

Quick Chat 017: What are your favorite holidays?
In this episode, Kevin and Jack talk about their favorite holidays, and what makes them so special. Share your answers to the discussion questions in our WhatsApp group chat! https://forms.gle/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7
Download a study guide here: https://atozenglishpodcast.com/what-are-your-favorite-holidays/
With listener mail from episode 14: https://atozenglishpodcast.com/technology-from-the-80s-and-90s/
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Intro/Outro Music by Eaters: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eaters/the-astronomers-office/agents-in-coffee-shops/
Jack
You are listening to the A-Z English podcast.
Kevin
Welcome to an A-Z English quick chat. We're going to surprise each other with the topic for the day and see where the conversation goes.
Kevin
Remember to check our website for steady guy with vocabulary notes and discussion questions as well as linked to our WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media pages so you can join in the conversation as well.
Kevin
But Jack what?
Kevin
Do you want to talk about today?
Kevin
What's this topic?
Jack
Today I want to talk about favorite holidays so well.
Kevin
And cool.
Jack
I know that you're a big fan of of the holidays, the holiday season, and I am 2, but everybody got their like favorite.
Jack
One you know.
Jack
And so I've kind of.
Jack
I would like to use it to share with our listeners what your favorite.
Jack
American Holiday is and why?
Kevin
Yeah for holidays, that's interesting.
Kevin
I'm it depends on the holiday for me because actually some holidays like Christmas.
Kevin
I don't really like very much, but that's the and that was not I I Grinch or as screwed.
Jack
Are you a Grinch or Scrooge?
Kevin
It's just when I was in university, I worked a couple of retail jobs at just like big stores.
Kevin
And they just always played Christmas music all day, every day for two months the same the same CD repeated.
Jack
Right, the same 7 songs.
Jack
Over and over again, right.
Kevin
Again and again and again.
Kevin
And I just got really sick of it.
Kevin
It's just like no more Christmas, but around that same time of year is the American Thanksgiving.
Kevin
And that holiday is probably the holiday that I probably the holiday that I miss the most not living in America these days.
Kevin
I'll talk about it a.
Kevin
Little bit, but what's?
Kevin
What's yours first?
Jack
So mine is a little bit strange because it I don't know if it's technically a holiday, but I'm getting.
Kevin
Things well, that's what you got.
Jack
I'll tell you what it is.
Jack
OK, so I when I was a kid, I loved Halloween.
Kevin
OK, right.
Jack
And I still do.
Jack
I I, I still love Halloween.
Jack
I love all the.
Jack
The icons, you know, like the Jack O Lantern and the witch and the ghosts and Dracula and vampires and zombies and all that sort of stuff.
Kevin
Right.
Jack
I love zombie movies and vampire movies.
Kevin
Right. We talked about that.
Jack
Movies, so I love horror.
Jack
Uhm, so for me, I just always loved Halloween.
Jack
Now, in America, Halloween is not a day off from work.
Jack
So you still have to go to work on Halloween.
Kevin
Right.
Jack
So it's not technically a holiday, but.
Kevin
The best.
Jack
It's something that we celebrate.
Kevin
I think account.
Jack
And it kind of, it is kind of like the first holiday of the holiday season which would be Thanksgiving, is in November and Christmas is in December and Halloween starts on.
Jack
October 31st.
Kevin
Right.
Kevin
That is pretty much where, yeah that that holiday season because, it's the three holidays basically in two months, you know end of October.
Kevin
End of November.
Kevin
end of December.
Kevin
Just bumping film all altogether.
Kevin
That's a a cool one, because it's so different from here in Korea too.
Kevin
In America, right?
Kevin
Like in America?
Kevin
I mean, people go crazy decorating their homes with so much holiday decorations my dad loves to decorate.
Kevin
Like they would set up this, their whole yard would have, you know, skeletons and witches and light shows and things there's.
Jack
Ah, I love when families really get into it like that.
Jack
Like, uh.
Jack
What when we were young, what was really exciting for my brother and me was to go to a pumpkin patch, and so we would.
Kevin
Oh, OK, cool.
Jack
We would each pick out a pumpkin, and then we would bring it home.
Jack
And then you take all the insides of the pumping out, and then you carve what's called a Jackal Lantern, and that's.
Jack
You know, you put you, you cut out the eyes and you cut out a nose and a mouth.
Jack
And you put a candle inside of it, and at night it looks really cool because it glows with that fandom inside.
Kevin
Yeah, I I remember doing that.
Kevin
What did you guys do with the pumpkin seeds?
Jack
We just threw it all in the garbage.
Jack
It was just like, the smell is not so good.
Oh, Oh no.
Jack
And I know that.
Jack
I know pumpkin seeds are really quite healthy and you can you can bake them or, yeah, that's smart.
Kevin
That's what we would do.
Kevin
It's really simple, like there's.
