Daily Dose of English 96
Hot Weather
Daily Dose of English 96
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben. You're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts and for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about hot weather because it's hot right now. Um, actually it's been quite warm where I live for really the entire summer so far, which started like two months ago. Uh, it's been hot. And so I thought I might talk a little bit about hot weather and, uh, yeah, leave it at that. So hot weather for me generally starts at about 25 degrees Celsius and above. Um, 25 is quite nice. I really enjoy 25 degrees. Um, but I wouldn't call that like, or I would like 24. I don't wouldn't really call hot yet. I don't actually use Celsius or Fahrenheit that much anymore, even though that's what I grew up with and that's what we use in the US. But I'd say around like 80 degrees Fahrenheit is where hot starts. I think 24 degrees is about like 79 or 78 or something like that, but I don't exactly know. It could be a little bit less. But from like 25 degrees and on is hot. Once you get to 30 though, that's when it's like really hot. And then some people live in countries where it gets to like 35 or 40 degrees and I don't understand that at all. That sounds very miserable. That sounds terrible. It sounds so hot. During the hot weather, there's a couple of things that I try to do to stay cool and one of them is definitely ventilation. So when the weather is really hot, making sure that if you're inside that you have airflow moving through the room and your apartment or your house or whatever it is, is very important. A good tip is to find a cross breeze, and that's when you open two windows or two doors or whatever in different parts of your, I'm just gonna say apartment, but this kind of can apply to anything. So two windows in different parts of your apartment so that the air flows through from one place to another, that makes a cross breeze. And that really helps a lot with airflow and keeping things moving and having it not be so hot inside. I had to close my window because I'm recording this episode right now and I like my audio to be a little bit cleaner. So I closed my window and it's a little bit hot. It's kind of hot in here. I'm excited to open it back up again and move to a different part of the apartment so that I'm not really hot. If you don't have a ton of windows or they're not really doing much, then other options are fans are great. Having a fan just to move air around can be really nice. During the hot season, I sleep with a fan. I don't actually keep it running during the day because it just doesn't do that much in the rest of the apartment, but it's fantastic for sleeping. Um, I actually have two fans. One of them is stronger. It's a, a stronger, larger fan, but it's a louder. Um, and then the other one is a little bit smaller and that's what I use in like warm weather when I want some airflow, but I don't want the, the, the big sort of louder fan, even though it's a better fan. Because sometimes you don't want it to be that cold in your room. Cause you don't want to get actually cold when you're sleeping or whatever. And so I like to use a fan at night to sleep. And I also get rid of my comforter because on my bed I like to have most of the year, and actually this is what I did pretty much all year in Oregon or in colder parts of the world, is I sleep with a sheet and then a comforter. A comforter, or duvet is another word for it, is a very thick, big blanket. And I like them a lot when I sleep because they're warm, they're cozy, which are a little bit different. And if I need, I can stick out my feet or my legs or whatever so I don't get too hot. I'm able to sleep quite well with a comforter and I really like them. I prefer them if it's not too hot. However, in the hot weather, you just can't. It's way too hot, right? If at night it's 27, 28 degrees, it's just not possible to sleep with a comforter on because it's... Too frickin' hot. So I replace that with a regular blanket. It is wool, so it is nice and cozy still. And so I have a regular sheet and then a blanket. I just forgot the word. And then a blanket for the hot weather. And again, if I need, I just stick my legs out or whatever and I can cool down that way. And I find that to be the most comfortable. So a sheet with a blanket on top and then a fan is great for me for the hot weather. If it was even hotter, so like maybe 30 something degrees at night, first off, that would be too hot. I would probably suffocate. But I would probably have to downgrade to just a sheet at that point. and potentially a fan as well. I don't like sleeping without a sheet, and I do like to have something that's a little bit thicker, because I find that I can really easily get cold at night. Because when you're falling asleep, and this is, I'm not sure if this is true everywhere in the world that's hot, but at least in parts of Mexico where I've been, when you're falling asleep, it's usually really hot, right? So at whatever, 10 or 11 p.m., maybe even at midnight, It's really hot, there's a lot of, it's almost we call it muggy. But then as it gets later and later in the night, so maybe like two, three, four a.m., it starts to get pretty cold, it gets chilly. And so if you don't have something more than a sheet, when it gets to be that cold, then you get cold and you wake up and you have to go find something. And I hate that, I hate waking up and having to go find another sheet or something like that. And so I try to have something with me already so that I can just pull it over myself or to have a fan that's like gonna turn off in a little bit. That's something that can also happen or something that can happen. Something that you can do is to set your fan to turn off in an hour or whatever if your fan has a timer that is. And I find that to be really helpful for that sort of weathered heat. I don't know why I've been talking about the night so much, but during the hot weather, it can also be really nice to go to outside and go to parks or to other kinds of things that are outside, go swimming. There's plenty of different activities that you can do outside. Growing up. I remember going definitely to the park a lot There were a couple of local parks that had like water features not pools necessarily although yes, there are great pools to go to but Like structures that like shoot water. They're usually for kids to play in and I really enjoyed that I'm going to play in the water and then hanging out in the park or something like that and One of the parks that I used to go to growing up had one of those water features, a really good big playground to play on, and then also an actual pool. And that was always a really fun thing to do during the summer. I'm not a huge swimmer. I don't love to swim. I enjoy it, and I do go into pools whenever it's available, pretty much. But I'm not like some people where you can't get them out of the pool. I remember having some friends who would swim for hours and hours and I did not want to do that. I wanted to go to the pool, swim around a little bit, have fun, and then get like a slushie or something. A slushie is, I don't know if they're specific to the US, they're probably not, they can't be, but they're a big drink, which is a lot of ice, but very finely crushed, so it kind of becomes like a mushy, not mushy, that's the wrong word. I mean, we'd call it a slushie sort of drink, which is hard to explain. Imagine like it's a little bit wet, but it's still thick, sort of like a smoothie, but it has more ice in it. And then, so it starts with that, and then there's a bunch of flavorings. They're really not very good. They're actually kind of, they can be really, really, really sweet and a little bit sickly. When you describe a food as sickly or a drink as sickly, it usually makes you feel, ugh, like, not like you're eating something disgusting, but something that's like too sweet or too salty can kind of be sickly. And so when I think of slushies and slurpees nowadays, that's what I think of. I think of like just really, really sweet and really, really artificial flavors. It's just like, ugh, I don't want that. I would much prefer, like even ice water at this point is a better drink for the heat. But yeah, I definitely enjoyed those as a kid. And yeah. There's a lot more great stuff to do in hot weather. You can go on, if it's not too hot, I guess, you can go on a good bike ride or just go on walks, on hikes, because those can be really nice in the sun, especially if you're from somewhere that doesn't have that much sun. So, yeah. Anyways, I'm going to leave it there. Let me know down in the comments below where if it gets hot where you're from, either a little bit every year or basically the entire year and what you like to do in the hot weather wherever you live or you're from. But thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you enjoyed it and I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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