Shadowing Practice: 30 Minute REAL American English Speaking Practice - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hi everyone, welcome back.

I missed you.

Today we are going to do a little bit of a fun video.

I'm excited.

I'm gonna show you guys some pictures, some pictures from my past.

Now, I am not a person who takes pictures very often and when I do, I don't save most of them.

Like I am the type of person who if I get some food that looks really amazing at a restaurant, I might take a picture of it, but I most of the time don't save that picture.

And yeah, generally, like most of the pictures I take are, you know, some funny random thing that I see.

I don't keep it.

So I have a very, very small collection of pictures that I keep.

And I have traveled to many different countries.

I've had a lot of different cool experiences, but I have very little pictures to show for it.

Do I regret it?

Not really.

I'm not, I'm just, I've never really been a picture person.

A funny thing about me is that once when I was a kid,

it was Christmas and my mom was telling people ideas for Christmas gifts they could give me.

And now I had never told my mom that I wanted a camera.

At least I don't think I did.

And my mom, she wanted a camera.

And so she told my stepmom to get me a camera.

I mean, she said you could get her a camera for Christmas.

You want to get her something, get her a camera.

And then my mom also bought me a camera.

She must have not thought that my stepmom was really going to get me one.

So my stepmom bought me a camera and my mom bought me a camera.

And so my stepmom took me back to the store to return it and ended up buying me something else.

I think some winter boots, but she was a little irritated with my mom, like as I would be too.

Like my mom was like that.

She was like just kind of mentally scatterbrained

and not really scatterbrained is like thinking about a million different things and kind of all over the place, not very organized.

Yeah.

She didn't really think about it much.

So she's like, yeah, you can get her a camera.

And then she goes and gives me a camera.

That's like a perfect example of my mom.

Remember she wanted a camera.

I didn't even want a camera.

Not only did I get two cameras, I didn't even want a camera.

So I ended up giving the camera that my mom bought me back to my mom.

It's just my mom really bought a camera for herself, basically.

So yeah, can you believe it?

I got two cameras when I was a kid and I didn't want either one of them.

I didn't really care.

I never really cared about cameras and pictures.

And the only reason I have this camera is because I'm a YouTuber and I needed a camera.

I only use it for my YouTube videos.

I never take it out and use it for pictures.

I just don't care about pictures.

I really don't.

I will take pictures on my phone.

I mean, the quality nowadays of the phone is really good, but I just, I really don't care much about pictures yeah my mom was

somebody who would take a million she took a million photos of me

when i was a baby

when i was a kid there are tons of photo albums

of those pictures that's not what i'm showing you today i don't have access to that stuff

that stuff is back in the us what i'm going to

show you is a little bit of my photo collection not everything

but just just some of my favorite pictures some of the pictures

that i liked enough to keep in my very small collection

yeah so here they are just some random pictures

and i'm going to tell you about them i'm going to talk about them

and through this

and through all of my speaking videos all of my talking videos you can practice listening practice speaking

because you can pause and you can imitate me

and you can learn some words

and phrases anyways i'm gonna show you the pictures okay so let's pull Pull them up here.

All right.

So this first one I want to show you is me standing in the kitchen of my stepdad's house or apartment.

He used to have this place for a few years.

Well, he had it up until like a year ago or something.

And then he moved in with his girlfriend and he doesn't live there anymore.

But this is where he used to live.

And this is where I would stay in the past few years.

Anytime I wanted to stay with him, I stayed at this place.

So sometimes I go visit my family like in the summertime.

And so a couple times I went and stayed at this little house.

And here I am at, I think it was like four in the morning, maybe four in the morning.

I had gone to bed at 2 a.m.

I slept two hours and I had to wake up at 4, 4.30 because I had to go to the airport because I had a full day of flights to Oaxaca, Mexico.

So I was flying from Massachusetts, United States to Oaxaca, Mexico, and I had layovers and stuff.

