along with--

- Kate.

- And we are back with another conversation in English

and we, this is where we talk about various topics

so that you can get some good listening practice,

learn new words and phrases and do this in a fun way.

So, be sure to check out the description

for resources and a list of the phrases that we use today.

Now, we are going to talk about winter.

We talked about summer-- - Um hmm.

- Maybe two years ago.

And we went through various idioms

and just talked about some in general

to give you some key phrases

and we're going to do the same again today

but we're going to talk about winter.

My first question is: is it winter

at the moment?

- That is an excellent question.

Winter is actually beginning, um,

in the next month.

- Okay, so today it is, well, it's late November.

- Uh-huh.

- When does winter officially start?

- That's a great question.

- I've never--

- I don't know off the top of my head.

I think it is in December.

- I always think that if you divide it by months,

then it's December, January, February.

- I think that this is a question that Google can answer.

- Um-hmm, yeah.

When is winter?

Is there an official date?

- Is it December 1st?

- I don't know.

Leave a comment below.

I do know the shortest day of the year.

- We're experts.

- Yeah.

We don't know the technical aspects of this.

- Of this season.

- Um, the shortest day of the year is the 21st.

- Oh yeah?

- Of December.

- Neat.

- Which is not too far away.

And at the moment, it goes dark at about...

- 5:30?

- Maybe a little bit before.

- Um-hmm.

- So, it goes dark quite early.

In the UK, I think it goes dark around 4:45.

- Yes.

- In the winter.

- Really early.

- And I want to say straight away that

one of the biggest differences between

where we live now and the UK

is the quality of light in winter.

- I agree, um-hmm.

- Because here, you can get some glorious days.

On Sunday, I was sitting outside in just a T-shirt

for two hours.

- And this Sunday, you'll be sitting outside again.

- Yeah.

- In a T-shirt probably.

- It's going to be a high of 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Which, I don't know what that is in Celsius

but it's warm.

- It's warm.

- Yeah.

It's T-shirt weather.

- Yeah, probably around like, never mind.

(laughing)

- Thought that was a little ambitious.

- I know.

I don't work in Celsius very well.

- So--

- Even though it makes sense.

- That's one of the big things here though.

Because we're in the mountains,

but we're in the south,

it can be really warm, relatively, during the day

but then, it can get really cold at night.

- Absolutely, uh-hmm.

And you notice that

here, for example, we didn't get almost any snow yesterday

in our neighborhood.

But, when we drove 10 minutes down the road,

there was ice and snow on the roads.

So, it really changes, not only in general,

but in little areas.

- Um-hmm, yeah.

So, some schools were closed yesterday.

- Um-hmm.

- Yeah.

I made a video about this,

about phrases in the snow,

last winter.

- [Kate] Um-hmm.

- [Jack] And I called it a snow day.

- Oh yeah.

- Was it a snow day yesterday?

- Yesterday was a delay.

- Right.

- So, it's really typical

that if the roads will be icy in the morning,

potentially schools will be delayed by an hour or two.

If it starts snowing during the day,

often we'll have an early dismissal

and school's will release one or two hours early.

- Okay.

So, a delay is when school's start late.

And, and early release is when you have to

pick them up early from school.

- From school.

- Right, okay.

And we sometimes get really good snow days here,

don't we?

- Yes.

We get, we get probably several snow days a year.

And we'll have at least one every year,

usually a few,

where we can go sledding by our house,

which is really fun.

- Um-hmm, yeah.

There's some great hills around here

to go sledding.

We call that sledging.

- Sledging?

- Yeah.

A sledge, and to go sledging.

- Wow.

Yeah, we call it sledding, no G.

- No G?

- No G.

- So, a few phrases just to introduce here

are I really like the one, "It's freezing."

Like, it's freezing cold.

- It's freezing cold.

It's freezing outside.

It's going to be freezing tomorrow.

- Um-hmm.

- Put on your jacket, it's freezing.

- We say that a lot.

- Yeah.

Come on, put on your jacket.

It's freezing.

- It's freezing.

Now,

funny enough,

we say that all the time to our son.

- Um-hmm.

- But when you were a boy,

did you like to wear a jacket?

- Well, I wore a jacket,

but at school I wore shorts for the whole year.

I found trousers really uncomfortable.

- So, you would only wear shorts?

- Only wear shorts until I was about 10, I think,

or 11.

- And right now, I'm working in a school

and I have students who are about 13 and 14 years old,

and they do not like wearing jackets.

- Hmmm.

Even this morning?

- Even this morning.

So, yesterday was really freezing, um,

but even so,

even we had a delay for snow,

and students came to school in T-shirts.

- Wow.

Yeah, yesterday it was freezing.

- Uh-huh.

- And I want to say it is relative,

but because you know, you're...