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Beth and Phil share real stories about journeys and travel. Beth bumps into people she knows in unusual places, and Phil tries to get into the Paraguayan way of life. 

Transcript

Beth
Hello. Welcome to the Learning English Stories podcast. I'm Beth and today we're telling more of our own true stories. Phil is joining me to share some stories about journeys. Hi, Phil.

Phil
Hi. How are you, Beth?

Beth
I am good, thank you. Are you OK?

Phil
I am, I'm very good. Yes.

Beth
So, Phil, do you enjoy going on journeys?

Phil
I do enjoy going on journeys. I love travelling and seeing different places. I find it really interesting.

Beth
Do you like spending time in train stations and airports?

Phil
Not so much that. I prefer the actually getting there.

Beth
Yeah, I think maybe the holiday is sometimes more exciting than the journey, although it depends.

Phil
Yeah, a nice road trip can be fun.

Beth
Oh, that's true, that's true. OK, then, Phil, let's start with your story.

Phil
My story. Well, this is about a journey from a long time ago. I'm going to talk about a journey that was about 20 years ago. It was a big journey. It was for a year. I went to work in Paraguay. I'd never been there before, and I can just remember going to the airport. I had to get the tube to the airport, and it was just full of people just going to work and sort of doing their normal commute. And I was like, well, I suppose I am going to work, but it's a lot further and I'm not coming back for a year.

And then we got to the airport, and we got on the plane and we couldn't get a direct flight, so we went to Miami and Sao Paulo on the way. But I just remember being in Miami, we had to spend eight hours there and sort of just walking out of the airport for a little bit. And Miami in August, it's hot, it's humid, and as soon as you step out, I'm not used to it when you step out of a building in this air conditioning, and it's hotter outside than when you're inside, because that doesn't usually happen in England. But it was really hot in Miami, so I thought, well, at least where I'm going to it's winter, so it won't be so hot. So then we got on the plane again, flew overnight down to Paraguay. It's quite a long way from Miami. And, yeah, when we got off the plane there, it was even hotter.

Beth
Oh, no.

Phil
It was so humid. And, and this is winter. This is like the end of August. Southern hemisphere. It's kind of not spring yet. Get in the taxi. The guy looks at us and he just says, what are you gonna do in summer? Yeah, it took a lot of getting used to it. I remember going to, there was a big party for the start of spring on the 21st of September and spring, well, if you know England, spring in England is actually still quite cold. Whereas spring in Paraguay, it was about 40 degrees. I was like…

Beth
Oh, gosh.

Phil
…'what's this? Doesn't feel like spring.' So it was a bit tough at the beginning because when you when you go away for so long, you're sort of thinking, you kind of can't see the end of it, so it's hard to process sometimes. And it took me a while to get used to it. But then you do, you do get used to it. You get used to the rhythms and the timings and how everything's different. And yeah, then, then it was kind of strange coming back.

Beth
And I guess when you got back, everything must have felt really cold, because if you thought that Paraguay in the winter was, uh, was, well, hot in the end.

Phil
I remember chatting online to someone that I'd worked with in Paraguay, and I was in Wales at the time and he's like, oh my God, it's really cold here. It's 17 degrees. And I was like, oh, that's quite warm here. It's 17 degrees.

Beth
Well, it definitely sounds like quite an adventure and a very long journey really. Was it worth it? Are you happy that you went to Paraguay for a year?

Phil
Well, it definitely changed my life because it's the first time I ever taught English.

Beth
Mm.

Phil
And I'm also still married to someone I met there, so…

Beth
Oh, well. Yeah.

Phil
…had a big impact.

Beth
Yeah. It sounds, it sounds like it did.

Phil
OK, Beth, tell us about a journey that you've made.

Beth
OK. Well, when I finished university, I went travelling for six months with my best friend, and I had some weird coincidences that happened on this trip. So, for example, I was in Thailand in a train station in the middle of nowhere. There was… it was about midnight because we were waiting for a train that was early in the morning, and I suddenly heard someone say, 'Beth, Beth!' And it was a girl I knew from school, and we were both really surprised because this wasn't a train station in Bangkok or Chiang Mai. It wasn't somewhere famous. It was somewhere that was the middle of nowhere, so that was very strange.

And a couple of months later, I was in LA in, in the US, and we were staying in a hostel, and I saw a guy and I thought, I know that guy. I went to school with him. And I wasn't entirely sure, so I didn't say anything, but a few days later, I saw him again in the hostel, and I said, 'hey, you're, you went to school with me, didn't you?' And he, he was like, 'oh, yes, like we had we had geography class together'. And, uh, yeah, we, we weren't friends, but we knew each other. And the only reason that I saw him again was because he'd missed his flight. Um, so that was a strange coincidence.

And then I would say the last strange coincidence, I was in Alaska. Alaska really is not a, not a very common place to visit, I would say. And I was on a ship, and I saw a guy that I thought I knew, and I thought, no way, this is not happening again. I'm not seeing someone I know, surely. And the man that I knew was called Ben, and, he played the piano, and I convinced myself that it wasn't him. But the last night of the ship, there was a man playing the piano on the stage, and there was a singer, and she said, 'take it away, Ben'. And it was Ben. And it was absolutely him playing the piano. And I went up to him at the end of the, of the performance, and he said, Beth, what are you doing here? I said, what are you doing here in Alaska? So yeah, I bumped into three people in six months in very different parts of the world, and it's a bit strange. This just seems to happen to me.

Phil
Wow. Yeah, that's, that's… and Thailand, LA and Alaska. Yeah. They're not near each other, are they?

Beth
No. These things happen to me. I don't know why.

Phil
Everyone's following you, Beth.

Beth
I know. Will you all stop following me, please? Tell us about an interesting journey you've been on. Maybe you've travelled to see friends or family for a holiday, or maybe your journey to work every day is very interesting. Send us an email and tell us your story. Our email address is [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.

Phil
That's it for this episode. Next time Pippa and Beth will be sharing some stories all about families. Bye for now.

Beth
Goodbye.

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