Shadowing Practice: Real English Conversation: Advanced English Lesson - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Last year at this time, something terrible happened and then something beautiful happened.
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I want to tell you about it.
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On September 27th, 2024, the city where I live, Asheville, North Carolina experienced Hurricane Helene.
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This became one of the worst natural disasters that has ever happened in the history of the United States.
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I was lucky that my family and my home were okay, but so many thousands of people suffered a lot.
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They lost people they love, they lost their homes, and they lost their businesses.
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My city is forever changed.
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The mountains around where I live are forever changed by what happened during that hurricane.
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But do you want to know something beautiful?
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I believe humans inside, we all have a connection
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that we want to make with each other and this happened in the middle of this tragedy.
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People in the community came together to help each other and guess what?
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So did you.
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I reached out to my students a few days after the hurricane happened
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and I asked you to help donate to one of the wonderful charities that was helping save people's lives in my city.
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This was a fundraiser to help fund helicopters, private helicopters.
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These were just normal citizens who happened to have a helicopter
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who were going into the mountains to save people who were trapped in their homes and had no resources, no help, and they needed to get out.
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This is a pretty costly thing to do, but I asked you to help and you did.
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Our community here at Speak English with Vanessa, my wonderful students,
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you donated out of the goodness of your heart $20,000 to help
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pay for fuel to get these helicopters into the mountains to save the people in my city.
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You are amazing.
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I was so touched by this and I know
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that the people whose lives were actually saved were beyond touched by your donations.
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So one year later, I want to say thank you
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so much for everything that you did if you participated in this last year.
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And if you did not participate in that fundraiser last year, I have some good news for you.
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But first let's back up a little.
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If you are new here, hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
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Here on my YouTube channel, I teach English learners like you how to speak real daily life English
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so that you can have the confidence
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that you need to go out into the world and speak in English and connect with other people.
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One of the things that my students tell me is
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that they really want to hear more real life conversations that are at a level that they can understand.
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Maybe for you, you can watch an English movie or TV show and understand the general idea, but you can't catch every single word without subtitles.
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This is really normal when you're learning another language, but how can you get to that level where you don't need subtitles to be able to understand a movie?
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Well, you need to hear real life conversations that are more understandable.
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And that's what I like to do here on my YouTube channel.
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And also in the course that I create every single month,
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the Fearless Fluency Club, we feature a new English speaker and you are able to understand,
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immerse yourself in English during that conversation.
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And during our course, I help you to break down the conversation,
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learning vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and give you the community and the tools to be able to speak yourself as well.
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So today you are going to see a little sneak peek inside the Fearless Fluency Club.
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You're going to meet someone who you don't know, but guess what?
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She knows you.
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What?
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Is that possible?
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It's true.
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You're going to meet Elsa.
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Elsa has been working for my business, Speak English with Vanessa, for the past seven or eight years.
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She has been really, really amazing working on so many administrative tasks.
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She is incredibly detail-oriented, kind, empathetic, and a wonderful part of Speak English with Vanessa.
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So even though you have not met her before, she knows you.
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And Elsa lives in my city in Asheville, North Carolina.
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She lives in a small town right outside of the city called Swannanoa.
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And unfortunately, last year during hurricane Helene,
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Swannanoa was hit so hard because the river goes directly through the town.
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Parts of Swannanoa were completely washed away.
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Thankfully, Elsa and her home were okay, but so many of her neighbors were not okay.
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She experienced a lot during that time, helping other people, trying to figure out how to create a life amidst everything
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that had been torn up in her small town.
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And that's what we're going to talk about today.
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You're going to meet Elsa.
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We're going to talk about her hurricane experience, how in the midst of all of those difficult times,
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she can still create the energy to give back to others.
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And that is something that is so beautiful in times of tragedy,
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that we can gather our own forces and help others when we are ourselves are still struggling.
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And maybe that's the best way to heal after all, is to connect with each other.
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Before you meet Elsa, let me tell you the good news that I hinted at before.
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If you join the Fearless Fluency Club between September 25th,
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2025 and October 25th, 2025,
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Speak English with Vanessa is going to donate 20% of all course revenue to the wonderful local charity, Beloved.
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Beloved has done wonderful work in Asheville ever since day one when the hurricane hit.
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They were out there on the streets, giving away supplies, making meals,
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and they are still continuing to help rebuild people's houses absolutely for free.
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And the only way they can do this is through donations.
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So we want to participate and help them help the local community.
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And if you join the course, you are going to be helping my community continue to rebuild day after day.
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Also, when you join the Fearless Fluency Club, you are going to get access to our wonderful library of over 47 modules.
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This is over five years worth of English lessons.
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You'll meet 47 native English speakers, have weekly live stream lessons with me,
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and access to weekly Zoom calls where other students get together, support each other, and speak in English.
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So if you would like to join the Fearless Fluency Club, this is a wonderful month to do it.
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20% of your fee will go directly to Beloved and help the people in my community.
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Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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All right, let's go in and meet Elsa and hear about her hurricane experience.
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If you want to dive deep and see many, many tragic stories about Hurricane Helene,
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all you need to do is type that into the YouTube search bar and you can find that.
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But I hope what you're about to hear will not only tell about the story of the hurricane,
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but also show the hope that when humans care about each other, we can really do wonderful things.
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All right, let's go and meet Elsa.
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Hi everyone.
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I'm here today with Elsa, who works for Speak English with Vanessa,
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helping you learn English, but also she lives in this town of Asheville,
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North Carolina, and we experienced something very big last year around this time.
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And I thought we could talk about it.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I'm excited to be with you guys.
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Yeah.
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So first let's do a little introduction.
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What do you do with Speak English with Vanessa?
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Yes, that's a great question.
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Well, I've been working with Speak English with Vanessa since 2018.
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So we've been together for going on seven years.
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I do all of the email responses, customer service.
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So when you guys write emails and you have questions about logging in or payments, how to use the course,
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I'm the one who's chatting with you usually and kind of helping support people if they have questions, getting it to the right person,
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helping everything in our day-to-day business lives run smoothly.
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Yeah.
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I sometimes tell, tell Dan that you often find like mistakes
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that I make and help figure out all the little details that I have overlooked and how valuable that is.
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So thank you.
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Yeah, of course.
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Well, it takes a village, a community.
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Yeah.
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I think your ability to pay attention to detail is amazing.
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Thank you.
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Yes.
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I'm very much on it.
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Very detail oriented.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So let's rewind the clock a bit and go back to September 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 2024.
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What were you expecting or what were you thinking might happen?
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And maybe a lot of people watching this, like, don't even know what happened yet.
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So we're kind of in the same boat.
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Set the seeing what was going on at that time might happen yeah
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so we live in the mountains of western north carolina and
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so we often um we get you know i would say
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it's pretty common for us to get rain here we live in like a temperate rainforest
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so it's very green we have a lot of plants it rains pretty commonly.
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So about a week before everything happened,
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we had been told that there was a big storm coming, that it could potentially be raining a lot here,
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that we maybe would need to just kind of be prepared that we would be getting more rain than usual,
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that there might be some flash flooding yeah we have a lot of rivers in this area
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and it's not uncommon for areas around the river to have
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some overflow for um kind of the biltmore village area anywhere
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along the river to just be a little higher than usual yeah there's like specific places
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that sometimes flood yeah a little bit a little yeah right like that's not uncommon
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and so i think um i was expecting okay you know, it's going to be rainy, maybe it won't be fun driving on the highway.
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It might be a good idea to sort of stay home.
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So I made sure that the day, I think it was the 26th or 7th,
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26th, the day before, the Thursday before, kind of to just cancel my plans for the next day and, you know, do everything from home and make sure
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that I didn't have any groceries to get or people to see
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and just kind of transition my plans to be more at home.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I feel like we kind of did the same thing school
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the day before it rained a lot yes there was like another storm
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that came through
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and pippin really wants to be part of this conversation he's
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our our um comfort animal right now our emotional support animal yeah we need him
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so i feel like for us it was similar we decided
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to stay home also schools decided the day before there had been so much rain on the 26th on Thursday,
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schools decided to cancel the next day, which was pretty surprising.
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I was pretty surprised about that because usually they might cancel for ice.
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Sure, but not rain. For rain?
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Like that's a lot.
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It's like the night before the last second.
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Totally.
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I think we should probably just hold off tomorrow because it looks like we might get more rain.
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Right.
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Like better to be safe than sorry.
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Just kind of being a, you know, a conservative approach wanting to be safe.
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Yeah.
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sorry Pippin and
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so I remember is it should we kind of transition into
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talking about what then the next part brought sure I remember people saying you know fill up pots
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and pans with water just in case and I remember thinking
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that seems really did you do that I did that
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and I remember my partner was like I really don't think that's necessary that's honestly a little embarrassing
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that you're doing that
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and I was like man well I just you know just want to be safe
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so I filled up some pots and pans with water
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and put them on the countertop just to be extra careful
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and then I remember maybe around five
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or six in the morning it started raining a lot
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and it was like pouring torrential downpour did you get woken up by it yes
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and I remember that morning my partner works in a hospital
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and so he had to get up really early
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and be there I think around 6 a.m
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and he told me by the time he was driving from our home in Swannanoa, east of Asheville, down south,
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that there was already standing water on I-40 and 26, that he was the only car out and he was driving through standing water.
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Oh, that's dangerous.
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Yeah.
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Wow.
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So he, I mean, he's working in the hospital.
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He has to go in.
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Hospital doesn't close.
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Yeah.
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And they probably needed him more than ever.
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Absolutely. That day.
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Yeah.
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So when he called you to tell you that, what was that like?
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Because that's already more than what you expected.
