Shadowing Practice: My Life Lately - The Highs and the Lows - Learn English Speaking with Video
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204 sentences
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It's been the rainiest summer of my whole life.
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And as I'm sitting here right now making this video, the rain is pouring down outside my window.
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And even though I would love some sunny days and warm weather, I also don't mind the rain right now.
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Because there's something so forgiving about rainy days.
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It gives you permission to slow down and to stay inside and just let things be for a while.
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Come on. She doesn't want to go out. Because it's raining so much.
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Especially here in the northern parts of the world where the summer seasons is so short, I think sunny days can come with so much pressure and expectations.
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Because you want to take advantage of them in the best way possible that it almost can become like a stress.
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At least that happens for me sometimes.
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I feel bad if I can't enjoy them fully.
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So, rainy days, they just feel like a big surrender.
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Because there's no fear of missing out of the sunshine. It's just like a big exhale.
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And when I think about the extreme heat and the wildfires that so many places in the world have been facing this summer, I feel nothing but grateful for all this water falling from the sky.
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It's been over a month since my last video.
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And back then, in the beginning of July, I was very busy working at our store in Sollefteå, getting everything ready for our one-year anniversary event at the end of July.
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There was tons of things to do and everyone in the team were working so hard.
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And I was so focused that I almost didn't film anything during these weeks.
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And I spent many, many hours framing all the 150 pieces of the artwork Alchemy that I created for the goodie bags that we were giving away just like last year.
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And you can see the whole process of when I created this painting in my previous video.
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And it felt so beautiful to spend so much time with the framing process and take apart each piece from the artwork and bring them to life in their own unique way.
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And during the month of July, me and Lumi spent more time in Sollefteå than at home and lived in my little apartment there.
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And I think it was really good training for her to live city life for a while and meet a lot of people.
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And she also got a new friend in this crow that was following us every day wherever we walked.
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And then on July 17th, it was time to celebrate our 1-year anniversary of the store in Sollefteå.
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And those two days became something I will never forget.
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I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined that so many people would come.
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There were even more people waiting outside through the night than last year.
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And honestly, it was just unbelievable.
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Again, I got to meet so many wonderful people from so many different places in the world and I'm still trying to take it all in.
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I almost have no video clips from these days, but other amazing content creators have done such beautiful videos from our anniversary and I will link them in the description to this video if you want to see more.
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And I just want to say thank you to all of you who came and celebrated our anniversary with us and filled it with so much love.
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And also, thank you to all of you who have been following me and supporting what I do over the years.
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I know that most of you live very far away and will probably never set your foot in our little store here in Sollefteå, but you are still such a big part of what makes all this possible.
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And I'm also so incredibly grateful for our little team who put so much heart and love into making our store a beautiful experience for everyone who comes and visits us.
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And to my family who stepped in and helped out so much these days.
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And when it was all over, I just couldn't stop crying.
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It was like my heart had been opened so wide from all these meetings and all the hugs and all the stories and all the love.
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I felt like I got some kind of emotional overwhelm.
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After the anniversary, it felt so good to finally come home.
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And this time, actually stay home for a while.
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And to have some time with Nayeli and Lumi and just be like a family again.
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It's raining so much.
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But very shortly, I started to feel sick.
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And looking back, I really wish I had just given myself a few days to rest after such a full-on month.
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But instead, I came home to a long list of things that needed my attention.
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The garden had completely taken over.
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The grass needed cutting.
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The house needed cleaning.
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And in between, I still went to Sollefteå to get some work done.
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And on top of that, I decided to take on a pretty big project that had been waiting on me for a long time.
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When I bought my old studio house years ago, the house that I lived in for 1 year during 2025, the previous owner sold it fully furnished and with a lot of stuff.
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And I put most of it in the barn next to the house thinking I would sort through it one day when I had more time.
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And since selling that house last year, I've been wanting to finally clear it out.
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So, almost as soon as I came home, I started with this, and my parents helped me so much, and it felt really good to finally deal with something that had been hanging over me for years.
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But, I underestimated how exhausted my body already was.
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My cold got worse, and somewhere in the middle of all that lifting and carrying, I hurt my back, too.
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I could barely move for a couple of days. Just walking out with Lumi was like a torture.
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And eventually, I think I just crashed, both physically and emotionally.
