Shadowing Practice: I Travelled To The Coldest City On The Planet (Yakutsk, Russia) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
B2
Minus 51 degrees Celsius.
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Minus 51 degrees Celsius.
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There is a city in Russia,
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more specifically Siberian Russia, which is the most isolated city on the planet.
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With temperatures going as low as minus 64 degrees Celsius.
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My hands is really cold, they're tingling a bit.
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Oh my god, fucking hell.
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Frostbite forms in minutes, eyelashes freeze in seconds.
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The most dangerous roads on the planet.
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The place that 300,000 people call home.
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This is unbearable.
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This, ladies and gentlemen, Izzykutsk,
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the coldest city on the planet.
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This might be one of the only times where I'm going away and I'm gonna miss the horrible British weather.
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Now getting to this city is incredibly difficult.
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First was a six hour flight to Istanbul, Turkey.
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Run, run, run!
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Then from Turkey was a five hour flight to Moscow, Russia.
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Oh my god, even here it's freezing!
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That next morning we drove to a different airport.
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Thank you very much.
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Why is there no one here?
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This was where I was boarding the final eight hour flight to Yakutsk.
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For thousands of miles there was nothing but ice and eight hours later after crossing the siberian desert i saw light
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this is inside it's the weirdest airport exit it's a bit
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of a ghost town I was now about to head outside for the first time in Yakutsk.
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My name's Joe, good to meet you.
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This was Siam by the way, he was our translator.
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Oh my f**king.
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Where is he?
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Oh my god, it's hard to breathe.
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Where are you?
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Where are my hoods?
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Minus 39 degrees Celsius.
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Quickly after walking outside we had to head to the car.
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You see, all I was wearing was a singular coat,
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and staying outside for any longer than just that was very dangerous.
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Oh!
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Are you okay?
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Give me a hand.
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Give me a hand, I'll help you up.
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Is this the car?
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Can't complain at this, can we?
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Just look at that.
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I'm gonna get some sleep and then check out Ukutsk.
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Let me show you what you've got to wear to survive in this temperature.
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What do you think of the fit?
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I am boiling right now.
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13 additional layers on top of your normal clothes.
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The cold air just attacks your face any exposed skin it just starts stinging a bit.
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Minus 41 degrees Celsius today.
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Would you say minus 41 for your kutsk?
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Is that cold?
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That's usual.
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The cars literally just disappear into the abyss and after walking around for only about 20 minutes.
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Just look at the state of my hat,
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my eyelashes, my gloves have completely frozen over.
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It is very, very cold.
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Can we go inside?
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My hands, it's really cold.
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Can we go inside for a second?
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Fucking hell, like they're tingling a bit.
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Fucking hell.
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In the space of a few seconds,
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my hands had gone from incredibly cold to just completely numb.
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I couldn't feel them at all.
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Your fingertips are very, very pink and cold.
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Frostbite here is incredibly common.
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Is that okay?
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Yeah.
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Luckily, I just got first degree frostbite, which is recoverable.
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Look at the difference in colour.
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This is the hand that felt cold and tingly.
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This is the other hand.
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I had to sit in that coffee shop for a good 30 minutes to let my body heat up.
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Once I've had a friend who was missing five of his toes on his left leg,
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he was running barefoot for like two minutes.
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Yeah, and he lost all his toes on his left foot.
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Yeah.
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There are so many extra challenges which need to be faced living in this city.
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But what do the locals have to say about living here?
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How is life living in the coldest city on the planet?
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The cold is our joy, our happiness.
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They treat us.
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So you like the cold?
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Yes, very much.
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It's a pain.
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I can't breathe anymore.
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When I'm on a cruise,
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I can't live there for a long time,
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because I'm a lot of pain.
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Really?
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Oh wow.
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The verdict I got was that no one here was fazed by the cold.
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Do you find living here tough?
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Yeah, it's different.
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For us, such code is just way of life.
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That's normal for us.
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And we get used to it.
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I mean, me personally, I don't understand how you could get used to this.
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But then I met this guy.
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What made you move to Yukutsk in the first place?
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They wanted to send me to Chelyabinsk.
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Well, he ran away, so I can say.
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My brother took me here.
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I came here and sent me here.