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Right.
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There's standing water on the highway.
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It's not just like, here's the river, there's standing water.
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It's there's the highway.
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Highway.
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Right.
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I thought, huh, that's weird.
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It usually there's not standing water on the highway.
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That's concerning.
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But I figured, well, it's probably fine.
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Yeah.
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Out of sight, out of mind.
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My house was, you know, I was looking outside.
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There was a lot of water rushing in the front yard down this little drain that we have.
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So after an hour or two, it started to clog up.
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And I went out there with a little shovel and cleared the leaves out and was like, wow, it's raining a lot.
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And then all of a sudden I lost power.
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And I remember thinking, okay, I was still texting a friend, like there goes the power.
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Haha, I guess I'm not going to be watching Netflix or I wish I had a show downloaded or something.
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I'm going to go read a book.
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And so I, because usually power is just a couple hours that it's out.
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Yeah.
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Not too big of a deal.
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Not too big of a deal.
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Like what are we going to do without internet in 2024?
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We can't survive.
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I mean, it is integral to daily life now.
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Right.
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Right.
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I remember that day or maybe it was the night before.
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I think it was the night before I saw a message that someone who lives over down like Reams Creek Road saying,
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Oh, my neighbors haven't had power for 24 hours.
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Like they had lost it Thursday morning.
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And I remember thinking 24 hours, that is so long.
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And I had this little panic of like, Oh, maybe like, maybe there's something more.
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Yeah.
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But it's probably just an anomaly.
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Right.
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So I filled up pots and pans too.
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Okay.
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I think I even filled up our bathtub.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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It was like, this is silly, right?
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Like, I don't need to do this.
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But that message about not having power for a whole day it really surprised me
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and now after the fact thinking 24 hours I was so naive
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that was nothing that was little did we know little did we know yeah
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so at that day of you're still at home your partner's off at the hospital you can still call
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but you had no power yeah there you are reading a
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book like old-fashioned old-fashioned just kind of waiting out the storm I remember the last thing I looked at on the news, I was kind of tracking where the hurricane was.
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And it said that it was going due north of some town in Georgia.
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And I looked at a map and I was like, well, that's kind of here.
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I was like, I don't know how far due north, but I was like, that looks like where I am.
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Don't love to hear that.
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And then I lost cell service.
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So then I no longer had access to the internet or any sort of calls, couldn't text. That just dropped.
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Cut off from the world, really.
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Yeah, right.
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Did that happen up here as well?
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Yeah, I remember we couldn't call everyone.
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And almost instantly you could see everyone come out of their houses.
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It was like, it felt like old-fashioned times.
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Right, totally.
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The only way to get any information was to come out of the house.
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But it was raining.
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Yeah for a while still so it was tentative to come outside, but Yeah, that when all that cut off it felt like Almost surreal.
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Mm-hmm.
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Oh, I can't use my phone, right?
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Oh, I'm so dependent Yeah, I felt so restrictive and confusing and odd.
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Yeah, I don't think I felt panicked yet though No, me neither.
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Like okay.
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This has never happened for more than like a couple hours.
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Sure.
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This is a fluke maybe yeah yeah and so then after
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that the the it continued raining I think the entire day
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pretty much maybe like part of the day until evening almost the afternoon the afternoon yeah okay
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and I remember going outside as well
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and kind of seeing my neighbors out there there are a lot of kids in my neighborhood
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and so kids were out riding their bikes and playing
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and my neighborhood is up a little bit of a hill
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so we were really lucky that there was no flooding or damage in our neighborhood, but, um, we were all sort of just waiting for a day or two.
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And then I think it was actually probably more like that night or that same, um, within 24 hours, some of my neighbors who have dump trucks
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and big pickup trucks drove out and realized
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because we looked down at the end of our street and saw people in like wheelchairs rolling down the road,
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like escaping from somewhere people on like crutches
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and people who were obviously in a place
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that they had to escape from walking down the street like at the end of the um 70
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and so that sort of I was like that's really odd I saw
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that there was standing water down there on a road where there's never water and so
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that made me start to think something was wrong yeah um
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at this point my partner was still at the hospital hadn't
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heard from him maybe like 12 hours had gone by my neighbors were saying oh it's really really bad.
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Like there's a house in the middle of the road on the next street over it.
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There was a landslide and it just slid out into the street is blocking the road, but you're still really just in your neighborhood because there's no way to know what's happening.
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There's no way to know what, what the damage had been except hearing from other people.
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And some people who had tried to go out and look said that there were power lines down, huge trees down in our neighborhood, a couple trees fell and blocked the road
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so no one could get out so we had neighborhood um chainsaw crews
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that came and cut the trees down and hauled them off
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and thank god we have people with big dump trucks who do
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that type of work like we really needed
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that yeah i feel like america is kind of in a
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unique position where a lot of people do have chainsaws right
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or like you have a neighbor who has some kind of heavy machinery
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that can move something or help in some way during a disaster like that.
