Name: 5 Days Of Learning New Skills | Try Living With Lucie | Refinery29
Uploaded: 2019-03-06T03:01:52.000Z
Duration: 12 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm Lucie Fink and this is Five Days Of Learning New Skills.

Hey fam, welcome back to Refinery29's YouTube channel.

If you are new here be sure to click on the little subscribe box in the corner, and if

you are interested in following my personal YouTube channel, check me out at youtube.com/LucieBFink.

I was listening to a podcast recently where I learned that focusing your attention on

learning a new skill, or trying a new activity–

something that maybe doesn't come all that naturally to you or is a little bit challenging–

actually trains your body to be able to deal with stress over time.

So this week I choose five skills that I can each dedicate just one day to.

And I intentionally choose skills that I can learn very easily at home because I wanted

you all to be able to learn alongside me.

I wanted to start the week off with something that's been frequently requested by my audience

and something that I always wanted to try.

My friends over at Fender, challenged me to try learning how to play the ukulele, and

they even sent me this beautiful ukulele in the mail.

And they even gave me access to Fender Play, which is their digital learning platform where

you can learn chords, basic finger placements, and you can take courses online.

I once learned from a YouTube video that when you are tuning a ukulele and you play the

strings from top to bottom, it should sound like this:

So I made sure that each string was tuned up with the online tuner and then I just practiced some chords.

A standard guitar has six strings, whereas a ukelele only has four and compared to the

standard guitar, a ukelele has a much smaller fretboard which is a lot easier for people

Because this video is for Refinery29, we just didn't have the copyrights to play real

So you better believe I would've been jamming out to Jason Mraz and Ingrid Michaelson, and

I would have liked to play some real songs for you, but I wasn't allowed to play any of those songs on camera.

So instead I practiced singing a song written by one of my favorite YouTubers.

We are the moon, the stars, the water and the sun.

I'm sitting at home, having some fun, just making some music, talking to no one.

As long as there's sauce, and there's bread, and there's cheese, it's a pizza to me alright.

After just a couple of hours, my comfort level with the ukulele improved immensely.

My fingers hurt, when I strum like this, so maybe I will strum like that anymore.

Right now I'm almost bleeding on this finger.

And the best part about this skill is that it's now been about a week since Monday, and

I even shared a little clip on my Instagram story of me singing Ingrid Michaelson's song,

And Ingrid Michaelson reposted it on her Instagram story.

And if you want to follow my growth and progression with the ukulele be sure to follow me on Instagram,

If you are bored, with no coffee left to brew, try learning something new, 'cause it's the right thing to do.

More so than ever in this past year, I've been hugely invested in my physical health.

Especially after having my gallbladder taken out last year, maintaining a healthy gut microbiome

Kombucha is a fermented tea that's a great source of probiotics.

It gives your gut that healthy bacteria that can aid in digestion, reduce inflammation,

So I thought a fun skill for Tuesday would be learning how to make this drink at home.

But first in order to make a fresh batch of kombucha you need a Scoby.

It stands for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast, Scoby.

It's essentially a living slimy blob that kind of looks like a mushroom, and it's floating

inside this liquid that's a starter liquid for making kombucha.

These Scobies grow, and they multiply, and they make little baby Scobies

So if you have a friend that makes kombucha at home you can just take a baby Scoby and

I wanted to challenge myself to do this from scratch, which meant I needed to grow my own

Scoby, and create my own starter liquid so that probably in two months down the line

First I boiled water and then I dissolved white sugar in it, and then I drop some teabags

in it, and I basically made a giant batch of sweet tea.

Once it's cool to you pour that tea into a large jar, and you add kombucha.

It's very important to use raw, organic, and unflavored kombucha for this, and what you'll

notice is that those store-bought bottles typically already have some filmy floating stuff in them.

So you want to make sure that when you pour the kombucha into the tea, that you're transferring

And then you cover it with a cloth, or as I used some coffee filters, you tie it off

with rubber bands make sure it's really secure and basically you just put it away from direct sunlight.

I tucked it into the back of my cabinet and in about 20 days or so I should have my own Scoby.

One thing that's very important here is cleanliness so you want to make sure you're not getting

So I made sure to wash my hands really well, and I also boiled the jar in boiling water before I did any of this.

Just trying out this skill for one day really opened my eyes to the giant world out there of Kombucha,

And in the meantime be sure to follow my Instagram stories for some Scoby updates alongside

Thursday's skill is something that I've been wanting to learn for a while now:

It's an extremely important topic, and there's so much to cover here, so Thursday was really

Luckily my best friend's fiancee, Stan is a martial arts and fitness coach.

So on Thursday he came over and taught me the basics of self-defense.

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5 Days Of Learning New Skills | Try Living With Lucie | Refinery29

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basically

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immediately