So a full day of flying and my flight was super early from Boston airport.

So I had to wake up at like 4 30, but you know me, I go to bed late and I couldn't go to bed early because I wasn't tired.

So I ended up sleeping two hours here.

I was on, I was on two hours of sleep standing in the kitchen, but I was excited.

I was excited because this was after spending like three months.

I spent like three months in the United States visiting family.

This was the first time I came back to the U.S after living in Ecuador for five and a half years.

So I came back.

This was 2023.

I spent the whole summer of 2023 in the U.S.

And this was me leaving at the end of the summer, well, in September, going to Mexico.

And it was my first time going to Mexico.

And it was just, I was excited.

I was on two hours of sleep.

I was delirious.

I felt like crap, but I was excited.

I had just gotten my new backpacking backpack.

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You can see it's, I'm not even wearing it correctly.

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You're supposed to tie the straps around your waist.

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There's like a buckle, a buckle around your waist.

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You're supposed to, you know, latch the buckle and tighten it.

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And so that the bag sits like on top of your waist or your butt.

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And so it's supposed to be like getting the weight off of your shoulders and kind of lift it up.

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I didn't realize that.

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I didn't figure that out.

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And so it's not buckled.

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And it's just like, I'm just all the weight is like hanging on my shoulders.

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So it's like heavy.

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It's like slouching down.

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Yeah.

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I figured that out later that I could buckle it and make it lighter.

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I was new to wearing this kind of a backpack.

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I didn't really know about it.

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Nowadays, I don't use this kind of a backpack anymore because I travel in different climates.

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I need like cold climate clothes, warm climate clothes, and I just have more clothes than I had back then.

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Back then I could fit all of my stuff in this backpack, these two backpacks, but now I still have that pink backpack that's in the front,

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but I traded the big one in the back for a suitcase.

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So I now have a big blue suitcase.

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I fill that thing to the brim.

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To the brim is like to the top.

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I fill that to the brim.

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I fill that Sometimes I can barely even close it.

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So I have a lot more stuff.

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But remember, that's all of my stuff.

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Think about everything you own, all of your clothes in your clothes, all of your stuff in your room.

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Think about all that in a suitcase.

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Yeah, good luck.

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So compared to some people, I am still quite minimalist.

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But compared to people who travel with just a little backpack, I guess not.

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When you need pants and jackets and sweatshirts and everything because it's cold some places, you need more space.

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I couldn't live out of this backpack anymore.

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And it was really annoying because if you wanted to get something out, you had to reach all the way down to the bottom.

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So you had to pull everything out, basically.

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The suitcase is a lot easier to access things, but also just has more space.

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And I don't have to carry it.

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I can just wheel it.

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I can wheel it because it has wheels.

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So I can wheel my suitcase like a verb wheel.

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So here I am in the kitchen.

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My stepdad always would wake up at 430 every day for work.

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Why?

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Because he's crazy.

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You know, he has to get up for work anyways.

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He works for the town.

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He has a town job.

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So he does like landscaping and stuff for the town outside.

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In the winter, he does like plowing and stuff, plows the snow, like with a plow truck, you know, pushing all the snow,

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clearing the roads with the plow truck, clearing the snow, moving it.

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So he does stuff like that.

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He mow like public lands and things.

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So mow like lawn mowing, you know, cutting the grass with a machine, mowing the lawn.

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So he does stuff like that.

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And he doesn't need to wake up at 4.30, but he does because he just likes to

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take his time in the morning and drink his coffee

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and relax and not be rushed

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and i don't know he just likes to have time in the morning he always wakes up at 4 30

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or early like that

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so he was used to it he was not tired he

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goes to bed at like 8 p.m he was fine

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and he was taking me to the airport i think he took the day off from work

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that day he took the day off

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so he was free to take me to the airport

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and you know it was like saying goodbye after spending all this time together this summer

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so it was like bittersweet feeling like you know excited

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but also a little sad you know it's always like that and

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so here i am just being my my silly self with

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my stepdad he took a picture of me um right before we went to the airport

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and yeah i like

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that picture next picture i want to show you oh this is a really cool picture

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so this is on the puente colgante this is on the hanging bridge

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that I talked about in a recent video where I talked about my journey to Ecuador for the first time, my trip that I took back in 2017.