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That's such a good point.
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I hadn't thought about like maybe in a city or a different region, a different country, it might be more of a rural thing
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that you're having tools that you are used to using on your land.
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Yeah.
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And you're just dependent on whatever kind of help outside organizations or like the government can give.
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Sure.
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Um, yeah.
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So you were at home, your partner was still gone and it's still Friday the 27th.
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Um, what happened at that point? Did he come back?
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Did you just hang out there?
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Yeah.
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Or go see why there's people in wheelchairs going down the street where like, what are they escaping from and what's going on?
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And I really was so isolated
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and had no idea really how bad it was for a couple days because I just was like, I'm going to stay put.
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I don't need to go anywhere.
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It's better to just hunker down and stay safe.
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I've got enough water and food to get through a couple of days.
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But, you know, I was thinking, well, we don't have power.
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So all the food is going to go bad.
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Just leave the freezer closed.
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Don't open it.
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But yeah, just kind of chatting with my neighbors
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and hearing some people say oh it's really bad this people
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on the street over a lot of the homes flooded
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and the river is 20 25 feet above the houses like up past the roofs
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and I just really couldn't conceptualize what that meant or what
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that looked like and they said that there were people doing emergency rescues
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that there were people on top of their houses who had been stranded
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and people who had died
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and it was really horrific hearing about all of this um kind of hearsay it wasn't
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that it was a lie it was just I had no idea
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but a lot of my neighbors were filling me in and so at
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that point I think I started to realize like oh this
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is very serious yeah like you're in the same part of
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town like Swannanoa was the word was the name yeah everything
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that was the most horrific and difficult to hear about was like in Swannanoa, in Swannanoa, all that stuff.
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Right.
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And that was like a couple streets from you, but yet you were spared.
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Yes.
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And totally isolated, like no internet, no cell service, you're cut off.
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How can you know?
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Of course you can't know, but hearing that feels so surreal.
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Right.
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That that's neighbors.
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To be in the epicenter and to have no idea.
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Yeah.
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It's, it's like, you don't know if you, if that's good because it sort of protects you or if you
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wish that you had known that you were kind of in the eye of the storm.
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I think there's a lot of really, we can talk about the aftermath later, but like a lot of difficult psychological survivor's guilt type of stuff going on.
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Yeah.
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So did you end up staying at your house?
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Did your partner have to stay at the hospital because roads were flooding?
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Could you even get around?
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I ended up, you know, calling my family.
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I was able to walk to a place down the road and to get cell service, call my family who live about 30 minutes south and they were all okay.
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Um, and then I went to the hospital with my partner one day to try to like, he has a coworker who has a,
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a little girl and I was going to hang out with her and there was not really much to do.
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So I figured I could babysit and be of help.
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And we left that day.
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Um, and we were at the hospital all night
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and then we drove home and all of our neighbors were like packing up their cars and fleeing.
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And I saw so many people, this commotion and our neighbor came up to us and let us know that they had been told that the dam, the water treatment facility, the dam where,
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um, that our part of town gets drinking water had failed
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and was going to like dump all of the water onto our neighborhood.
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And all of our, all of our neighbors were panicking, trying to evacuate.
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And at this point there was no gas either.
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So there was no, no places had power, no places had gas there was no information we had no
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idea what was going on there was no water there was no it was just silent i don't know
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if you remember that eerie feeling of there weren't helicopters there weren't there was no noise yes
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and you had no idea when anything would change right
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that this could be it i remember i had
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that feeling on like saturday like oh my gosh is this like how we die i know there's no water and
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but there's no way to contact there was no thought of
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like oh people are coming mean in they're gonna bring is
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anyone coming no one had there was no gas in your
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car to be able to go anywhere like that's a real panic feeling totally i'm sure
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so many people especially like near you yeah yeah and
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so my partner
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and i made a plan like he got in his car
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i got in mine i threw our dog in the back
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and i drove so fast please don't turn me in
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but i was driving way over the speed limit to the hospital
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that was going to be our meeting point and we were gonna
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um then we had heard some things about
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that it wasn't a true claim but we couldn't really get we couldn't verify
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if it was real um we didn't want to drive home
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and waste the gas
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because we were we had we didn't have a lot thankfully i had gone a couple days before just
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because i was like wanting to be safe and got gotten gas
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but he was almost on empty um and we went to a fire station
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and they were like we really can't tell you we don't know better safe than sorry it's good that you evacuated and, um, yeah, the dam breaking would have been,
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I mean, we heard after the fact that had broken, how incredibly disastrous that would have been catastrophic.
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Yeah.
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I mean, thank goodness that did not happen,
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but I, it was maybe good that there was some kind of evacuation because there was no evacuation warnings ahead of time.
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None of that, the week leading up to it.
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So saying, Hey, you should leave.
