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/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7Download 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/If you could take a minute and complete a short survey about the podcast, we would be very appreciative. You can find the survey here: https://forms.gle/HHNnnqU6U8W3DodK8We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes.Intro/Outro Music by Eaters: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eaters/the-astronomers-office/agents-in-coffee-shops/JackYou are listening to the A-Z English podcast. KevinWelcome 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. KevinRemember 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. KevinBut Jack what? KevinDo you want to talk about today? KevinWhat's this topic? JackToday I want to talk about favorite holidays so well. KevinAnd cool. JackI know that you're a big fan of of the holidays, the holiday season, and I am 2, but everybody got their like favorite. JackOne you know. JackAnd so I've kind of. JackI would like to use it to share with our listeners what your favorite. JackAmerican Holiday is and why? KevinYeah for holidays, that's interesting. KevinI'm it depends on the holiday for me because actually some holidays like Christmas. KevinI don't really like very much, but that's the and that was not I I Grinch or as screwed. JackAre you a Grinch or Scrooge? KevinIt's just when I was in university, I worked a couple of retail jobs at just like big stores. KevinAnd they just always played Christmas music all day, every day for two months the same the same CD repeated. JackRight, the same 7 songs. JackOver and over again, right. KevinAgain and again and again. KevinAnd I just got really sick of it. KevinIt's just like no more Christmas, but around that same time of year is the American Thanksgiving. KevinAnd that holiday is probably the holiday that I probably the holiday that I miss the most not living in America these days. KevinI'll talk about it a. KevinLittle bit, but what's? KevinWhat's yours first? JackSo mine is a little bit strange because it I don't know if it's technically a holiday, but I'm getting. KevinThings well, that's what you got. JackI'll tell you what it is. JackOK, so I when I was a kid, I loved Halloween. KevinOK, right. JackAnd I still do. JackI I, I still love Halloween. JackI love all the. JackThe 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. KevinRight. JackI love zombie movies and vampire movies. KevinRight. We talked about that. JackMovies, so I love horror. JackUhm, so for me, I just always loved Halloween. JackNow, in America, Halloween is not a day off from work. JackSo you still have to go to work on Halloween. KevinRight. JackSo it's not technically a holiday, but. KevinThe best. JackIt's something that we celebrate. KevinI think account. JackAnd 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. JackOctober 31st. KevinRight. KevinThat is pretty much where, yeah that that holiday season because, it's the three holidays basically in two months, you know end of October. KevinEnd of November. Kevinend of December. KevinJust bumping film all altogether. KevinThat's a a cool one, because it's so different from here in Korea too. KevinIn America, right? KevinLike in America? KevinI mean, people go crazy decorating their homes with so much holiday decorations my dad loves to decorate. KevinLike they would set up this, their whole yard would have, you know, skeletons and witches and light shows and things there's. JackAh, I love when families really get into it like that. JackLike, uh. JackWhat when we were young, what was really exciting for my brother and me was to go to a pumpkin patch, and so we would. KevinOh, OK, cool. JackWe would each pick out a pumpkin, and then we would bring it home. JackAnd then you take all the insides of the pumping out, and then you carve what's called a Jackal Lantern, and that's. JackYou know, you put you, you cut out the eyes and you cut out a nose and a mouth. JackAnd you put a candle inside of it, and at night it looks really cool because it glows with that fandom inside. KevinYeah, I I remember doing that. KevinWhat did you guys do with the pumpkin seeds? JackWe just threw it all in the garbage. JackIt was just like, the smell is not so good.Oh, Oh no. JackAnd I know that. JackI know pumpkin seeds are really quite healthy and you can you can bake them or, yeah, that's smart. KevinThat's what we would do. KevinIt's really simple, like there's. KevinAll the pumpkin guts and I don't remember I. KevinI'm sure my mom just threw that away. KevinShe would like pick all the seeds out. KevinOf it, but she would. KevinJust line, uh, Trey, just with seeds. KevinAnd throw it in the oven and just sprinkle salt over it. KevinSo just salted pumpkin seeds. KevinReally simple. KevinAnd yeah, every year we would we would have just a big tray of pumpkin seeds after making our jack-o'-lanterns. JackI think we were just too lazy to kind of pull the guts apart from the seeds. JackLike it's kind of hard to separate the seeds. KevinYeah, they all stuck together. JackIt's all stuck together, but yeah. KevinI don't remember how my mom did it, but I know she was she. KevinWas the one in charge of Elsa. JackThis is a hard worker, yeah? KevinYes, wait. JackThe yeah and the other thing I like, I like the season. JackMy favorite season is fall and so Halloween comes kind of at the end of fall or right in the middle of fall, I guess. JackAnd the air is kind of in English we say brisk. JackSo it's kind of, that's my favorite temperature. KevinI do love the fall as well. JackI love it. JackYeah, just the. KevinAnd Thanksgiving then is just a couple weeks later, and so it's starting to get a little bit cold. KevinBut it depends on where you live. KevinOf course for me. KevinThanksgiving and Thanksgiving is a holiday. KevinA day off of work, of course. KevinAnd I always loved Thanksgiving because it's just a gathering of friends and family. KevinAnd for us, I have a pretty small family, especially growing up, like my family is spread all over America. KevinSo Thanksgiving, we would actually go over to a family friends house and we would join in their big Thanksgiving. KevinInstead of my family, which is just three people. KevinWe 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. KevinOf 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. KevinAnd then after, of course. KevinIt 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. KevinOne of the kids rooms at whatever house we were at and we played a lot of video games. KevinI know we talked about