normal life. I’m kind of looking forwarding to having that for a while.

But i hope some of you have some interesting trips plan for maybe this summer or this winter depending on where you live which hemisphere you are in. I hope->Hopefully you get the chance to do some fun staff or travel to some interesting places this year and of course i hope your English learning is going well and if you have->are having trouble understanding native speakers and you need more help understanding fast speech escpecially when native speakers reduce sounds and say things in a way that’s very unclear or fast or shortten.

Then i encourage you to assign for my membership so that you can get my specilized training where i'll->\ help you understand->identify these different reductions and sounds and patterns that will help you become a little more comfortable to->with fast speech. so click the link in the episode description below this episode to join my membership and you’ll get my listening practice seminars you’ll get that specialized training.

And of course if you are a Spanish or portuguess speaker you get my e-book my collection of 3 short stories misterory->mystery stories that i wrote in English and translated it into Spanish and into protuguese so if you want to practice reading fiction in English the links of->to those are also in the episode description.

Alright today we are gonna talk about the old age and i’ll focus specially on the US and what old age is like in the US and maybe what life is like for older people and things like that so hopefully this will be an interesting topic for you and remember that if you want->need the transcript that’s also in the description you can go down there and click that if you need it and if you like this episode->podcast please share it with your friends and family members who could find it useful poeple who were->are learning Enligh please give it a five-star rating and write a review. Alright let’s get started!

Are your ears ready? you know what time it is. it’s listening time!

okay let’s talk about old age so first of all let’s talk about how old age is viewed in the US. I think there are a lot of mixed opinions when it comes to this. the phrase mixed opinions refers to opinons that might be contradictory may be some are positive some are passive those->these are mixed opinions so there are some positive feelings when it comes to old age and i think one of the main positive things is that we tend to associate old age with retirement with being retired and not working any more.

And in the US retirement is seen positively it’s interesting because i was talking with my wife about this recently and we were comparing the attitudes regarding retirement in the US and in Mexico and it’s interesting because in Mexico and probably in most countries aroud the world retirement is not necessarily seen as some amazing thing right? Prople don’t have this idea that they are gonna have fatanstic life once they are retired and they are gonna do tons of fun activities and travel around the world and all that kind of staff.

However, oftentimes, Americans kind of fantasize about retirement, we romanticize it a little bit, we tend to think that this will be a great time in our lives and people often prepare very hard for many years for retirement and once they are retired they try to have fun and just enjoy their life to the max. so many retired people like to travel to many places and take up new hobbies and find fun things to do. by the way, in English we can use the phrasal verb take up when refering to starting a hobby.

So for example, if i say I took up tennis that just means I started this hobby. so old->older people when they are retired they often take up new hobbies and try to do a lot of fun activities so in that scence->sence, this part of old age can definately be seen positively in the US.

However there are also some negatively feelings when it comes to old people because in the US just like every where else in the world older people tend to have more health problems so there are often hurts->aches and pains that people have to deal with. In English the word acid->ache refers to pain that you have for example if i say i have a headache i’m saying i have pain in my head.

So when you get older you tend to have aches and pains your body doesn’t feel the same as it was felt when you are->were younger and you might have more serious health conditions you might have health conditions that don’t allow you to have this really active lifestyle so whenever no->we never know what our health will be like when we are older and so that can cause may be some fear when it comes to getting older.

So as you can see, there are some mixed opinions mixed feelings because on the one hand when you get older and you retire in the US you can often have a lot of fun but on the other hand your body might not be in the best shape to have all of these fun so it’s not completely positive or completely negative.

In terms of my view and how I view old age I think that there are positives and negatives of course and I think my advice to myself would be to try to do well now in order to weep->reap benefits later.

In English when we say that you reap benefits we are saying that you receive the benefits of something that you do now and you reap those benefits you recieve them at a later time usually.

so this can be apply->applied to your body if you take care of your body when you are younger then hopefully you will have a better body in the future and if you take care of your mind when you are younger hopefully you’ll be in good metal->mental health in the future.

And if you focus on your relationships when you are younger hopefully you will have good relationships in the future when you are older and you will have a good circle of people around you that are willing to help you in case you need help and who you can connect with in->at that age so hopefully i am able to do those things.

next, let’s talk a little bit about the living situation of the older people in the US, so in the US older people tend to try to be as indenpendant->independent as possible for as long as possible.

This is just part of our culture we are more independent than other cultures and people realy value being taking->able to take care of themselves most people don’t really want other people to take care of them right? people here want to take care of themselves feel independent feel in control of their own lives->life that’s one of the culture->cultural elements here.

So that is->\ also tends to apply to a lot of older people they want to hold on to their independence as long as possible so it’s quite common for people here to continue living on their own even when they are a little bit older right? If people are 80 years old but they are in great health and they don’t need any help with their daily life. it’s possible that they might live along->alone even if they are 80 years old. of course the older you get the more likely it is that you will need some help right? but people in their 70s and even people in their 80s might still be very independent and might be able to do everything for themseleves so if they can they tend to do that.