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it's better than not panic moments but right being somewhere else that's safer
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or calmer yeah totally be okay oh of course yeah
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so we ended up going and staying the night down in hendersonville um
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and just kind of trying to regroup from there yeah yeah
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try to figure out what is life i remember we went to the hospital on saturday okay
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because we heard through word of mouth that there was internet at the hospital
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because it was the only place that had power.
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Yeah.
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And nobody was really using a couple neighbors had a generator.
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Okay.
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But I, I don't know.
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The hospital was really like the only place that you could get any kind of internet.
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And because of this work, I thought I need to can contact somebody.
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And I know it's only been three days.
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And if I'm not connected with people for three days, it's not a big deal, but who knows, it felt so endless.
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Right.
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So we went to the hospital, found some very spotty wifi and I messaged you and a couple other people on the team to just say, here's the situation.
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Here's like the three things that need to happen in the next couple of days.
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We're going to try to see if this figures itself out, but I have no clue.
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Right.
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And I was so glad to hear from you.
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I think you had already messaged me at that point.
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I think so.
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Maybe because you'd been to the hospital with your partner.
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Yes, that's right.
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Yeah.
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How did Elsa do this?
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Yeah.
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Even before we got there on Saturday.
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But it felt really relieving to know both you and I, we live here.
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We are stuck in this spot, not only in so many ways,
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but with work thinking, I can't just drop off the face of the earth
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right at this moment i need things to continue to happen
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and other people on our team were able to just pick it up yeah
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and send the emails when they needed to be sent to help with videos
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that needed to be published all that kind of stuff
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which was like one less thing to think about absolutely
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that felt like okay i can just focus on family survival
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whatever we're doing local kind of getting your bearings in your neighborhood and your state and your community.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So when you were in Hendersonville, um, was there any point when you felt like I should go home or I need to like,
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how long were you living in Hendersonville?
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Yeah, that's a good question.
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So my partner was still going home because we had stayed there for a night and then we decided, you know, he wanted to get back and just check on things.
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And, um, it was our poor dog is pretty anxious
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and she really doesn't do really well not being at home
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so we wanted to get her home and
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so he decided he was going to go back home
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and I was going to stay at my mom's
451
because he ended up working the like two weeks straight and
452
so he took her home and spent some time there
453
and like helped her get a little more settled and
454
and I ended up staying at my mom's um to be closer to family
455
because I have some older family members I wanted to like make sure
456
that I could do whatever I could get them water get food set up
457
and I ended up staying there for I think a solid week okay about a week
458
and it was so helpful to have our team I want to go back to
459
that too like I think you're right it's like you think you've got everything down
460
and that like everyone does their thing and you're doing yours
461
and then something like this happens and it's very affirming to have each other's backs
462
but also just to remember like the importance of being able to rely on each other
463
and to fill in for each other when we need that support is so important.
464
Yeah, yeah.
465
Like when we're going through a crisis to have other people be able to step in and help.
466
Yeah.
467
And then if that should happen to somebody else to be able to just not just continue work, but hopefully like support each other.
468
Right.
469
Emotionally and yeah, in all the ways needed.
470
It was really amazing to see how neighbors banded together.
471
I felt like I got to know certain people who had been living in my neighborhood since the sixties
472
or who had grown up there, um, sharing food together saying like, what, what thing in your freezer is,
473
um, thawing at a rate that needs to be eaten.
474
Like, let's get the grills out.
475
And one good thing is that I feel like a lot of us have camping gear in this area.
476
That's true.
477
Yeah.
478
So we were really camping.
479
We had a little propane tank.
480
We were cooking, we had headlamps, like sleeping bags if we needed it.
481
And, um, my neighbors have a little above ground pool.
482
They were giving a lot of the older neighbors water to flush their toilets.
483
Yeah.
484
Cause you didn't have any electricity.
485
It's not like you went home because you have electricity.
486
No, there was no electricity.
487
There was no, you turn on the faucet and there was nothing, nothing flush the toilet.
488
There's nothing.
489
Yeah.
490
We were going to the bathroom outdoors using our camping skills.
491
Um, but yeah, it was a lot of, at that point, I feel like about after a week, there started to be an influx of distribution and aid.
492
There was like, oh, we had the Chinook helicopters flying over.
493
And that really, for me, felt like a relief.
494
Like someone's coming to help.
495
There's water, there's food there.
496
There was a lot of like wellness checking that happened once I think people got cell service, like, hey, my parents live up Long Branch Road or,
497
hey, my sister lives over in Black Mountain across this bridge.
498
Can someone go?
499
And people took their cars.