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I've been here for 20 years.
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I've been here and I've been here and I live here.
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So what was the crime that he committed, Sayan?
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He killed two people.
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He killed two people?
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Yes.
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Fuck you.
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As much as obviously that's awful,
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in context to this video,
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he committed a crime, tried to run away to the most isolated city on Earth,
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aka Yakutsk, in hopes he wouldn't get caught,
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eventually got caught here, served 20 years,
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and when he got out,
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he was so used to the cold that he decided to stay.
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Do you enjoy living in Yakutsk?
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No. Yeah?
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Our life is not that different from yours,
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just a little bit colder.
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A city frozen in ice,
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but behind it all, just a normal city.
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Delicious.
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It is currently minus 41 degrees Celsius here in Yakutsk.
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Let me show you some cool things you can do here.
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First is the hot water experiment.
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Boiling hot water.
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A normal banana.
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Obviously I took a bite out of it just before.
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And then I left it on an open window for 15 minutes.
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Okay.
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Completely frozen solid.
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Next, hot noodles.
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You leave it like this for a few minutes.
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Oh, get the hat.
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Completely frozen solid.
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One of my favourite Young LA t-shirts here.
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And after leaving it to dry for literally only a minute.
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That is mad.
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And as the sun set in Yakutsk,
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we went to some fresh cloves,
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laid up over that, went on a night out.
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Is this warm for us?
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This is warm?
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Yeah.
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Is this warm?
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Yeah, we can eat ice cream.
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I am literally freezing my tits off right now.
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We're currently heading back from the night out This has got
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to be like the weirdest walk back for a night out ever Yeah if we pass out right now we're f***ed
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That next day my translator Sian said he had a surprise for me Thank you No way!
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No way!
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They've got a proper gym and everything Inside this sports hall are some of the finest athletes in Yakutsk,
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training for Yakutsk's national sport.
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Mass wrestling.
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Here's how it works.
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Two athletes sit facing each other with their feet braced against a board.
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They both grip a short wooden stick.
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The goal is to pull the stick away from your opponent or pull them across the board.
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Is it me against him?
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I had been challenged Nice to meet you
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Somehow I actually won Well played,
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well played I don't want to try it Can you play with me?
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The world champion wants to play me I'd been told this guy here was the world champion of mass wrestling.
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That guy there, he's the world champion.
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Your champion.
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World champion.
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World champion.
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Wow.
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Now he wanted to play me.
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Good luck.
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This was a best of three game.
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And...
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Jump!
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1-0 to the champ, he just destroyed me.
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I don't know how I won that,
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but now it was 1-1.
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It was now the deciding round.
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The world champion won it.
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Well played my man.
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But that ladies and gentlemen is Yakutsk's national sport.
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The city is clearly doing fine.
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But what about the little villages?
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Died around Siberia, isolated on their own,
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truly in the middle of nowhere.
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Alright, it's pretty early right now.
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We're currently about to embark on a six hour road trip deep into Siberia to a small remote village.
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How cold is the village?
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Minus 50.
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Minus 50?
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Maybe minus 61.
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It feels like minus 61.
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It feels like minus 61?
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Yes.
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I'm pretty nervous about this one, I'll be honest.
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How safe are the roads here in Siberia?
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So the further out we go,
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the more dangerous the roads get.
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Brilliant.
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Due to the extreme cold,
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the steam coming from other cars really affected the visibility.
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I joined these guys in the back of the car for this part of the crib because it is sketch.
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This wasn't even a road anymore,
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the ground was literally ice and snow.
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A remote road in the depths of Siberia.
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What was I expecting to be honest?
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But by some miracle after several hours we had arrived.
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Sasha is a local of this village.
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Minus 50 degrees Celsius, feels like minus 61.
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Is this cold for you?
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Well, today, yes.
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Okay, let's go.
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Just look at this place.
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You can't see anything ahead of you.
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That jump from minus 40 yesterday to minus 50 today is very noticeable.
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The village is so much colder.
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But with it being completely isolated hundreds of miles away from the city,
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how different is life here?
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Sasha had kindly invited me into her home where lunch was already prepared.
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Now unlike in the city,
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the diet of the villagers is all just food that they've sourced themselves.