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I found myself in a really low place where everything suddenly felt overwhelming.
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Even the smallest things felt like too much, and I just had no energy left.
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So, for a few days, I finally did what I probably should have done from the beginning.
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I just rested.
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And slowly, my back started getting better, and I could move around more again.
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And some of the things that had felt completely overwhelming started to feel manageable, and mostly because I got help.
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I don't think I can ever put into words how grateful I am to my parents and my whole family.
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They're always there when I need them, helping me pick up the pieces and somehow get back on my feet again.
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I really don't know what I would do without them.
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Good morning, everyone. Hello, my loves.
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And welcome back to a new video.
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It feels like it's been a really long time.
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And I had quite some resistance for taking up the camera film because it's just feels like it's been months ago.
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Not that much has been happening.
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The past 2 weeks I've spent just not feeling so well, but this is the first day that I start to feel like I'm on the other side of this sickness or the cold or whatever I had.
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I'm so glad to sit here in the sun and feel life coming back again.
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And I'm having a cup of coffee.
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And cheers to all of you. Thank you for being here.
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Hej Lumi. Come here. I bet they want to say hello. Here's Lumi.
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She has a grown a lot since my last video.
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I see that when I look back.
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She's so full of energy, but it's like perfect way.
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She's curious. She loves to explore. And she also she's like to be alone a little bit, have her own little projects. So, everyone, I am so happy to be back.
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It really feels like I am on the other side of a very intense time.
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Now, it's the 1st of August and I actually feel such a relief that there's like no big things going on ahead of me.
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There's no big deadlines.
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There's no big events I have to work towards because I feel like I've been running with projects all the time for a long long time.
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And now when things were finished, I just crashed or how do you say?
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And I still feel very tired, but I think it's because of the sickness.
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So I'm just going to take it really slow now this August.
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I'm just going to you know, spend time in my garden.
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I haven't spent time in my garden since June.
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I feel a little bit behind with my life here at home, but it's okay.
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And I also still have a little bit of back pain and I just feel overall like I a little bit of a broken humor right now.
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But I'm going to do something else today that I really have been looking forward to.
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I'm going to go out in the forest and pick blueberries with my mom.
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There is tons of blueberries this year.
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And that's my greatest joy when the forests are full of blueberries.
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I feel so happy because blueberries is the berry that I love the most and they are so healthy.
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I'm going to take Lumi with me.
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And we're going to pick some blueberries and I hope it's not going to start to rain again.
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I guess we got to get going very soon.
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She fell asleep in my mom's lap on the way to the blueberry forest.
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Good night.
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Good night, Lumi.
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Just look at this richness.
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There's so many of them and even though I pick them every day.
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Just look at these. They're getting really, really big.
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And these are getting so huge as well, but they've gotten eaten a lot, so I don't know how they're going to be in the end.
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She gets to eat up on the counter now again, so she gets to have her food alone.
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Stanna. Stanna.
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Bra. You're ready for a little walk. I see that.
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Yes, she's quite a bitey as well.
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It's just that time in the puppy life. Biting a lot.
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I like to drive to a dirt road. Somewhere in the forest.
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I have a place where there's a lot of blueberries.
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So, every time I take her out for a walk, I also pick some blueberries.
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It's so cute how she sits in the car like this. She loves to look out.
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She's finally big enough to kind of see out from the windows where she sits.
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And she seems to really enjoy it.
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I love that she can just walk freely with me like this.
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I absolutely am training her as well, walking on a leash.
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But I really will do my best to make her be a dog that will stay by my side.
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I'm going to practice a lot of recalling and yeah.
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At least now she's 13 weeks old and I can see that she always keeps an eye on me. She never runs away or anything.
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And when Nanook was a puppy, when he was 13 weeks old, he disappeared.
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He was like such a free spirit.
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He was never afraid of running away or anything and it was really hard to teach him to stay by my side and I also did everything wrong.
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I never really I didn't know how to train him.
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Let's pick some blueberries here.
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If I bring this every time I go out, I'm going to have so much blueberries.
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And that is so wonderful.
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Lumi wanted to say hi.
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So nice with a little bit of sunshine.
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It's been raining constantly today and it's been thunderstorms, like not here, but surrounding me. This area.
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And it's wet everywhere.