500
People took four wheelers people were taking like off-roading people were taking helicopters i know
501
that you had a fundraiser for helicopter searches and deliveries to remote areas
502
and it was just amazing the way
503
that people came together in community to care for each other yeah i think that was really heartening
504
yeah that there was no organization that was doing
505
that in particular there were organizations doing things but just neighbors messaging
506
and trying to connect and help each other yeah and
507
if i know like
508
when we like in our neighborhood people would say oh i'm going here i hear there's a water
509
distribution site that someone opened up the army came in
510
and they have a bunch of water i'm gonna go there
511
because i have gas in my car and you don't yet right
512
so i'll get you some water what do you need
513
and just that coming out to connect and help each other very selfless i feel like there it was even more,
514
it was very beautiful to see that, but even more beautiful when just what, one or two months later,
515
it was like election year in the U S which is such a dividing time, no matter what.
516
Right.
517
And we live in a pretty divided city.
518
I feel like there's a lot on either side, a lot in the middle too, but just everybody helping everyone, no matter what, there was no thought of any of this,
519
like media, this and them and all that kind of stuff.
520
You versus us.
521
It was just like us the community together everybody helping each
522
other you know here we had um french canadian yes ottawa
523
linemen yes fixing our power lines yeah amazing i remember hearing
524
everywhere people coming in like utility trucks from all over the
525
country from outside of the country from you know canadians coming
526
that was amazing feeling i felt so supported and cared for I remember seeing signs that were just like, thank you for helping us.
527
And I think I started to cry.
528
Well, I was crying a lot during that time, but just feeling the support of other people, knowing I did a volunteer water distribution one day at, um, Asheville high.
529
And it was a lot of guys from Buffalo who came down and they go to natural disaster sites and they, this was their job.
530
They kind of post up in schools and create like food and water.
531
Like, are they RMEs ready?
532
the ready to eat meals are re no rems maybe something like
533
that the the food
534
that kind of like army meals army meals you can eat
535
it in any condition you don't need refrigeration i think it even has its own little cooking thing
536
which could be dangerous depending um
537
but yeah then i think it was about two weeks two full weeks
538
that we didn't have power maybe even longer
539
and then it was almost a month three weeks
540
that we didn't have water so
541
that was a long time to not have water yeah what was
542
that like in swananoa for food i feel like there's a lot of things like
543
that happening yeah you're right i think there there was um
544
you know we i think we both volunteered at blunt pretzels doing like chopping veggies
545
and like i did a lot of cleanup at the end of the night
546
and they had so many people were suddenly homeless they were sleeping in tents or they didn't even have a tent.
547
And so they were cooking three meals a day for people for, I think they just stopped doing that.
548
Like their goal was a year, a year, a year.
549
Yes.
550
Right.
551
And so, um, volunteering with them and seeing that people were really using it was, I think, affirming for them.
552
Like, there's such a need.
553
This isn't just, oh, we did it and nobody wants it.
554
Yeah.
555
And then Bounty and Soul is another amazing organization that I've volunteered with pre and post-hurricane.
556
But they moved a lot of their markets to this Juananoa Black Mountain area
557
and have really focused on the areas that were hit the hardest and I've been volunteering at the Latino market.
558
So it's like a lot of Spanish speaking community members there, um, get, you know, produce and all sorts of pantry staples.
559
And, um, it's an amazing place to feed the community.
560
And so I feel like people have really seen that there's such a need and people are excited to volunteer like that.
561
Yeah.
562
That seems to be that beauty you were talking about.
563
So people are like excited to, to do that and get involved just because it feels nice.
564
Yeah, I think for me when I went to Blunt Pretzels, I have never felt that kind of atmosphere before of like we were just chopping potatoes.
565
We're chopping whatever, putting together stuff.
566
Everyone was like, we cut the whole box of potatoes.
567
All right, let's go.
568
We got another round.
569
All right, there's people coming in 30 minutes.
570
Let's make this.
571
Everyone was so positive.
572
And like if you're working in a restaurant, people aren't doing that.
573
Yeah, totally.
574
They're just like so everyone was so grateful to be there.
575
Yeah.
576
And I think a lot of people were kind of like me or you who felt extremely lucky.
577
We were spared in so many ways.
578
And I felt a lot of guilt about that.
579
Like something I had, yeah, I'd never experienced that before.
580
But physically, and I was like, I wasn't going crazy about it,
581
but I was feeling just like so overwhelmed by that feeling of guilt that I thought like, I need to just, I need to do something hands on.
582
Absolutely.
583
My couple hours is not going to change the world, but it might help me in kind of that selfish, like giving back to me kind of way.
584
And holy cow, it totally fit the bill.
585
Like being there for a couple hours, I came home so rejuvenated and like, I'm like, I see what other people are doing and that it's this community effort.
586
And I'm like, it's just me a couple hours chopping vegetables.
587
I want to save the world.
588
I want to save everybody.
589
but seeing like just this little effort when everybody does it right is
590
so powerful yeah I felt like after that I was like well
591
if whenever I'm done teaching English someday I would love to do
592
that I know like World Central Kitchen was like a big
593
yes player in helping feed a lot of places around here um during
594
that time I was like whoa what if
595
that was like all the time and you go to like disaster zones
596
and you're helping people and everyone's so positive helping each other in this like tragedy.
