Today we're going to talk about favorite places to live. I'm going to talk a few minutes, and then we'll go back and listen for some particular vocabulary. Let's get started, shall we?
Well, I would say that my favorite place to live is in a big city. I've lived in a medium-sized city, a city of about 500,000 people. And now I live in a city—Los Angeles—of three and a half, four million people. It's difficult in some ways living in a big city. There's lots of traffic and there are lots of people, so it is very crowded. But I really enjoy the good things about living in a big city. For example, there are good restaurants. Just about any type of food that you want to eat, you can find in Los Angeles.
Another good thing about Los Angeles, of course, is its weather. It's always not too hot, not too cold—what we would call temperate—and I really enjoy that. I grew up in a very cold climate in Minnesota, the state of Minnesota, so I am very happy to be in Los Angeles. No more snow for me.
One other thing I like about living in a big city, such as L.A., is that there's a real diversity of people. There are people from probably every country in the world living in Los Angeles, and that's exciting. It can sometimes present a challenge and cause some difficulties in communication, but I enjoy that very much. I speak a little Spanish, and there are a lot of Spanish speakers in Los Angeles, so I get a chance to practice my Spanish as well.
I don't think I would want to live in the country or somewhere in a small town. My sister lives on the outskirts or in the suburbs of a small town—not really suburb, but because she lives almost out in the country, about 10 minutes from her town, which has only 10,000 people. So I would find that difficult. I think it would be a little boring for me, but she really enjoys it, and so do her children. To each his own. Everyone has their own taste in things like where they live.
Now that you've listened to the podcast, you have a couple of options. You can go back and listen again to see if you can understand more. Or, if you would like, you can listen to some explanations of vocabulary. There were four terms that I want to talk about from today's podcast.
The first is temperate climate. When talking about Los Angeles, I said that it has a temperate climate. Climate, of course, refers to the weather, the temperature. Temperate means it's not too hot and it's not too cold. It's right in the middle.
Another term I used in describing Los Angeles was diversity. I said there's a lot of diversity in Los Angeles. Diversity means people or things from different cultures. To be diverse also means to have many different types of interests or whatever you happen to be talking about. It could be cultures, it could be languages, it could be interests.
Another term I used in talking about some of the challenges is I said that things can present a challenge. To present a challenge means to give you some difficulty, to make things a little bit harder for you.
Finally, in talking about my sister, I said she lives in the outskirts of her town. In the outskirts usually means somewhere between the city and the country—not the suburbs, which are communities or places where people live outside of the main city—the last suburb and the place where the country begins, where you don't have a lot of city life.
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