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I took my first trip outside of the country to Ecuador.

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I went with a friend and yeah, I ended up living there for years.

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This picture is from, I think it was the very next day.

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So the first day in Ecuador was like a travel day, right?

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I spent the whole day like traveling on the bus

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and just trying to get to the amazon where i was staying in ecuador

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and i think the second day the first day in the amazon

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and the second day in ecuador this picture was taken by

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my friend i was sitting on this um hanging bridge nowadays

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the hanging bridge has a railing it has like sides

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that you know railing like you could put your hands on it you know it has proper sides

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so you can't fall off the side

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but as you can see at this time i think there was a railing on on one side of it

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but on this side of it where i was there was no railing

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so you could just fall off the side there was nothing to prevent you from falling off the side

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and here i am sitting on it i have my classic black rubber boots

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that we would always wear all the time in the amazon

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because it it rains a lot and it gets muddy in the ground.

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And I have very minimal clothing on, just a tank top, tank top and some shorts because it was, you know, warm.

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Not super hot.

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It was never, this location of the Amazon is high enough elevation that it's not super hot, but it was a little, it was warm and humid, but not too bad.

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Not like, it gets hotter and more humid in the United States in the summertime.

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Like this was not that bad.

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And if you notice my hair is kind of messy.

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It's knotted.

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I was starting the process of dreadlocks, dreads.

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I had those for a couple years and then I ended up cutting them off and growing up my hair.

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It was just an experience that I was, I was having.

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I was, I wanted to, to experience that.

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So I was starting the process of dreadlocks they were like baby dreads

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so it was it was just kind of messy

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and not super defined but yeah that's why my hair looks like

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that and yeah i'm just looking out at the the river

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and i'm just sitting on the bridge

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and that's a nice picture special picture all right okay this

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picture was taken in a different part of the amazon more

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lower elevation it was taken in the city called Coca

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or it's also called the official name is Francisco de Orellana, I think.

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But Coca is what everybody calls it.

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It is the city in the north of the Amazon part of Ecuador.

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It is where I went with my with one of my ex-boyfriends and we went to buy a little piece of land, like three hectares there.

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You will know about this if you watched my video talking about my entire experience in the Amazon in Ecuador.

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This city, Coca, it has a river that goes all around the city.

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So this is me just at the edge of the city, just taking a silly picture in front of the river.

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This is kind of a fun time in my life, a little bit exciting.

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Like we just bought a piece of land and we were working on it.

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We were building a farm project.

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We were starting a farm and well, long story short, we ended up abandoning it and leaving.

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But yeah, that didn't work out.

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But it was like a time of my life when I was kind of a little bit delusional, but I was kind of just living off this dream I had, this vision that I had of creating a fruit forest.

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I don't know.

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I was just so into it.

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I was so passionate about it.

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And I would go out to the farm and work every day.

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And nowadays, I would not do that.

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I don't want to live in this place nowadays.

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But I still love fruit.

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I still love gardening, but you know, I still love the countryside for some reasons, but yeah, just at this point in my life,

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it's not, it's not really something I'd want to do that kind of commitment.

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But anyways, this is what that picture kind of is all about.

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This is a picture.

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It's not super great quality, but it was taken by a friend at the beach on the Northern coast of Ecuador.

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I don't know if you could see, but there are a ton, a ton of these red crabs peeking out of the sand.

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There were absolutely so many red crabs.

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It was just full of red crabs.

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And of course, you know, when you come near them, they hide, they dive down, dive down into the sand and hide.

