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Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? You keep singing it over and over in your mind.
Last weekend I edited the Catch Word episode about the word wannabe. In it, Jessie and Maura talk about the singer Lady Gaga and how someone might be a Lady Gaga wannabe and dress like her and say provocative things like she does. It’s an interesting episode so check it out here if you want to know what a wannabe is.

 Well, ever since I listened to that episode I’ve had Lady Gaga’s song Poker Face stuck in my head. Here’s a short clip of the song. If you’re interested in learning more about what a poker face is, check out our Catch Word episode titled Stone, where Maura and I discuss the idiom poker face.

 When a song is stuck in my head, I often find myself humming it out loud too. To hum a song is to make the tune of the song without opening your lips and singing the words. I’m really bad at singing (and actually even at humming), so people can never recognize what song it is.
What song is stuck in your head?

 Harp

Hey all!

I went snowshoeing a couple weeks ago and wanted to share some photos with you. You can see in the picture where we are standing that my two friends are wearing some funny things on their feet. These are snowshoes! They are like shoes for snow. But actually, they are just attachments that go on the bottom of your boots. When you wear snowshoes you can walk in the forest in deep snow and these special attachments help keep you above the snow.

Check out the frozen waterfall behind us.

They actually have snowshoes all over the world and we don’t know exactly when or where they were invented. Here is a link to a little interesting article about the history of snowshoes.

Snowshoe is a noun, but can also be used as a verb.

I had to upload these pictures now, because it seems like it is almost spring in our part of Canada. We have been having temperatures above 0 with lots of sun lately. Hopefully spring has come early this year!

We're taking a break!

Here are some expressions used in my blog!

To get out of shape – To become unhealthy

To hit some weights – To lift weights; to exercise with weights

To get back into the swing of things – To get used to a routine

To have a lot on your plate – To be very busy

Downtime – Free time

You know, recently I’ve been feeling a little out of shape.  I haven’t been hitting the gym as much as I’m used to.  What’s worse, I’ve been eating really late and buying things that probably aren’t so good for my health.  It’s just been one of those stressful periods, I suppose, where I have so much on my plate that I can’t manage to sit down and have a proper meal.  If I’m not at work, I’m at school.  If I’m not at school and I’m at home, I’m doing my homework or working on something. There never seems to be any downtime in my life.  I really just can’t wait ’til things slow down. When I have time I’m going to go back to the gym and hit some weights and try to get back in shape.  Sometimes, it takes a few weeks to get back into the swing of things when I start working out again, but after about a week or so, my body adjusts and I get a pretty good routine going.

So what kind of junk food do you eat when you’re busy? I would love to hear about your routines as well. Hope you guys will post some.  I’ve got to run for now. Take care Culipsers.

I love the Olympics, I always have and I always will. As a young girl, I remember being excited whenever the Olympics were happening. I was about 7 years old when the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics happened and I remember watching many of the different events. I love both the Summer and Winter Olympics and have my favourite events for each. In the Summer Olympics, I love watching swimming and track. In Winter Olympics, I love speed skating, figure skating, snowboarding, bob-sledding; OK, really, I love them all!

I have been very excited about Vancouver 2010 for the last couple months. Before the Olympics started the Olympic flame was carried across Canada by thousands of people, some famous athletes but mainly by ordinary Canadians. I wish I could have been one of the lucky torch bearers. When the Olympic Flame was in Montreal I went to the Old Port of Montreal to celebrate. It was a very cold night but it was very exciting to see the flame so close and to see the excitement of the crowd and of the torch bearers. I have added some pictures that I took that night.

I think that most Canadians have Olympic Fever right now. At work, at school, with friends or even on the bus, everyone is talking about the Olympics. It was exciting when Canada finally won its first Olympic gold medal on home soil. Canada has won many gold medals at Olympics in different countries but never before in Canada .

The best part of the Olympics is hearing the stories about different athletes and their struggles to become an Olympic athlete. I always cheer for Canada but I also love hearing the stories about athletes from different parts of the world and cheering for them too.

Are you watching the Olympics? How many medals does your country have? What is your favorite sport to watch?

Also if you want to hear more about the city of Vancouver here is a link to the episode that Maura and I did last year.

Hi everyone,

One of the things I love about being a part of this podcast is seeing the English that we share here at Culips being used in real situation that I encounter in my life! The other day I was waiting at a cash register to pay for some photocopies and I noticed a box that said “Rain Checks.” Do you know what this means? When I saw this it made me think of the episode that we did talking about that exact expression. You can find it here.  Luckily, I didn’t need a rain check that time.

Then it also got me thinking about the word check and how normally in Canada we should spell the word cheque. Many Canadians do not know the spelling differences between what we use here and other countries. This means that even business documents or advertising may contain words spelled incorrectly by Canadian standards.  Depending what kind of English you are studying you might see words spelled differently. This is another good reason to check out our section on these spelling differences here. Culips is based in Canada, so we decided to use Canadian spelling, of course.