Kevin
All the pumpkin guts and I don't remember I.
Kevin
I'm sure my mom just threw that away.
Kevin
She would like pick all the seeds out.
Kevin
Of it, but she would.
Kevin
Just line, uh, Trey, just with seeds.
Kevin
And throw it in the oven and just sprinkle salt over it.
Kevin
So just salted pumpkin seeds.
Kevin
Really simple.
Kevin
And yeah, every year we would we would have just a big tray of pumpkin seeds after making our jack-o'-lanterns.
Jack
I think we were just too lazy to kind of pull the guts apart from the seeds.
Jack
Like it's kind of hard to separate the seeds.
Kevin
Yeah, they all stuck together.
Jack
It's all stuck together, but yeah.
Kevin
I don't remember how my mom did it, but I know she was she.
Kevin
Was the one in charge of Elsa.
Jack
This is a hard worker, yeah?
Kevin
Yes, wait.
Jack
The yeah and the other thing I like, I like the season.
Jack
My favorite season is fall and so Halloween comes kind of at the end of fall or right in the middle of fall, I guess.
Jack
And the air is kind of in English we say brisk.
Jack
So it's kind of, that's my favorite temperature.
Kevin
I do love the fall as well.
Jack
I love it.
Jack
Yeah, just the.
Kevin
And Thanksgiving then is just a couple weeks later, and so it's starting to get a little bit cold.
Kevin
But it depends on where you live.
Kevin
Of course for me.
Kevin
Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is a holiday.
Kevin
A day off of work, of course.
Kevin
And I always loved Thanksgiving because it's just a gathering of friends and family.
Kevin
And for us, I have a pretty small family, especially growing up, like my family is spread all over America.
Kevin
So Thanksgiving, we would actually go over to a family friends house and we would join in their big Thanksgiving.
Kevin
Instead of my family, which is just three people.
Kevin
We would go and join this big group where there was like 20 people there and we would, you know, there was a ton of food.
Kevin
Of course it's Thanksgiving food, but then also it was really fun because there were all the other kids to play with all the other families, and so we'd all eat and eat and eat a lot.
Kevin
And then after, of course.
Kevin
It was, you know, the parents and the adults would all go and either watch TV or talk or whatever and all the kids we would go up to.
Kevin
One of the kids rooms at whatever house we were at and we played a lot of video games.
Kevin
I know we talked about that a couple episodes ago.
Kevin
And so it was just a really fun day to to gather all together with friends and family.
Kevin
And then I did the same when I was in university.
Kevin
Actually, because again, Thanksgiving has always been really big for me.
Kevin
And when you're in university, you know, some people live or some people, parents, homes.
Kevin
Are quite far from the university town.
Kevin
And so sometimes my friends would go home for Thanksgiving, and they'd go back.
Kevin
But before Thanksgiving, every year, we would do a friendsgiving.
Kevin
And so it was all the friends would get together because Thanksgiving Day is for family and so some people would go home.
Kevin
But before that, like one week before, we have all the friends to come together and everyone would, you know, we're just college students.
Kevin
We don't have a lot of money.
Kevin
We don't have a lot of.
Kevin
They don't have a lot of space, but everyone would do.
Kevin
We do a potluck.
Kevin
And so, you know, I would bring some food and my other friend would bring some food and everyone would bring something and we would all come together and do like a friend Thanksgiving, where we'd all just get together.
Jack
Did you, did you cook?
Jack
A bird like like make for our listeners out there like the most traditional of Thanksgiving.
Jack
Food is the Turkey we yeah, I made a Turkey and did you guys do a Turkey for friendsgiving?
Kevin
Sometimes everyone would do something different.
Kevin
There was almost always someone would do our Turkey, would actually bake the whole Turkey.
Kevin
What I I always like to have fun with my friends giving.
Kevin
So Turkey is still the traditional food for it.
Kevin
But what I did for my friends giving for two years.
Kevin
In a row I remember I did different things, though I still did Turkey, but not like the big, you know, full birds cooked in an oven.
Jack
Yeah, that's too much for just a few friends, yeah.
Kevin
Uhm, yeah.
Kevin
So what I did though is I would go and just buy some Turkey meat and one year I did Turkey tacos.
Jack
Turkey tacos, OK, yeah.
Kevin
So it was still Turkey.
Kevin
You still get that traditional Turkey, but I was like, I'm going to do something different with it.
Kevin
And we did Turkey tacos or another year.
Kevin
I did Turkey sandwiches, and so we'd still do like, the cranberry spread, but instead of, you know, just on the plate of Turkey meat and cranberries and things.
Kevin
It was a Turkey sandwich, basically, so I played with the theme a little bit.
Jack
That's fun that the Turkey Taco thing is definitely a good representation of where you're from. The SW yeah, you're close to Mexico. So yeah, of course.
Kevin
That too, yeah.
Jack
Mexican food.