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But when you're kind of far away from them, they come out and they peek out and they hang out, like half their bodies inside, half their bodies outside

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and yeah it just looked really cool I like this picture uh it's really cute

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and yeah I love the crabs they're so cute okay

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so this is when we moved to coca

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and it was a lot hotter there because it was lower elevation

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and I was doing a lot of farm work

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and I just got so tired of my heavy dreads my hair

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that I just cut all of my dreads off

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and I for the first time in my life had this really short hair I literally just took scissors, took the dreads and just cut them.

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And so, yeah, my hair was like really short like this for a while.

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I used to just wear a hat and I used to just wear t-shirts and shorts.

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And sometimes Ecuadorians would think that I'm a guy, I'm a man.

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And that was good for me.

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That was great.

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The best time in Ecuador was when I looked like a man

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because then I was not harassed then I was not catcalled and treated like an object, basically.

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When I looked more feminine in Ecuador, yeah, I was bothered a lot more.

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When I look more like a man, they kind of just left me alone.

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That was nice.

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And so this was a good time.

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This is a great time.

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And I really enjoyed having super short hair.

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It was super easy.

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Honestly, there's a big part of me that always wants to go back to hair like this.

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It would just make my life so much easier if I just had short hair like that.

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I feel like it's just so much more comfortable and enjoyable.

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But I don't know.

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I also really like long hair.

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I always have.

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I like when men have long hair.

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I just like long hair.

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And the longer, the better.

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I've always been like that.

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I've always loved long hair on everybody.

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I like the way long hair looks, but I enjoy the feeling and the practicality of having short hair more so.

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So this was a great time because I had the short hair

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and I had a boyfriend my life was just kind of really simple

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and really easy at this time not

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because my boyfriend helped me with anything trust me I did more farm work than he did

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but just because I don't know like I didn't I wasn't thinking about dating

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and stuff like I just I don't know I just woke

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up every day living with my boyfriend just kind of like

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my roommate like my friend I never felt like I was alone uh too alone

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and then I just did my things I was really passionate about you know doing the farm work and I don't know, living my simple life.

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I was teaching some English classes online and I was just having a very simple life.

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You know, I didn't have much money, but I didn't need much money.

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But now I'm actually more free than I was then in the sense

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that now I have more money and I can travel more.

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I'm not so tied down to like one piece of land or one project or one, you know, location, different things, different phases of our lives.

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Okay, next one.

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This is a really nice picture

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that someone took of me in like a nice nature spot a waterfall spot spot near tena in ecuador

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and then in the amazon tena tena is like a city in the amazon

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but this is a little bit outside of

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that i don't know exactly where it's located

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but i remember we had to walk through nature to get

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there we had to walk a little ways take a bus

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and walk and it's just it's really beautiful

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and my my friend had a professional camera

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and i just saw this place

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and i just jumped in i didn't i had no hesitation normally like

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when the water's cold or whatever i'm like slow to get in it

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but this one i just jumped right in it was even

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raining i didn't care i had clothes on i didn't even

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have like a bathing suit on i had some shorts

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and a shirt and i just jumped in it

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and just was like ah this picture was taken

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and it's a really great picture and i enjoy i it's a it's a nice memory.

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This is a picture that was taken in a greenhouse.

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This is a greenhouse at one of the farm projects, one of the community farm projects in the Amazon at the first location where I lived,

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where I lived with some other foreigners, basically, who were creating a community,

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a vegan community that was dedicated to growing fruits and food.

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And this is in the greenhouse house of one of those farms.

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Here I am with someone who I think still lives there today.

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This is Charlotte.

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I think she still lives there.

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I think she's going to spend her whole life there.

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I don't know.

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She's really into it.

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This is a picture of us just kind of standing there and looking at the lettuce.

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And I think I have a piece of lettuce in my hand and I'm probably eating it or something.

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We mostly focused on growing fruits, but they did have some vegetables, as you can see, some some greens and stuff.

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I like this picture.