597
I don't know.
598
I felt so invigorating.
599
It's also our community, right?
600
It's maybe a different feeling, but, but it is such an interesting experience to have, to feel that energy is so different than talking about it.
601
It's like nothing I've experienced to like tell someone what it's like to live through a natural disaster.
602
You just can't understand until it happens.
603
And like you said, we are so lucky and have
604
so much to be grateful for
605
and it's it's an electric feeling of banding together of doing something transmuting this crisis
606
and really leveraging our grief and turning it into action
607
and it yeah like you said it may not be something transformative for a couple hours
608
but it's like not only does it feel good for you
609
if everybody does it it compounds and I took
610
that experience away as like small is all and it's like
611
if we apply that to life it doesn't have to be some huge thing
612
that we fix a system like we can't do
613
that in a lot of ways but if we start with our neighbors
614
and if we start with our communities and
615
if we start with each other like I really do I'm like holding hope
616
that that makes a difference yeah you starting with who you can affect
617
and what you can do and when other people do
618
that too it just comes together as something
619
so powerful yeah I remember one time we went for a hike we wanted to visit the hike
620
that we almost always go to
621
that hike was blocked off we couldn't go there anymore
622
but there was a nearby hike
623
and there was just two dudes with chainsaws cutting trees right making way for this trail
624
that like is not the world's most important trail yeah
625
but they felt like they wanted to help make some bit of normalcy put together this trail
626
that they cared about it and yeah, it felt in the scheme of things, this is so simple.
627
It's just a small thing, but it means so much.
628
And everyone doing things together, these little small actions can have a big effect.
629
And like something about that, about doing something that you don't have to do, that you're not getting paid to do that.
630
Maybe you just want to do because it feels good.
631
Or, you know, that it will have a positive, like, I love to let someone out in traffic
632
when I'm driving of like oh you go ahead
633
because i see you're trying to turn and that looks really complicated
634
and i love when i see not just
635
that it has a positive chain like another person would be like okay to the next person it seems
636
so simple but the fact that you were able to hike on a trail
637
that it was passable that like there's so that that feels
638
so important yeah especially after you've gone through this upheaval yeah
639
having any little bit of normalcy is yeah yeah really important
640
and it's amazing it's been a year it feels like
641
so much normalcy has come back especially to this area like we're not living in like boone
642
or spruce pine or places that are really changed yes forever forever um
643
but it is i don't know
644
if you felt this like just driving around occasionally there's places like we go to the nature center yeah often
645
and the main bridge to to go over to the nature center is cut in half.
646
And they're never gonna fix that.
647
There's not, they've built another road to go over.
648
There's no fixing that, yeah.
649
But just that as a stark reminder, wow, that is a thing that happened.
650
And it's very jarring to kind of see that in your just live my daily life, taking my kids to the nature center.
651
Oh my, and just brings back all of those feelings.
652
Yeah, that's something you don't hear about stuff the news you
653
don't think about oh right people are going to be reminded of this a year later
654
that it's like grief is going to have a an imprint on your life
655
and then it's not gonna maybe ever go away like it
656
will be altered your perception of the loss will be different
657
for your for your the trajectory of your life yeah yeah
658
well thank you for this yeah conversation this has been great
659
the reflecting is so emotional still yeah it's been a year
660
but goodness there's still a lot to process and i'm
661
so glad that we're able to that we're that we're all okay we're
662
so lucky and i'm really grateful to be part of this team
663
and get to support this awesome community
664
but also to get to chat about this
665
and talk with you what it was like yeah i'm so glad you are okay
666
physically and now getting there emotionally
667
and yeah just willing to share your story it helps students
668
also who have experienced whether it's a natural disaster just grief
669
and crisis in general hear how other people go through things absolutely we're all connected in some way bonded through
670
that yeah yeah so thanks so much absolutely thanks everyone for watching thanks for watching.
671
Take care, guys.
672
Bye.
673
Well, thank you
674
so much for joining us as we talked about this really difficult topic of the hurricane Helene
675
that hit my city in Asheville, North Carolina last year, September 2024.
676
If you want to continue improving your English
677
and also give back to help the people in my community continue to rebuild after this tragedy,
678
you can join the Fearless Fluency Club.
679
In the Fearless Fluency Club, you will immerse yourself in real English.
680
You'll meet 47 native English speakers.
681
You'll also have weekly live stream lessons with me
682
and you'll have weekly Zoom calls with other English students so
683
that you can support yourself and continue to improve your English conversation skills.
684
If you join between September 25th, 2025 and October 25th, 2025,
685
we are going to be donating 20% of all course revenue, including if you are a past member and you are continuing your subscription,
686
you are also participating in this fundraiser.
687
We are going to donate 20% of all revenue for the Fearless Fluency Club to the wonderful charity Beloved.
688
They're doing incredible work in my city, helping to rebuild people's lives out of the goodness of their hearts.
