English Listening - Family Visit

Welcome to the listening time podcast. Hey everybody. This is Connor and you're listening to episode 221 of the listening time podcast. I hope you're all doing great and that your English learning is going well. I hope that this podcast has been helpful for you and that you feel like your comprehension is improving little by little probably. And in today's episode I want to talk about the recent visit that we had from my in-laws my wife's family. It wasn't her whole family but her mom her sister her sister's husband and her sister's baby boy all came and stayed with us for a little over a week. So they just left last weekend. So this is something on my mind and it was a really nice experience. And so I wanted to talk about that today especially because it was a special experience because we met each other's kids. I had never met their son. My wife had never met their son and my mother-in-law my wife's mother had never met their son either and they hadn't met my daughter and only my sister-in-law had met my son. So it was cool. It was a great experience. So this will be a more personal episode but I'm sure you'll enjoy it. And remember as always that you can sign up for my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast by becoming a listening time family member. So that link is down below and you can also check out my U.S. Conversations podcast in which I talk to different people from all over the country at normal speed. It's great practice for your listening. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. It's very educational. You learn a lot about the country. And like I said it's great for your comprehension. So check that out. That link is also down below. All right let's get started. Are your ears ready. You know what time it is. It's listening time. Okay let me talk about my in-laws visit their stay here at my house. First of all I'm really thankful that we have enough space in our house to host people now. Of course people had to share rooms and stuff but it was perfectly fine and it was great having them here in our own space. We really enjoyed that and they did too. So I'm really thankful that we were able to do that. And I'm also thankful that we have a car that can actually fit all of us. It's a very tight squeeze meaning there's not a lot of room when we all go in that one car together. But that car seats eight people and there were eight of us with three car seats for babies or small children. So it was a tight squeeze but thankfully we were able to go around together in the same car. So I'm really thankful that we have the house and the car to actually host family like that. So that was cool. So let me just talk about the last time when we all saw each other. So we last saw my sister in law about two and a half years ago. I think that goes for my wife as well. I don't think she has seen her sister within the last two and a half years if I'm not mistaken. And so the last time we saw my sister in law she actually met my son who was just one year old at the time. So obviously he doesn't remember her. So for him it was as if this were the first time meeting her as well even though she already met him. But my brother in law had never met either of my kids. And the last time I saw him was over four years ago actually. So it was a long time that we went without seeing each other. He hadn't met my son or my daughter. And by the way I should mention this brother in law that I'm talking about is Ferdia who some of you might know because I actually recorded an episode of my U.S. Conversations podcast with him. He was the one exception to the rule because usually I just talk to Americans but I wanted to record a special episode with him. So some of you might remember who my brother in law is. So I hadn't seen him in more than four years. So a long time. And of course we had never met their nine month old son and my mother in law my wife's mother hadn't met their son either. So you can imagine that excitement. She's a grandma meeting her grandchild for the first time. That's very special of course. And it's not like when she met my kids because my mother in law was actually there when both of my kids were born. She wasn't in the room I mean but she came to our house or was at our house the next day or the same day. So she was able to spend a lot of time with my kids right when they were born. And of course they weren't doing much at that time. They were just tiny newborn babies. I think that's a little bit different from this experience because she was meeting her other grandson for the first time and he is nine months old. He's not just a newborn baby. He can actually interact with people and sit up and make noises and laugh and smile. So I think this was a different experience for my mother in law meeting her grandson at nine months old rather than a newborn baby. So that was pretty special for her too. So as you can imagine this was a really important reunion for all of us. Honestly we just missed them a lot. It had been a long time since we were all together and it was long overdue. Meaning we should have done something like this a long time ago. But even though it was long overdue it's good that we eventually got around to doing this type of reunion with them. And throughout this whole experience of being with them it made us appreciate family more and of course it made us remember that we're all getting older and if we only see each other every four years five years or so we probably won't see very much of each other throughout the rest of our lives. So hopefully we can see each other a little more often than that. And it was just a really fun experience playing with each other's kids seeing the kids interact with each other a little bit. Of course their son is very young so there isn't a ton of interaction in terms of playing and stuff like that. But still there was some interaction between my kids and their kid. So overall it was just a really good family experience. And so let me talk a little bit about what we did and just talk about our time together. They flew into two different airports. So this was a little bit complicated. So my sister-in-law's family they flew into LAX which is the big airport in Los Angeles. You can imagine this is a very busy airport. A lot of international flights go out from Los Angeles and so they flew from Dublin Ireland directly to Los Angeles. Dublin is where they live. They live in Ireland and that was a challenge for them because they flew with their baby boy and that's a long flight 10 and a half hours maybe if I'm not mistaken. So they flew into LAX but my mother-in-law flew into a different airport called Ontario Airport which is closer to where I live and their flights arrived maybe an hour apart from each other. And so I thought I would be able to go to LAX and pick my sister-in-law brother-in-law and nephew up and then it would be perfect timing to go to the other airport and pick up my mother-in-law. But unfortunately there was a little bit of a complication after they landed at LAX. Their stroller wasn't there with the baggage and then finally someone realized that the crew or whoever is supposed to be in charge of all of that stuff they didn't bring the strollers in from the gate. The gate is like where you enter the airplane. There are a lot of different gates at an airport so they had to wait for a long time to get their stroller. So I had to circle around the airport for a long time while I waited for them. And so by the time I picked them up and then made it all the way to the other airport to pick up my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law had been waiting for quite a while so it was a lot of driving. It wasn't the easiest thing to pick people up from two different airports but it was really fun to see my nephew for the first time there when I picked them up from LAX and I just got to say hi really quick before we put everything into the car and started driving. But we got home late at night and then the next morning was kind of the big introduction where they met our kids and we all spent time together and it was really nice. My kids were really shy at first because my kids are super shy compared to other kids but they had brought gifts for my kids and that really helped my kids warm up to them. As we say when someone warms up to someone else that means that they start to feel more comfortable with the person and like them and enjoy being around them. Maybe this is a warm up to someone. So my kids warmed up to them when they saw all the gifts and it was really nice to watch them start to interact with their aunt and uncle. And of course we had already met their son the night before but it was fun to introduce the cousins to each other and their son is huge. They have a really big baby but of course at that age when babies are really big and have all of their baby fat it's super cute. It's a compliment at that age to talk about a baby being big and having fat and all of that. He's super cute and very lovable and smiley. He smiles a lot. My kids at that age did not smile at strangers or new people as much as my nephew smiles. So he's really cute and smiley. Super big. So it was really fun to get to know him a little bit and interact with him and I like watching my kids interact with their cousin. So that was great. My wife was really happy to meet my nephew. For her it was really special to meet her first nephew that actually is a blood relative because it's her sister's son. So our other nephew and niece they are my blood relatives and obviously there are niece and nephew. It's my wife's niece and nephew. But of course she was excited to meet her sister's son for her. It was her first time being around a nephew who is a blood relative to her so she really liked that. And of course like I mentioned my mother in law was super happy to meet him. And what was great throughout the time that they were here was that number one my nephew and my wife really bonded. They spent a lot of time together. But really the big surprise was that my kids really really loved their aunt and uncle. My daughter just loved being picked up by her uncle her aunt and by the end of their stay. It was as if they had always known each other and they were just super comfortable with each other. It was really nice to see. And so we spent a lot of time together just here at the house playing with the kids and all that. That was really fun. And one of the main things we did really besides that the main thing we did throughout their stay was shopping. This is not my favorite thing. This is not what I prefer doing but I liked being able to spend time with our family regardless of what we were doing. So we drove to a lot of different malls and shopping centers and stores. And of course I got a little bit bored at a lot of these places after being there for a while. We did go to one store that I actually liked a used bookstore. I don't know if you have a lot of used bookstores in your city where you live here in the US used bookstores are pretty common. I love these stores because you can find cheap books that are still in good condition and I love buying classic books for cheap at these used bookstores. So I enjoyed going to that store. The other stores were more for buying clothes and makeup and all that kind of stuff. Kids clothes. Right. So not necessarily the funnest thing for me. But like I said I enjoyed driving around with them and talking to them and spending time with them. And the other big thing we did was eat. We ate a lot. I ate a bunch of junk food. This tends to happen when I'm on vacation or people are visiting. I tend to eat pretty bad. I don't eat how I normally eat. But one thing that was really exciting for my in-laws was to eat Mexican food here because the Mexican food they have in Ireland is not very good according to them. And obviously my sister in law is from Mexico and my brother in law actually lived in Mexico for about a year. And so for them Mexican food is very important but they don't get the chance to eat good Mexican food very often. So they were really excited to eat this type of food here in Southern California because we have great Mexican food here. It's kind of like the California style of Mexican food. It's a little different from Mexican food in Mexico but it's really good. So we actually ate at the same restaurant like four times. It sounds kind of crazy but they just kept wanting more and more of this food from this restaurant that we showed them. And so we ended up eating food from that restaurant like four different times in a little over a week. So they loved it. They were really happy to eat good Mexican food again. And like I said we spent a lot of time just here at the house playing with the kids. We were able to play with the kids and have a lot of fun with them. one game, not exactly a board game, but more like a party game, we might call it. We were able to play a game one night, which is not the easiest thing when you have young kids, but we were able to do this, so that was nice. Me personally, I really enjoyed talking a lot to my brother-in-law with Ferdia. Some of you know him, as I already mentioned. Like I said, he actually lived in Mexico for a year. He and my sister-in-law lived in the same apartment building that we lived in, so we were neighbors, actually, and throughout that year, we spent a lot of time together. We played a lot of board games together, and we watched movies together, and things like that. And so, I had a closer connection to him in the past. We spent a lot of time together, but of course, once they moved to Ireland, obviously things were different, and we rarely saw each other. It was cool to spend time with him, and to just talk about the past, and also just have kind of like a cultural exchange. Remember, he's from Ireland, not from the US, so we were constantly talking about things in the US, and how they compared to things in Ireland, because this was the first time that we had been together in the US. Before this, I had only seen him in Mexico, or in Italy, when we traveled together. It was cool that they were able to come to my country, and we were able to talk a lot about the different things here, and whenever we would drive around, we would comment on some of the different things we saw. It was really fun to have this cultural exchange, and so it was great to be able to spend time with him, and of course, my wife was really happy to see her sister, and mother, and obviously her nephew, and my brother-in-law, everyone, but it was really great for us. In summary, we had really missed being with them, and we were really looking forward to this time together, and so we had a great time together, and it really made us want to see them more. Perhaps we'll go to Ireland at some point, I don't know. It would be great to go visit them there, and hopefully we can coordinate with them to see each other more often. It's hard. They live on the other side of the world. It's not easy to get together, but I think that we'll make an effort to see each other more often. I think we all really realized how much we had missed each other, and so we'll definitely try to coordinate these reunions more often, let's say, figure out the logistics. Like I said, it's not easy, but hopefully we'll be able to do that. I know this was more of a personal episode. I talked a lot about personal relationships in this one, but hopefully you enjoyed it, and I enjoyed talking about my reunion with that part of the family. Remember that you can check out my episode with Ferdia, and get to know him a little bit by signing up for my U.S. Conversations podcast. That link is down below, and you can also check out my advanced podcast episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member. That link is down below as well. If you haven't done so yet, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can. That really helps me out. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.