I wonder if you have ever noticed spelling differences or been confused  by them. Or do you think that it is easy to understand spelling differences between Canada, the U.S. and Britain?

Hello Culips Listeners,

I hope that you all had a wonderful January. It seems like time is just flying by, I can’t believe it’s already February (hopefully that means that spring will be here soon.) We have been very busy at Culips preparing some great new episodes. This is our first monthly newsletter so please send us suggestions of things you would like to read about here. Let’s get started with some great news.

Culips—Awarded ESL Site of the Year 2009 by EnglishClub!!!

The year 2010 started with a bang at Culips. We learned that we’ve been honoured by EnglishClub as the ESL Site of the Year for 2009!!! We’re very excited by this news, especially because EnglishClub is such a well recognized leader in the ESL world. The EnglishClub website (EnglishClub.com) is wonderful for both teachers and students of English. If you’ve never been to the EnglishClub website, go check it out now!

Olympics 2010

The 2010 Winter Olympics are happening this month in Vancouver. Which sports events will you be watching? I have to be honest: ever since watching the Hollywood movie Cool Runnings, I love watching the bobsled races! Check out the Culips blog soon to read my post about going to the Olympic Torch Relay when the torch was in Montreal this past December.

Culips on Facebook

Become a fan of Culips on Facebook. It’s easy, just log on to Facebook and search for Culips or click here.

Upcoming Episodes

As usual, we have some excellent new podcast episodes that we’ll be uploading soon. In February we’ll be featuring an interview with our Australian friend Alethe. This is the first time we’ve featured an Australian accent on Culips, so make sure you check it out! Alethe is a world traveller with some exciting stories to share.

We also have upcoming episodes about the expressions shrug it off and bug.

We hope you’ve had a good start to 2010! Please remember that if you ever have any questions about the English language or North American culture, you can always email them to us at questions@culips.com.

Happy English learning everyone!

The Culips Team

Hey everyone!

Today (like most days in winter) I was thinking about hat head. I have hat head pretty much every day in winter…and I don’t like it!

Hat head is an expression we use in Canada (and the U.S.) to describe what hair looks like after someone has worn a hat for some time. After wearing a hat for a few hours, the hair is often flat underneath. If you have straight hair normally, the hair underneath may have a line in it. If you have curly hair (like me) when you take off a hat, some of your hair is flat and some is curly.

It is not usually a problem for me in the summer because I don’t wear hats but in the winter most people wear hats because it is so cold. At least others have hat head too and it’s not just me! Lots of Canadians have hat head.

Do you get hat head often?

Do you want to see my hat head?

And do you know the Canadian word for winter hat? It’s toque (sometimes spelled tuque or touque)!

ESL Site of the Year 2009

Culips declared ESL Site of the Year 2009 by EnglishClub!!!

This week the Culips team learned that we are being honoured by EnglishClub as ESL Site of the Year for 2009!!!. We are very excited by this news as EnglishClub is a leader in the ESL world. The EnglishClub website is wonderful for both teachers and students of English. If you have never been to the EnglishClub website, go check it out! It’s a great site. If you are visiting us here from EnglishClub, thanks for checking out our site, we hope you like what you see and hear!

Culips was also the ESL Site of the Month in June 2009 – check out what Jessie said about the award here.

Harp

Hello Everyone! Happy New Year!

In some places midnight has already passed…Happy New Year too you! As I write this, in Montreal the party has yet to begin. The weather was super cold a couple days ago, but luckily it has warmed up and is currently only -5! People are ready to get bundled up (dressed in warm clothes) to go out and celebrate New Year’s.

All of us at Culips are looking forward to bringing you even more, funky new episodes and other fun functions on our site in the new year! Robin, Jessie, Harp and I hope to be in more contact with you!

Thanks for listening! We truly appreciate it! And….HAVE A GREAT NEW YEAR!

If you read this blog, you may have noticed that I like to post videos. I love finding new and interesting videos online. Do you often visit youtube? Do you view the youtube site in English?

The other day I was looking at youtube.com and I started thinking about how bad the English as on this site. For every video there are comments left by all different kinds of people. The English comments often contain a lot of spelling mistakes, no punctuation and not many complete sentences. Have you ever noticed this before?

The reason for this is partly due to texting. Many people have cell phones and use them to send text messages. When we send text messages, we often do not use the correct spelling because we want to get as much information in as we can and we need to keep the message short. This means that people take short cuts and take letters out of the words to make them shorter. Sometimes we use numbers as part of words too.

Here are a couple examples of English Text words:

Regular English                        Texting English

Night                                                 Nite

Later                                                  L8r

See                                                      C

You                                                    U

Your/You’re                                     Ur

I also found a video on youtube about this problem. Check it out below. It is also a good idea to view the comments for this video. As many of the people who viewed this video care about grammar, the comments are written in proper English with complete sentences. If you compare the comments of this video to comments of other more popular videos, you should be able to see the difference!

C U L*R!