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It's really raining every single day.
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It's the rainiest summer in my whole life.
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As I said, it's better that it's rain than it's fires.
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It's going to be thunderstorms here any minute now. So, I better get inside.
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So, the rain is pouring down right now.
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So, I'm just cleaning up a little bit in here.
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These rugs have finally dried.
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It's the fourth time I've been cleaning them because of puppy.
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I'm making some nettle tea from stinging nettles that I picked earlier this summer.
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Nettle tea in the making.
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So, this is all the blueberries that I picked today during me and Lumi's walks in the forest.
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I'm going to rinse them now.
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Or not rinse, what do you say?
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Yeah, take away stuff like this.
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This is just what I have been longing for. You know, late summer evenings sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea and just cleaning berries.
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I've had this image in my head for a long time that I'm going to do this, and now I'm doing it I'm so happy. I just really long for peaceful moments like this when you don't really do much.
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When you don't have to think so much.
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It's actually really, really nice to do yeah, stuff like this. When you can just let your mind wander.
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And you don't have to think, analyze, or you know, you don't have to talk.
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Unless now, when I make the video though.
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And I've also been cleaning up a little bit here at home lately. I'm still doing that.
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I'm going to the recycling station every week now.
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Filling my car with stuff that I have, you know, I'm just cleaning away a lot since the big move that I haven't, you know, done yet.
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Unpacking boxes and It's so nice. It's so healing for the soul to do that.
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I'm going to make this tea now.
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Pine - No, not pine tea.
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stinging nettle tea. Stinging nettles from my own garden that I harvested when they were tiny. And this is really really healthy.
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Especially for your hair and your skin.
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I thought I wanted to answer a question that I have got a lot now in both in my comments here on YouTube but also on my Instagram.
164
And that question is how is it going with Nayeli?
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Hej gumman How is it going with you?
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Yeah, you're surviving.
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I always have to check on Lumi when Nayeli is close by because sometimes Lumi wants to play with her and she chases her and Nayeli doesn't like that, obviously.
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how's it going with Nayeli and Lumi? That's a very frequently asked question and I can definitely understand that you're curious about that.
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And I would say that it's going good.
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It's going kind of how I expected that it would go.
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Now, she peed on the carpet again.
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Oh, yeah. Well, I'm in the middle of the puppy bubble now and it's just a lot.
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It's very intense. But, it's also only a short period when they are this small.
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Anyway, it goes as I expected with Nayeli and Lumi.
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Now, when Lumi is getting a little bit bigger, she is more energized and I think it was a little bit easier the first weeks when Lumi was here because she was so small. She was so much smaller than Nayeli, than my cat. And then, you know, Lumi was a little bit more new to everything.
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So, she was a little bit more afraid. But, now when Lumi is more, you know, curious and she's, you know, want to play with everything, then Nayeli thinks she's really annoying.
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She keeps her distance, but it's not like she's not afraid of her and that's the most important part for me that she's not afraid of her at all.
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She moves around in the house freely, but she, you know, keeps her distance and I'm not pushing her to be with Lumi or to be to take Lumi to her.
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I'm just letting them get to know each other slowly and I think this will actually take a couple of months for them to really be safe with each other I'm sorry, Nayeli. It's going to be better in a few months, I promise.
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I'm proud of you.
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Something I really realized is that no adult dog or cats like puppy energy.
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Puppy energy is so intense that any grown-up dog also thinks it's annoying.
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Maybe a few dogs like puppies, but yeah, they are curious in the beginning, but then they're like, "Oh, please." So, I guess that it's going to take time until Lumi is mature enough to know how to behave in front of Nayeli. She will eventually learn that she can't play with Nayeli because Nayeli doesn't want to play with her.
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I definitely believe that in some kind of future they will be able to sit with each other in the couch or just be close to each other.
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Well, they sleep together every night. Me and Nayeli and Lumi, we all sleep in the same bed.
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And that's fine because then Lumi's calm. She's sleeping, so Nayeli feels safe to be around her. But when she's awake and when she's like this, when she's full of energy, yeah, then then Nayeli stays away.
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Are you getting a little bit tired now, maybe?
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She's so cute though, this girl. I love her so, so much.
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It's intense with a puppy time. It is. But oh, I feel so much love every day.