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Fish shavings are one of the most popular meals that people eat,
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and you just eat it frozen.
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Mmm.
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Mmm, sounds crunchy.
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Just tastes like an ice cube dipped in salt.
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Okay, I wasn't the biggest fan of the fish shavings,
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but a lot of this food was delicious.
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I'll show you.
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Now for the water that I'm drinking,
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I'm standing on a lake right now,
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obviously completely frozen, and this is where they get their drinking water from.
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The frozen lake is cut up into ice blocks.
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You cannot get much purer than that.
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Every family has a weekly stash of ice,
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which if they want to start drinking,
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they bring it inside and let it melt.
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This is the only option because piping systems would just freeze up.
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And due to the limited water,
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showers are not a thing here.
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Special types of saunas are used,
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where the intense heat is meant to cleanse open pores detoxify the body using a fraction of the water
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that a shower would.
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If you're rich in the village you'll have a private sauna like this one
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but most go to the public sauna and if you need the toilet at any point.
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That was a unique experience.
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Sewage systems also don't exist here because it's physically too cold
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so you go into one of these shacks outside do your business into a hole in the ground
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and that business freezes instantly so there's no smell i have a present for you
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you have a present yeah oh okay it's a bear meat bear meat no way
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brown bears poses a big threat in this village don't give this meat to the Oh,
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so only men can eat the bear meat.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you.
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I don't taste anything.
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No flavour.
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I mean, there's not really much to say about it.
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You could say the food is bear.
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I can hear like a,
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apart from that dog, you can hear a pin drop.
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I was literally walking in one of the most isolated places on the planet.
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How do you get electricity to this remote place?
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The electricity lights go on for hundreds of miles back to Yakutsk.
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I'm here, I'm here, I'm here,
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I'm here, I'm here, I'm here,
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I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
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You've got everything you need here?
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Yes, I'm here.
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How do you like living here in this small village in the middle of nowhere?
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Since we were born, we've already used to it.
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We don't know another life.
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There's definitely a lot of challenges which this village faces due to the extreme cold and extreme isolation.
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The people I met all just seemed so happy.
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We are living, not surviving.
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This world, we are protecting our whole world.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice your English listening and speaking skills through a captivating travel experience to Yakutsk, the coldest city on the planet. By engaging with the transcript, you will hone your pronunciation and comprehension while seeking to mimic the speaker’s intonation and emotional expression. This lesson is particularly designed to help you improve English pronunciation and engage in English speaking practice in a fun and dynamic way. You will also learn about extreme weather conditions and unique cultural aspects of one of the most isolated cities in the world.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Coldest city - the city with the lowest temperatures on Earth, in this case, Yakutsk.
- Frostbite - an injury caused by freezing of the skin and underlying tissues.
- Isolated - located far away from other places; remote.
- Temperatures - the degree of heat present in a substance, in this video referred to in Celsius.
- Roads - routes or paths made for vehicles; mentioned as dangerous.
- Layers - multiple clothing items worn on a body to stay warm.
- Ghost town - a deserted place, often used to describe an area with very few people.
- Escape from the cold - a phrase that can refer to finding warmth in a harsh climate.
Practice Tips
To maximize your learning, use a shadowing app while watching the video. Shadowing involves watching a video or listening to audio, then mimicking or repeating immediately after the speaker. Here are some targeted tips:
- Start Slow: Since the speaker shares their experience at a conversational pace, you might find it helpful to pause frequently. Repeat phrases as you hear them, focusing on pronunciation and fluency.
- Emphasize Emotion: Notice the emotions conveyed through the speaker’s tone, especially when expressing discomfort due to extreme cold. Try to match this emotional tone when you repeat the sentences.
- Practice Key Vocabulary: Pay special attention to key phrases and vocabulary. Use them in context by creating your own sentences based on the video content.
- Recording Yourself: Consider recording your speaking practice and comparing it to the original video. This method will help you identify areas for improvement and track your progress.
- Explore Related Content: While learning English with YouTube can offer diverse accents and styles, explore videos related to extreme weather or unique cities to expand your vocabulary further.
Engage with each practice session and enjoy the journey of language learning as you explore the fascinating world of Yakutsk!
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.
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