Steve: Hi Jill.
Jill: Hi again.
Steve: We're going to try to have an easy discussion. We're going to talk to each other and we're going to talk about the things that we do every day in our daily lives. So, could you begin or do you want me to begin? You begin and take us from when you wake up until 10:00 in the morning. Jill: Okay, so, on a recent podcast Mark and I discussed our daily routines a little bit, but I don't think it turned into beginner content. I think it was probably, at least intermediate by the end of it, so I'll try to go a little slower this time. When I get up in the morning, I usually get up around 6:30 and unlike Paco I don't turn my alarm off several times. I get up right away. I usually take about an hour to have a shower and of course, doing something with my hair seems to take about 20 minutes and, I know, it's frightening. You know, having some breakfast and what not.
So, I guess I get up, have a shower, do something with my hair, put on some make up, brush my teeth, usually grab some breakfast as I'm heading out the door. Then, that's usually about 7:30 and then I drive to work. It usually takes about 25 minutes so then I'm here by 8:00. Sometimes I chat with a couple of people in the morning first thing; sometimes not, check emails and that basically takes me to about 10:00 A.M.
Steve: Now, when you say chat, you're referring to chatting on Skype with some of our learners? Jill: Right.
Steve: Okay. Now, it's my turn. I wake up about 6:30, quarter to seven and my wife doesn't wake up until about 8:00, so I normally sneak out and go to the computer and look and see what happened over night. I might post something on my blog.
Sometimes I actually have a discussion, a Linguist or LingQ discussion at 8:00. I don't schedule them at 7:00, because if I want to sleep a little later than 7:00 it's just a little bit hectic. If I have a discussion at 8:00 then I might have one cup of coffee at 7:30 just to make sure I'm awake. Then when my wife gets up and inspects her flowers and all this kind of stuff, I, meanwhile, we have an espresso/cappuccino machine at home and we really, both of us really enjoy our cappuccino. So, when my wife is up then I will go and make the cappuccino.
First of all she will cut some fruit. We always begin our breakfast with fruit. It could be grapefruit, it could be right now berries, berries mixed with peaches are delicious. So, sometimes we'll put the berries in the peaches and a little bit of yogurt and sprinkle some granola on it and so we start with something like that. Then I will cut the bread and I like you know full grain, you know tasty bread, which we might toast in a little toaster oven and meanwhile I'll make up the coffee and it's cappuccino so we have the, and my wife and I have two different settings on the machine in terms of the strength of the cappuccino or the coffee. Then I will make the milk, froth the milk up in the little container and I pour the milk. If I get it right then the bubbles are just the right size. Sometimes it's too bubbly, sometimes it doesn't work, many things can influence it: milk, how old the milk is, things I don't understand, temperature, I don't know. Then we enjoy, oh and I also forgot to mention that before breakfast I run out and get the newspaper. So, we chat for a while and my wife likes to do Sedoku, which is something I would never, ever do and I read the newspaper.
When we're done with that then I'll go back up to my computer and I'll do some more work on the computer, because after I've had my nice cup of coffee and my nice bread I just can't brush my teeth right away. So, then at 10:00 I'll go brush my teeth and yeah, might have a shower and shave and then the day continues. What do you do, let's take the end of the day, when you leave and what happens. Take us into your evening.
Jill: Okay. Usually I leave work about, between 4:30 and 5:00 and I try most days after work to do some sort of exercise after having sat all day long. Sometimes I'm tired and I really don't want to, but I always feel better after I do so I'll try at least three days out of the week to, in the summer usually go for a run or a hike outside when the weather is nice. In the gym, or in the winter I will often go to the gym, because it's raining here a lot. Sometimes I'll still go for a run depending on how cold it is, but often I'll go to the gym. Sometimes maybe do a class at the gym, because I find I have a hard time spending a long time at the gym. I can go hiking for hours at a time, but I can't go on a treadmill for hours at a time. So, that's what I usually will do right after work. Then by the time I do that and get home its usually at least 7:00 if not 7:30 and then I eat something. Often I don't make anything very elaborate, because it's already so late. Often Chris and I actually end up picking up sushi or just Greek food or we eat out, we actually we out too much, but it's, because we just don't find that we have any time. So, then we eat and usually it's 8:00 or 8:30 by the time we're done eating and you know, then we do the dishes if there's dishes. Then maybe I need to have a shower after I've exercised and basically it's 9:00 o'clock at night. So, then maybe I spend an hour or so watching a show on TV and then usually by about 10:00 maybe 10:30 at the latest I go to bed and sometimes I read for 15 minutes if I'm not too tired. And, usually by 10:30 every night my light is being turned out. And then that's it until 6:30 the next morning. Steve: Okay, well in my case I'll often work in the morning at home in my home office. Then I come into the office in the afternoon and continue to do things that mostly relate to the Linguist, but also sometimes on our wood business, which is an important part of what we do.
Then I'll normally drive home and I should point out that I'm lucky. I'm about 10-15 minutes away so at 5:00 I'll drive home. And, of course, while I'm driving home I'm listening to Russian. Sometimes I will work out or run or exercise in the morning in, which case I've done my exercise. If I haven't then when I come home I'll work out or I'll go for a run. I'm like you; I feel, even if I feel tired, if I go for a run I'll actually feel less tired after my exercise. And, I am able to exercise and listen to my language at the same time.
Then, my wife is a great cook and so sometimes I will offer, I will say Carmen, you know you've been cooking so much recently. Let's go out. She says okay, okay. Then I say, but you know what? You're food is much better than anything we'll get at a restaurant and I'll open up a nice bottle wine and why don't we just eat at home. Yeah, you're right. Let's do that. So, there's a bit of a ritual that we go through. We occasionally go out, but increasingly it's just so much more pleasant to sit at home. And, I'm fortunate in that Carmen, my wife who likes to golf, but once she comes home from her golf thing she's quite happy to cook up a nice meal and we'll normally have an Hors d'euvres and a salad and we've got the vegetables and we've got the this and that. It turns out to be really a very nice meal.
And, so we will normally sit down around 7:00 o'clock. The other thing that we're able to do, because we live right by the ocean, in the summer we'll go for a swim. So, once the, Carmen has the food more or less ready to go and I wait for her, then we go in for a good swim, which is very refreshing especially if I have been exercising, because then the ocean is you know, 17 or 18 degrees so you don't stay in for a long, long time. But, it is very, very refreshing.
Then we have our meal and then after the meal I'm not, I don't watch that much television unless, I like foreign movies although now recently, I have bought some Russian CDs and I really like Russian movies, especially movies from the Soviet period. They're so much more low key and there's no great violence, car chases, you know Star Wars, space wars, whatever. None of this hyper stuff that I can't stand; very low key. So, I enjoy those.
Or, I might read or I might study some Russian or if there's a good program on TV we'll sit down and watch TV. I'll normally go to bed about 11:15 and if I read a little bit, I think it's probably about 11:30 or 40 before the lights go out and the next day starts again. So, there you have it. Two days in the lives of two people. Have you anything to add?
Jill: No, I think that we covered it.
Steve: And, again, if any people listening are members of LingQ or intend to become members of LingQ we would love to hear stories about your days in your native language and this can then be learning material for other people. In English, if you're native language is English, or in Spanish or in Chinese or Japanese or Arabic or whatever language. We may not be offering that language right now, but we will be interest he future and we would love to hear from you.
Thank you.
Jill: Thank you.