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It's so nice to have a dog to be with all the time, to enjoy and explore and and also to see the world through her eyes a little bit. Now, I'm going to take a first sip on this. Cheers, everyone.
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Tomorrow I'm going to Sollefteå and work.
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And I actually thought I'm just going to end the video here because I don't want it to become too long, and I just wanted to start up easy again with making videos.
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I feels like I crashed a little bit and like I have to start up the engine inside of me again and it kind of takes some time.
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So, I don't want to overdo anything and I felt a little bit of pressure when I was going to start filming this video because I felt like I had nothing to share really. I didn't have anything exciting now.
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I'm just at home. But then I remember something that I heard from a lot of you.
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I had the honor meet some of you now during our anniversary at the store.
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So many of you that watches my videos and one thing that so many had in common that they said to me was that they feel so calm when they watch my videos that they feel like it's like an oasis and that they kind of can feel a moment of peace when they watch my videos. And I am so glad to hear that.
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That in this stressful life that we sometimes have that my videos can be just even a small moment of peace in your life. That means so much to me.
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What I understood from from those that said this to me is that it doesn't really matter what I share.
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They just enjoy watching and especially just my normal everyday life and that just made me really happy to hear that because sometimes it's like easy to feel pressure when I don't have anything special to share or I don't have the energy to go out, film amazing, epic, beautiful scenes in nature. Sometimes I just have the energy to be at home and just film my everyday life and so it means so much to me to hear that you enjoy these videos as well when I am just at home, just living my normal life. And that it it can give you a peaceful moment, because that means so much to me. Yeah, I just wanted to say that that I'm really really glad if you feel even a tiny bit better after watching my video, then that's my dream. That's my goal.
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So, I'm going to clean up these berries now, and then I'm going to go to sleep, and then yeah, go up early tomorrow to Sollefteå, and have a working day in the city.
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I am so grateful to each and every one of you who watches my videos.
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Thank you so so much. I hope you have a wonderful summer or winter, depending on where you are in the world.
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But I hope you take care of yourself and each others, and I'll be back soon. I'm sending you so much love. Bye-bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 204 sentences and 3492 words to shadow. The speech runs for 29:52. The speaker talks at a steady 117 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| puppy noun | /ˈpʌpi/ | A young rat. |
| curious adjective | /ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/ | Tending to ask questions, or to want to explore or investigate; inquisitive; (with a negative connotation) nosy, prying. |
| intense adjective | /ɪnˈtɛns/ | Of a characteristic: extreme or very high or strong in degree; severe; also, excessive, towering. |
| grateful adjective | /ˈɡɹeɪtf(ə)l/ | Of a person or their actions, feelings, etc.: expressing gratitude or appreciation; appreciative, thankful. |
| rainy adjective | /ˈɹeɪni/ | Pouring with rain; wet; showery |
| berry noun | /ˈbɛɹi/ | A small succulent fruit, of any one of many varieties. |
| sting verb | /ˈstɪŋ/ | To hurt, usually by introducing poison or a sharp point, or both. |
| everyday adjective | /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ | Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions. |
| explore verb | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | To examine or investigate something systematically. |
| ton noun | /tʌn/ | The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each. |
| sunshine noun | /ˈsʌnʃaɪn/ | The direct rays, light or warmth of the sun. |
| cheers | /t͡ʃɪəz/ | A common toast used when drinking in company. |
| artwork noun | /ˈɑɹtˌwɝk/ | A painting, drawing, sculpture or other piece of creative, visual art. |
| pine noun | /paɪn/ | Any coniferous tree of the genus Pinus. |
| pour verb | /poɹ/ | To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| clean up verb | To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). | |
| run away verb | To flee by running. | |
| start up verb | /stɑɹˈtʌp/ | To rise suddenly. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| do over verb | /ˈduˌoʊvɚ/ | To cover with; to smear or spread on to. |
| give away verb | To make a gift of (something). |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been facing · have been following · I've been wanting |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | It's been · have imagined · have done |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 76 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: sunshine /ˈsʌnʃaɪn/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, furnish /ˈfɝnɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, unbelievable /ˌʌnbɪˈliːvəbl̩/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, underestimate /ʌndɚˈɛs.tɪ.meɪt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like puppy, curious, intense.
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.