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I got my I got my boots on.

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I used to wear those boots every day, you know, because it's muddy and stuff.

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So I got my farm boots on, but but it was warm.

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So this is how I would dress like the Ecuadorians would wear like pants

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and long sleeve shirts and hats and they protect themselves from the sun and everything.

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And they'd cover every inch of their body.

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I would wear like shorts and tank tops and these boots.

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This was my my farm outfit.

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And you could see my hair is in dreads, but it's all tied up.

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So it's all it's all big and voluminous.

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I like that picture a lot.

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This is a picture that I took at my land, at my little cabin on my land.

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You could see behind me, I have a little bit of a hammock and I have a green post.

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I painted it green and well, I didn't paint it.

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I paid people to paint it.

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And then I have some bananas behind me.

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I, yeah, I wish I had more pictures.

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I think I do have another picture.

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Actually, I had this cute little, it was a tiny, tiny little one bedroom, not even like a bedroom size.

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It was like, it was like three by three meters or something.

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It was like a tiny, tiny little, little block of a cabin.

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It wasn't even, I paid for it to be made, um, by my neighbor.

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And he said that the cheapest, easiest way to, to make this, you know, long-term would be just to make it out of cement.

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So I didn't make it out of wood.

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Uh, I had a little cement cube, uh, made, but I couldn't really afford much at the time.

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He said this would be cheaper and, and it would like last a bit longer and stuff.

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Yeah, I didn't really have much money at the time.

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So I just kind of, I just wanted a little place that I could sleep in

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and I could lock the door and I could keep like tools and stuff.

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And so I had this little cabin made.

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This is me taking a picture of myself after I recently got my ears pierced.

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I never got my ears pierced my whole life until I was this age.

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I was there.

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I was, I think, 23.

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I got my ears pierced because I saw that the the Kichwa women were, or not just women, the men also,

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the Kichwa people were selling a lot of like really beautiful earrings.

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And I saw these earrings and I wanted to wear them, but I didn't have my ears pierced.

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So I finally decided to get my ears pierced.

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But I, in this picture, I had recently gotten them pierced and

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when you get them pierced they are sensitive and they're healing

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and they have just a tiny little stud earring a stud earring just like a tiny little little earring

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and you're not supposed to take that out for a while

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but i was impatient

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and i really wanted to put on my new earrings my new beautiful earrings

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that i got from the quichua people and

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so i kind of forced it too early

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and my ears weren't fully healed yet i think

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and it it hurt

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so in this picture you can see i I have these new earrings on that I'm all excited about, but my ears hurt, my earlobes.

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And they were a little heavy too, these earrings.

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So it's kind of weighing down my earlobes.

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Earlobes is like this little part of your ear.

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So I was like a little uncomfortable.

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Like it was kind of a little painful, but I liked them and I, whatever, I, I wanted to take a picture.

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So anyways, I was really excited about my new earrings, but I kind of jumped the gun a little bit.

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I jumped the gun.

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It's like I did it too soon, too impulsive, too fast.

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I should have waited.

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Yeah, that's the story of me with these earrings right here.

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Okay, so this is a picture of me in front of my little house, my little cabin.

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You can't really see the cabin because I have this blanket with a tiger blocking it, but I just liked the way it looked, the tiger thing.

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Here I am sitting in a chair in the front.

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I'm like working on a farm.

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I'm like probably sweaty and dirty.

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I am holding up a machete in my hand.

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I used the machete all the time to work on the farm.

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I used a machete and a weed whacker.

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Weed whacker is the machine to cut the weeds, but it was a gas powered weed whacker.

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But the machete is just a knife.

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All around you could see I have bananas.

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I have papayas.

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I planted all that.

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At this point, the farm was starting to produce papayas and bananas a little bit.

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But not really the fruit trees hadn't really started to produce, hadn't really started yet to produce yet.

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I don't know if you could see, if you look farther under the roof, I had this little like front porch area thing.