that a couple episodes ago. KevinAnd so it was just a really fun day to to gather all together with friends and family. KevinAnd then I did the same when I was in university. KevinActually, because again, Thanksgiving has always been really big for me. KevinAnd when you're in university, you know, some people live or some people, parents, homes. KevinAre quite far from the university town. KevinAnd so sometimes my friends would go home for Thanksgiving, and they'd go back. KevinBut before Thanksgiving, every year, we would do a friendsgiving. KevinAnd so it was all the friends would get together because Thanksgiving Day is for family and so some people would go home. KevinBut before that, like one week before, we have all the friends to come together and everyone would, you know, we're just college students. KevinWe don't have a lot of money. KevinWe don't have a lot of. KevinThey don't have a lot of space, but everyone would do. KevinWe do a potluck. KevinAnd 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. JackDid you, did you cook? JackA bird like like make for our listeners out there like the most traditional of Thanksgiving. JackFood is the Turkey we yeah, I made a Turkey and did you guys do a Turkey for friendsgiving? KevinSometimes everyone would do something different. KevinThere was almost always someone would do our Turkey, would actually bake the whole Turkey. KevinWhat I I always like to have fun with my friends giving. KevinSo Turkey is still the traditional food for it. KevinBut what I did for my friends giving for two years. KevinIn 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. JackYeah, that's too much for just a few friends, yeah. KevinUhm, yeah. KevinSo what I did though is I would go and just buy some Turkey meat and one year I did Turkey tacos. JackTurkey tacos, OK, yeah. KevinSo it was still Turkey. KevinYou still get that traditional Turkey, but I was like, I'm going to do something different with it. KevinAnd we did Turkey tacos or another year. KevinI 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. KevinIt was a Turkey sandwich, basically, so I played with the theme a little bit. JackThat'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. KevinThat too, yeah. JackMexican food. JackThat kind of fusion with Thanksgiving is a great idea. JackI the thing I remember is the week after Thanksgiving. JackHow many Turkey sandwiches my brother and I would eat because my mom had all of this meat leftover from Thanksgiving? KevinLots of blood fingers. JackYeah, it was just Turkey sandwiches for, like, a week after Thanksgiving. JackYeah, every day. JackYeah, but I loved it. KevinThat was the best part. JackI love Turkey. KevinWhen, 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. KevinFamily. 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. JackAnd then when you're a poor college student, that there's nothing better than free food. KevinOh yeah. KevinThere'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. KevinLike one what holiday is important for you and what's your favorite holiday? KevinBut what does your family do on those holidays? KevinAnd is it the same or is it different? KevinFrom other holidays and every family has her own trip. JackThat'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. KevinAnd that. JackVery interested in in lots of different you know stories and lots of different conditions. KevinI 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. JackDad, right. Yeah, yeah. KevinYou know, here in Korea we've got chalk, and in America we've got Thanksgiving. KevinAnd it's the same idea, but it's so different. KevinBut still, it's getting friends, it's getting family together and food. JackYeah, it's all there's all of its family and food. KevinSo she. JackThose are the two common denominators. KevinThose are the big ones. JackI think they, yeah. JackCut across all the holidays. KevinYeah, yeah. KevinThat'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. KevinAlways a happy time of year, hopefully. KevinAnd so that's where it's a good topic to to discuss. KevinBut we can go ahead. KevinAnd wrap up with that for today. KevinSo what about listener mail Jack who has who sent in today? JackYes, so we. JackHave, yeah, so we have some listener messages from our listener mail from. JackNikki and I'm I apologize if I. KevinAnd this was actually on our website of course, so you can comment on there. JackYeah, yeah. JackNikki wrote right into the yeah, you can just leave a comment right on our website. JackAnd so she said hi, Kevin and Jack. JackAnd the question was how did you learn to type? JackAnd so that was one of the discussion questions that we had in a recent episode, I believe. KevinThat was from, yeah, quick Chat 14 about our technology discussion, our old technology one. JackThat's right, that's right, Nikki said. JackI learned to type when I studied for two years at university and I started a part time job at that time. JackIn the interview, the first question was, can I use a computer? JackHere, unfortunately, we didn't have a computer in our house. KevinYou don't. JackIt was very difficult to find an Internet cafe in our city. JackFortunately, my father friend worked at the university at the Computer Center, and so Nikki says I asked permission from him to use the computer. KevinOK, nice. JackYeah, he showed me how to turn up, turn on and turn off the computer and then said the best way to learn is just. JackDo it by yourself. JackSo he didn't really help her help Nikki. JackAnd so, uh, but Nikki figured it out and even though it was hard, eventually learned how to type. JackSo there you go. JackThat's a very interesting story. JackAnd yeah, I mean, that's the way you learn things anyway, right? JackIt's just talking about doing it. KevinIt really is. KevinJust start. KevinJust do it. KevinJust get in there and start clicking around. KevinThat's great. KevinWell, thanks for writing it on the website, Nikki. KevinThat's very cool information to have. KevinAnd for everybody, of course, you can please check out our website where we have all of our information. KevinThen 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. KevinTell us more. KevinAlso, if you've got the time, it would be great if on Apple Podcast you could go and give us a 5 star review. KevinAnd write a comment about how we're helping you with your English here. KevinSo everybody, thanks for joining in and see you in our chat. JackAlright, bye. Bye.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-a-to-z-english-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy