with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hoge

where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide

finally learn English once and for all

without the boring textbooks, classrooms

and grammar drills.

Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn

to speak fluent English effortlessly.

- Hello, I'm AJ Hoge,

the author of Effortless English:

Learn to Speak English like a Native

and this is The Effortless English Show,

the show that teaches you to speak English powerfully.

And I am finally back after a long break.

As some of you know

that what I was doing during my break

was walking the Camino de Santiago.

What is the Camino de Santiago?

Well, it's a walking path in northern Spain.

But it's more than just a walking path.

It's actually an old pilgrimage.

A pilgrimage is a spiritual

or religious trip or journey.

For example,

Muslims have a pilgrimage to Mecca, right?

They're not just going to Mecca for tourism.

It has a deeper meaning.

So that's what a pilgrimage is.

In India, Hindus have pilgrimages;

Buddhists have pilgrimages.

Well, this was an old Christian pilgrimage,

especially about, you know, thousand years ago or so.

People used to walk along northern Spain

because at the end, the end point of the walk,

the end of the Camino de Santiago,

there's a big church.

And inside that church are the bones,

the body of Saint James.

I'm not Catholic but I just did it as a

I don't know, still as a deeper journey,

an opportunity to walk across Spain,

as a kind of walking meditation.

I went with my good friend, Joe,

from Learn Real English,

so it was also a chance to travel with him

and have an experience with him.

So I thought, in this show,

I'm gonna do something a little different.

Normally, I talk about learning English, but

many people have asked me about my trip,

so I thought I would share some of the videos

that I took during my trip,

because during the trip, I took a few videos.

Every several days, I would take a video

and talk to the camera

and talk about what was happening.

So this is an opportunity for me to share

some of my experiences in Spain

just about a month ago.

Let's start with the first video.

The first video comes from France.

We actually started in a little town in France

just over the Pyrenees Mountains.

It's just a, like six seconds long;

it just shows me

the day we began, it's Joe and I

starting our Camino.

Here it is.

We're beginning the Camino.

Okay, well that's it.

We're beginning the Camino.

But you can see, this is a little town called

St. Jean Pied de Port.

I don't know how to pronounce it correctly in French.

But it's this little town and it's

one of the most traditional starting points

for the Camino de Santiago.

And this is just an old little town,

and this is where we started

and this was the morning we started.

The next video is several days later.

I can't remember,

it was day four maybe of our pilgrimage.

And it's a famous point on the Camino.

In the camino, you walk to these paths,

first we went up and over the Pyrenees Mountains,

which was a beautiful walk, that first day.

Then we went to the town of Pamplona,

and then finally, we reached this point called

the Alto de Perdon.

It has a nice sculpture.

It's on top of this hill.

If you ever see the movie, The Way,

there's a movie called The Way

with Martin Sheen,

it's about the Camino de Santiago.

So if you like, if this is interesting to you,

I recommend rent or buy The Way

and you can use my movie technique,

using that movie, The Way.

And my movie technique is described in my book,

if you don't know what the movie technique is.

All right, so this is the famous point along the Camino.

I'll show you the video now.

Hello, it's day four of the Camino.

We are at the Alto de Padron, I believe it's called

or Perdon,

Alto de Perdon,

which is a big top of a big hill;

very windy up here, there are wind turbines

you can see.

We're feeling really strong;

we had a nice rest day in Pamplona

and we are at the half-way point for today

onward to Puente de Reina,

which is our next stop.

And you can see behind us the statues,

the canvas sculpture, iron sculpture of

pilgrims, you know, walking into the wind

which is famous little

waymark, or landscape mark

on the Camino.

We're doin' well, havin' a great time.

So as you can see

that landscape was very beautiful,

these big, these green hills.

For most of the Camino,

we're walking through the countryside.

The beginning, we walked over the mountains.

For most of it, we were walking through

hills or plains, flat area.

And then every two or three hours,

we would walk through a small, little town,

a little Spanish town.

Most of them were beautiful towns

with the old stone buildings,

very old, 500 years old, a thousand years old,

very, very old stone buildings

from the Middle Ages and beyond,

and more recently, too.

But...

It was one of my favorite parts,

was number one, being out in nature

and walking around every day,

and then also going through these beautiful

old stone towns in Spain, was great.

Now,

in a journey like this,

this journey took 32 days,

we walked for 32 days.

And just as in life,

just as when you were learning English,

many times when you begin

and everything feels great and you're excited, right?

Maybe, you just started off with these English lessons,

you're very excited,

or you're doing anything that's new,

and it's very easy to be excited at the beginning.

But what always happens

for anything that's a little bit difficult,

a little bit long,

anything challenging,

there are going to be some bad days,

there are going to be some tough days.

And of course, everyday on the Camino was not easy.

I also had some difficult days.

And the next day, in the next video, I describe that.

(water rippling)

So it's early morning, maybe 6:30,

and I'm up because I can't sleep.

And I've to say that the first

miserable day and evening on the Camino.

Yesterday, walking was fine, no problem,

seemed fairly easy, actually, physically.

But then when we arrived into town,

I was just feelin' pretty good.

We arrived in this town, and the town is

honestly just horrible.