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I had a little stove, gas stove there and very, very basic, very small.

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I just think this picture is funny and very like psychedelic.

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It's just, it's just crazy.

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Like me sitting in front of my little cabin with my fruits growing around with my machete.

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I just think it's so funny.

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Yeah, I was probably alone when I took this picture.

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I was probably alone.

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I used to stay alone a lot on the farm until I just got

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so sick of it and just so tired of being alone.

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And then I left.

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But for a while, I used to I didn't want to let go of the dream.

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And I was like, no, I can make it happen.

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I can I want to grow a farm and then and then more people will come in the future.

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And but I just couldn't live like that anymore.

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but it was fun it was fun it was cool

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while it lasted me the person I am now today I

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would never want to live like this now it was just it was extremely rustic like I'm fine with nature

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and countryside but this was just extremely rustic there was not even electricity

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or running water at this place

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and I used to go to the city almost every day to use the internet

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and and to use those things but but I would like come out here

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and sleep out here and I had like a solar powered

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little light that would provide a little bit of light in the nighttime for a few hours.

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It was just extremely rustic and isolated and I was just super alone.

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And yeah, I just, I wouldn't want to live like that now, but that's what I did.

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I was a little crazy.

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This was like when I was like 23, 24, you know, basically from 20 to 24 was when I lived in the Amazon.

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So yeah, on the farm in the Amazon.

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And this picture was taken in San Miguel de, no, San Miguel de Bolívar.

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I think, I think is the name.

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I'm not sure.

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But it's basically some random town in the Andes of Ecuador.

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It's kind of in the center of the country in the Andes.

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This is where another ex-boyfriend that I was with later on.

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This was later.

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This was after I stopped living on the farm and everything.

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Another guy, another ex, he was, we were traveling and we were in this town.

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And this is where he started to film videos of me with his professional equipment.

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He had a professional camera and microphone.

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But previously, I was just using a very crappy phone and microphone and just really bad quality stuff.

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So my videos, the content was good, but the quality was not good.

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And that was definitely impacting my reach.

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I was making short videos at the time, not long videos.

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I was making short videos and posting them on like Instagram and TikTok at the time.

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The content was good, but the quality was bad.

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So this is when my ex with the good equipment started to film me, started to help me with my videos by filming me and stuff.

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This is when I started to have success with my videos.

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Like this is when I started to post videos on Instagram and they started to do really well.

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They started to get a lot of views and I started to get people DMing me, asking for classes and I was able to raise my prices.

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And this was even before my YouTube career.

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This is when I kind of just started to grow this like English teaching business for the first time.

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Because previously I was an English teacher.

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I used to do conversation classes on a website called italki, but it was not like my own business.

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And like students were going through that website to find me.

452

They were not contacting me because they saw my videos.

453

They were contacting me because they were looking for a teacher on

454

that website any teacher so this was the first time

455

that i was able to you know get paid directly

456

and have more control and it was like my own business

457

so i will forever be grateful to this ex who helped me with these videos

458

and he really helped get my channel off the ground like he

459

and then i started posting these videos on youtube short videos

460

and they started to do well and then And then my YouTube channel started to grow.

461

And then that inspired me to make long videos.

462

And so he helped me for a couple months making a bunch of videos.

463

And that really helped to start my career or start my business.

464

And then we went separate ways and we ended up not being in a relationship anymore.

465

And then I just started to make videos by myself.

466

And basically all of my long videos on YouTube, I made by myself with my own equipment.

467

but my ex he helped me with the some of the original short videos

468

that really helped get everything off the ground get the momentum going

469

and then I was able to take it from there

470

and make long videos and then start to grow my YouTube career

471

and everything so so I will forever be grateful to him for his help with that and

472

if it hadn't been for him it probably would have taken

473

me a lot longer yeah to kind of start to make like good quality content

474

and have success and yeah so I'm really really grateful to him for

475

that but yeah but since then like he helped me for a couple months back in 2023

476

and since then I've been completely on my own yeah the

477

past three years I've been making content completely by myself totally

478

independent with no help besides from those people who I had

479

in my videos like conversation videos obviously this you know special

480

guests besides besides the special guests I haven't had any help with my videos I've done it all by myself

481

and I use all my own equipment.