However sometimes they decide to go to a retirement community, these are communities or residential buildings that are designed for seniors, by the way we can use the word senior to talk about an older person so these communities are intend for seniors who can still take care of themselves mostly that they might have very easy access to have->care or care if they need it in these communities so they live among other old->older people there and they probably have a lot of activies and social events and things like that and they have easy access to help if they need it but they can still live independently for the most part.

So we have those retirement communities and a lot of people like those types of communities when they are older because it really provides a lot of socializing and things like that. and if people need a little bit more assistance if they need a little more help with their daily taks their daily life maybe their health then maybe they might live in assistant->an assisted living facility this is a place where people who are not completely independent might live and they recieve some help they will->\ recieve more help than in a retirement community for example.

So they’ll probably have daily help with their tasks health issues things like that. But they can still be some what independent and try to do a lot of things on their own in this place but if the person really can’t take care of themselves and they really need someone else to take care of them and help them out then they often go to live in a nurssy->nursing home and in a nursing home you have all the help you need someone is always there to provide you with whatever assistance is neccessary that is kind of a long term care facility we might call it.

So you recieve everything you need in order to live your daily life and you have all the help that you might want so that’s for peole that really can’t take care of themselves anymore. So those are some different living situations that people might have once they reach an older age so how about living with your kids? or your grandkids when you are older, well this isn’t that common in the US.

It happens, some people do this but it’s definately not as common as it is in many other countries around the world. for example, in Mexico, it’s really common a lot of grandparents live with their children and their grand children especially if one of grandparents has passed away for example if the grandfather is no longer alive it’s very common for the grandmother to live with her children and her grand children so that’s common in many countries however in the US it’s not as common. when i was growing up, i remember that i has->had some friends who had this living situation their grandparents lived with them but practically all of these friends that had this were children with emmigrations->of immigrants so their parents and grandparents were from other counties and in their countries this was normal.

So i can’t really remember have->having friends who won;t->were not the children with an emmigrance->of immigrants who had this type of living situation so that should show you that it’s not that common here again people do this and some people they like this but i would say that it’s not the norm here, By the way in English we can something is the norm when we want to say that something is normal or it’s the normal thing to do. so that’s not the norm here.

However, meet->me personally, i tend to like the idea to have->of having your parents live with you when they get too old to take care of themselves that’s somthing that i’ve always offered to my parents if they need to live with us then i think they should i think that if it’s possible that would be a nice thing to be able to do for my parents since they took care of me all throughout my childhood so i like that idea but i would say that many other people might not like that idea and so that really just depends on your own personality your own preferences not everyone would agree with that but that’s kind of my opinion.

And lastly let’s talk about some activities that old->older people might do. So in the US older people are encouraged to take care of their health and older people tend to be cotious->conscious that they need to excicise and keep their body in shape and so it’s really common to see older people walking early in the morning or at different time during the day but i tend to walk pretty early in the morning i like walking and i see almost exclusively older people. I don’t really see a lot of younger people walking around the neighborhood at this time.

And that’s because younger people tent to have to walk or go to school or whatever but you get my point i see a lot of older people walking around the neighborhood pretty early in the morning and they do this in groups sometimes or they might do it with their spouse but that’s very common and it’s common for them to try to engage in light excicise so they might have some excices classes or programs it just depends on their preference and there are some sports older people really like in the US. I would say the most popular sports for seniors in the US is golf.

I love golf I have played it for->in years and i still like this sport and i hope to take it up again in the future. but if you play golf in the US, you notice that there are a lot of older people play in->on the course so this sport is not very hard in->on your body so i think that’s why it’s a great type of sport for older people and i sometimes see older people play tennis too.

Tennis is definately harder for->on your body than golf you definately have to move more but i think that a lot of older people can also play tennis and enjoy this sport and i’m sure there are plenty of other sports that would be good opions for seniors as well.

And some older people like to garden they might try to take really good care of their garden or their front yard or their back yard and that can be a good activity for old->\ people and it can be something that is even a little bit therapeutic for people, a lot of people like to garden because it is good to->for their mind so that can be a great activity for older people.

And of course if they can older people tend to travel as i mentioned people once they retire sometime want to travel as much as possible with all of their free time so that’s another great activity and of course one other very common activity is spending time with grandchildren that’s obviously something that a lot of grandparents really like to do.

Alright why do not we stop here for today i hope this episode is->was interesting for you and->\ remember that you have the transcript available if you need it and if you want to practice with the difficult sounds of Enlish and you need help understanding native speakers when they speek fast make sure to become a listening time member so that you can access my listening senminars and start to understand those concepts those patterns a little bit better so you can click the link in the description to access those that’s patreon.com/listeningtime and of course if you are a Spanish or Portuguese speaker then checkout my ebook to start reading fiction in English.

Alright thank you for listening to this episode and i’ll talk to you in->on the next episode of listening time.