689
This is an incredible charity that's doing great work
690
and you can be a part of it as well by simply joining the Fearless Fluency Club.
691
Two for one, English and helping people who really need it.
692
You can join the Fearless Fluency Club
693
and also participate in this fundraiser by clicking on the link in the description for the Fearless Fluency Club.
694
Join today.
695
I can't wait to help you improve your English and continue to improve my city as well.
696
Well, thank you so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.
697
Bye.
698
Hey, how you doing?
699
My name is Poncho Bermejo.
700
I'm one of the co-directors of Bill of Asheville.
701
Usually people ask us what bill of Asheville it is and I always say this is a no profit, it's a collective of people that care.
702
We are many, many people that care and act for the common good of our community.
703
Yesterday we went to Swannanoa and we were able to connect with different people.
704
We are renovating houses there, rebuilding houses.
705
We have seen a lot of pain, we have seen a lot of trauma, a lot of people that don't even want to live here no more.
706
are scared of trees because many trees probably thousands of trees fell in houses and cars
707
so many people are with this trauma too the trauma seen many people dead floating in the river too
708
so we haven't seen a lot of pain we haven't seen
709
a lot of destruction only i can tell you then we are seeing too
710
that we are walking right now in the reconstruction with many people
711
that is coming together like i say we are a collective of people in care
712
and we haven't seen many people in care around the country
713
people in from new york having came people from from ohio
714
people from chicago people from texas are coming together to came
715
here with all the force to reveal this community people usually
716
talk about who is not here like they say oh you
717
know this this institution is not here this organization is not
718
here i'm not worried about who who is not here i'm
719
worried about who is here then is the people in the community
720
and the power of all these people
721
and he's coming from all these different places to do it to no way for nobody
722
because we believe than we are the people that we was waiting for.
723
And because the reason we are not waiting for nobody.
724
But wait, do you want more?
725
I recommend watching this video next, where I walk around my old neighborhood near downtown Asheville and talk to you about what I see along the way.
726
This is a great way to immerse yourself in real life English
727
and also see a new place that maybe you'd be interested in visiting someday.
728
All right, I'll see you there.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Real English Conversation: Advanced English Lesson”. This video has 728 sentences and 8227 words to shadow. The speech runs for 46:18. The speaker talks at a natural 178 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hurricane noun | /ˈhʌɹɪkeɪn/ | A severe tropical cyclone; an intense storm rotating around a central eye. |
| helicopter noun | /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/ | An aircraft that is borne along by one or more sets of long rotating blades which allow it to hover, move in any direction including reverse, or land; and… |
| fundraiser noun | /ˈfʌnd.ɹeɪ.zɚ/ | An event undertaken to get money by voluntary contributions for a particular activity or cause. |
| hike noun | /haɪk/ | A long walk, usually for pleasure or exercise. |
| chop verb | /t͡ʃɑp/ | To cut into pieces with short, vigorous cutting motions. |
| rebuild verb | /ɹiːˈbɪld/ | To build again or anew. |
| donate verb | /ˈdoʊˌneɪt/ | To make a donation; to give away something of value to support or contribute towards a cause or for the benefit of another. |
| goodness noun | /ˈɡʊdnəs/ | The state or characteristic of being good. |
| tragedy noun | /ˈtɹæd͡ʒ.ɪ.di/ | A drama or similar work, in which the main character is brought to ruin or otherwise suffers the extreme consequences of some tragic flaw or weakness of… |
| immerse verb | /ɪˈmɜɹs/ | To place within a fluid (generally a liquid, but also a gas). |
| normalcy noun | /ˈnɔɹməlsi/ | The state of being geometrically normal, at a right angle. |
| grief noun | /ɡɹiːf/ | Suffering, hardship. |
| dump verb | /dʌmp/ | To release, especially in large quantities and chaotic manner. |
| guilt noun | /ɡɪlt/ | Responsibility for wrongdoing. |
| trauma noun | /ˈtɹɔm.ə/ | Any injury to the body of a living thing. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| fill up verb | To make (something) completely full. | |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| cut off verb | /ˌkʌt ˈɔf/ [ˌkɐɾ ˈɔf] | To remove by cutting. |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You're going to meet someone who you don't know, but guess what?
- I'm excited to be with you guys.
- I'm very much on it.
- Did you just hang out there?
- Could you even get around?
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 | has been working · I've been working · I've been volunteering |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has ever happened · has been · have not met |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were trapped · were actually saved · was hit |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who were · someone who you · day, which was |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 147 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: evacuation /ɪˌvækjuˈeɪʃən/, flush /ˈflʌʃ/, donation /doʊˈneɪʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, gosh /ɡɑːʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: helicopter /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/, evacuation /ɪˌvækjuˈeɪʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, generator /ˈdʒɛnəɹeɪtə(ɹ)/
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 hurricane, helicopter, fundraiser.
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.