482

I've learned a lot.

483

It still could be better, but I'm fine with the way it is right now.

484

I accept I use the light of outside to film.

485

I sit in front of windows and use the light.

486

Today it's almost sunset, so it's getting dark.

487

So the quality is not that great right now, but most of my videos have decent quality.

488

Obviously it could be better, but it's good enough.

489

Okay.

490

Thanks for watching my video.

491

Thanks for being here.

492

And if you like this video, I have definitely more pictures.

493

If you want to see more pictures from my life, I would love to share more and to talk about them.

494

So let me know if you want to see more like this and have a good one.

495

I'll see you later.

496

Bye.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “30 Minute REAL American English Speaking Practice”. This video has 496 sentences and 5748 words to shadow. The speech runs for 29:01. The speaker talks fast, about 198 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
earring noun	/ˈɪəɹɪŋ/	A piece of jewelry worn on the ear.
backpack noun	/ˈbæk.pæk/	A knapsack, sometimes mounted on a light frame, but always supported by straps, worn on a person’s back for the purpose of carrying things, especially when…
pierce verb	/pɪɹs/	To puncture; to break through.
dread noun	/dɹɛd/	Great fear in view of impending evil; fearful apprehension of danger; anticipatory terror.
cabin noun	/ˈkæbɪn/	A small dwelling characteristic of the frontier, especially when built from logs with simple tools and not constructed by professional builders, but by those…
boot noun	/but/	A heavy shoe that covers part of the leg.
machete noun	/məˈʃɛ.ti/	A sword-like tool used for cutting large plants with a chopping motion, or used as a weapon.
buckle noun	/ˈbʌkəl/	A metal clasp with a hinged tongue or a spike through which a belt or strap is passed and penetrated by the tongue or spike, in order to fasten the ends of the…
suitcase noun	/ˈsutkeɪs/	A large (usually rectangular) piece of luggage used for carrying clothes, and sometimes suits, when travelling.
nowadays adverb	/ˈnaʊ.ə.deɪz/	At the present time; in the current era.
stepmom noun		Stepmother.
coca noun	/ˈkoʊ.kə/	Any of the four cultivated plants which belong to the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America.
crab noun	/kɹæb/	Any crustacean of the infraorder Brachyura, having five pairs of legs, the foremost of which are in the form of claws, and a carapace.
anyways adverb	/ˈɛn.iˌweɪz/	Anyway, anyhow, in any case.
weed noun	/wiːd/	Any plant unwanted at the place where and at the time when it is growing.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
fall off verb		To become detached or to drop from.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
come back verb		To return to a place.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
grow up verb		To mature and become an adult.
hold up verb		To wait or delay.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Do I regret it?
At least I don't think I did.
That's like a perfect example of my mom.
I didn't even want a camera.
I just don't care about pictures.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to have · used to live · used to just wear
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be rushed · was taken · was not harassed
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have traveled · I've had · I've never really been
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	person who takes · person who if · somebody who would

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 105 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: machete /məˈʃɛ.ti/, elevation /ˌɛlɪˈveɪʃn̩/, passionate /ˈpæʃənɪt/, delusional /dɪˈluːʒənəl/, impatient /ɪmˈpeɪʃənt/
Long words — get the stress right: delirious /dɪˈlɪə̯.ɹi.əs/, minimalist /ˈmɪn.ə.məl.ɪst/, psychedelic /ˈsaɪ.kəˌdɛl.ɪk/, voluminous /vəˈlu.mə.nəs/, delusional /dɪˈluːʒənəl/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like earring, backpack, pierce.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?