Jack
That kind of fusion with Thanksgiving is a great idea.
Jack
I the thing I remember is the week after Thanksgiving.
Jack
How many Turkey sandwiches my brother and I would eat because my mom had all of this meat leftover from Thanksgiving?
Kevin
Lots of blood fingers.
Jack
Yeah, it was just Turkey sandwiches for, like, a week after Thanksgiving.
Jack
Yeah, every day.
Jack
Yeah, but I loved it.
Kevin
That was the best part.
Jack
I love Turkey.
Kevin
When, yeah, I loved when I a couple years I went to my friend because I was living away from my parents in university, but one of my good friends, he was still living with his.
Kevin
Family. And so they would invite me to their house for Thanksgiving as again, just big important holiday. And I would love that because as a college student going to my friend's mom house, that mom would make tons of food and always would give me bags and bags of food to take home after I had tons of leftovers.
Jack
And then when you're a poor college student, that there's nothing better than free food.
Kevin
Oh yeah.
Kevin
There's nothing better than free food, and I think this is kind of an interesting place to end, and that's something I'd love to talk to or hear from our audience about our listeners.
Kevin
Like one what holiday is important for you and what's your favorite holiday?
Kevin
But what does your family do on those holidays?
Kevin
And is it the same or is it different?
Kevin
From other holidays and every family has her own trip.
Jack
That's right. In every country got its own you know cultural holidays that might not align with the with the US so share, share those two because. Yeah.
Kevin
And that.
Jack
Very interested in in lots of different you know stories and lots of different conditions.
Kevin
I think Thanksgiving would be what I'd love to hear because a lot of countries don't have Thanksgiving in the same way, but they have some harvest festival, and that's really what Thanksgiving is.
Jack
Dad, right. Yeah, yeah.
Kevin
You know, here in Korea we've got chalk, and in America we've got Thanksgiving.
Kevin
And it's the same idea, but it's so different.
Kevin
But still, it's getting friends, it's getting family together and food.
Jack
Yeah, it's all there's all of its family and food.
Kevin
So she.
Jack
Those are the two common denominators.
Kevin
Those are the big ones.
Jack
I think they, yeah.
Jack
Cut across all the holidays.
Kevin
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin
That's so I'd love to hear what different holidays you have, but also how do you do your holidays?
Because, maybe it's different and holidays are fun to talk about.
Kevin
Always a happy time of year, hopefully.
Kevin
And so that's where it's a good topic to to discuss.
Kevin
But we can go ahead.
Kevin
And wrap up with that for today.
Kevin
So what about listener mail Jack who has who sent in today?
Jack
Yes, so we.
Jack
Have, yeah, so we have some listener messages from our listener mail from.
Jack
Nikki and I'm I apologize if I.
Kevin
And this was actually on our website of course, so you can comment on there.
Jack
Yeah, yeah.
Jack
Nikki wrote right into the yeah, you can just leave a comment right on our website.
Jack
And so she said hi, Kevin and Jack.
Jack
And the question was how did you learn to type?
Jack
And so that was one of the discussion questions that we had in a recent episode, I believe.
Kevin
That was from, yeah, quick Chat 14 about our technology discussion, our old technology one.
Jack
That's right, that's right, Nikki said.
Jack
I learned to type when I studied for two years at university and I started a part time job at that time.
Jack
In the interview, the first question was, can I use a computer?
Jack
Here, unfortunately, we didn't have a computer in our house.
Kevin
You don't.
Jack
It was very difficult to find an Internet cafe in our city.
Jack
Fortunately, my father friend worked at the university at the Computer Center, and so Nikki says I asked permission from him to use the computer.
Kevin
OK, nice.
Jack
Yeah, he showed me how to turn up, turn on and turn off the computer and then said the best way to learn is just.
Jack
Do it by yourself.
Jack
So he didn't really help her help Nikki.
Jack
And so, uh, but Nikki figured it out and even though it was hard, eventually learned how to type.
Jack
So there you go.
Jack
That's a very interesting story.
Jack
And yeah, I mean, that's the way you learn things anyway, right?
Jack
It's just talking about doing it.
Kevin
It really is.
Kevin
Just start.
Kevin
Just do it.
Kevin
Just get in there and start clicking around.
Kevin
That's great.
Kevin
Well, thanks for writing it on the website, Nikki.
Kevin
That's very cool information to have.
Kevin
And for everybody, of course, you can please check out our website where we have all of our information.
Kevin
Then of course you can comment right on there, but also remember to check the show notes where you can get links to the website and links to our WhatsApp group where you can come and join the conversation.
Kevin
Tell us more.
Kevin
Also, if you've got the time, it would be great if on Apple Podcast you could go and give us a 5 star review.
Kevin
And write a comment about how we're helping you with your English here.
Kevin
So everybody, thanks for joining in and see you in our chat.
Jack
Alright, bye. Bye.
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