Hello Culips Listeners,

We hope that you have had a wonderful year, we sure have! We wanted to thank you for all your ongoing support. We really appreciate all the positive comments, here or through emails. Our membership is growing daily and has more than doubled in the last year; we hope that 2010 will be another great year for you and Culips.

At Culips, we will be taking a short break to rest and relax during the holidays. In this break we will be featuring a countdown of our Top 4 most popular episodes. Also during this short break we will be preparing to gear up for some exciting new changes, including a new website design and a forum for you to discuss your English questions.

For the month of December we will be counting down to 2010 by posting our most popular podcasts EVER! If you have already heard these episodes, please browse through the pages of podcasts as there are many great episodes on the page that you may have missed.

Happy Holidays to everyone! Our next brand new episode will be uploaded on Jan 2, 2010, which will be perfect for any New Years resolutions to improve your English.

Sincerely,

The Culips Team

Once again I’m going to blog about the weather. I know, I know, I’m a bit obsessed with the weather. I talk about it all the time, but it’s just so wonderful right now that I have to talk about it!

Montreal is in the middle of an Indian summer. “Indian summer” is an informal expression used in Canada and the Northern U.S. to describe the weather when there are unusually sunny, warm days in autumn, usually after the first frost.

This week the weather in Montreal has been amazing; it was 18°C a couple of days ago! To give you an idea of just how warm that is compared to typical weather at this time of year, the average temperature for Montreal on November 10 is 6°C. It’s a bit chillier now (today it’s 7°C) but it’s still a beautiful fall day with lots of sun.

The expression Indian summer is actually quite an old expression. If you’re interested in learning more about its history, check out this website.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/indian-summer.html

I hope you’re all having a wonderful fall day (or spring day for those of you listening in the Southern Hemisphere).

Harp

Last week was my birthday and it was an exciting one as I got to meet and interview my favourite new Canadian artist. When I was in Vancouver in the summer, I heard a song on the radio and it caught my attention right away (make sure you all check out the episode where Maura and I talk about Vancouver ).

This was the first song that I had heard in a long time that I loved from the first time I heard it. It’s called Road Regrets by Dan Mangan and it’s a beautiful song. I heard it a couple times when I was in Vancouver and loved it more each time I heard it. When I finally got back to Montreal I was able to find Dan on myspace (www.myspace.com/danmangan) and hear more of his music. Every song I heard I loved!!!

Dan is in the middle of a cross-country tour of Canada and he played in Montreal on my birthday. I had the opportunity to meet him right before his concert and I asked him some fun questions for you all to get to know him a bit more. There are a lot of great articles on the internet where serious music journalists interviewed Dan or reviewed his amazing CD. You can find these on his website, http://danmanganmusic.com. As I am an ESL podcaster and a huge fan, I decided to ask him some fun questions!

After talking for a bit about how much I love Dan’s music we started with my questions.

Me: What is your favourite road trip song?
Dan Mangan: Dynamite Walls by Hayden (another great Canadian artist).

Me: What is your favourite soundtrack (the music that plays during a movie)?
DM: American Beauty.

Me: What is your favourite band?
DM: Radiohead.

Me: What is the theme song for the tour so far?
DM: 2 Weeks by Grizzly Bears.

Me: What is the book that has inspired or affected you the most?
DM: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Me: What is your favourite city in Canada ?
DM: I really like Montreal. I don’t know if it’s my favourite, but I really like it.

Me: What is your favourite international city?
DM: Hmmmm, London, England.

Me: What would your last meal EVER be?
DM: A good curry!

Me: OK, this is a silly but fun question. Who is your favourite superhero?
DM: Hmmm, that is a hard one….Batman is my favourite, even if he doesn’t have any superhero powers.

Dan had to go back into the concert venue to set up for the show. Here are some pictures of the setting up and sound check.

The show was AMAZING. It was the best concert I have seen in a really, really long time. If Dan is touring in a city close to you, go check him out. You will not regret it! In the meantime check out his website and myspace page.

Thanks Dan for meeting with me, you rock!!!

There is a new movie that comes out today in Canada called Where The Wild Things Are. It is based on a children’s book by Maurice Sendak. This was a book that I read as a child, but it was actually published in 1963. If you want to know more about this book you can click here. The main character’s name is Max. He is sent to his room and goes on to imagine a world of ‘wild things.’

Here is a reading of the children’s book that I was lucky enough to find on youtube. The original illustrations are pretty beautiful.

Now that you know the children’s story, check out the new movie. It looks awesome! Adults are really enjoying it. And best of all, the critics love it too. The music in the video below is by Arcade Fire which is a band originally from Montreal. I think their music with this movie is a great combination. Enjoy!

I think every kid is fascinated with trains. My nephew loves taking the train and creating toy trains. Since I was young I have wanted to take the train, especially through the Rocky Mountains, from Edmonton to Vancouver, but I never had the chance.

When I started traveling overseas at the age of 21 I finally had the chance to take the train. I have taken the train in numerous countries and loved it every time.
I took the train across Europe and in Asia. I still remember the first time I took the train. It was an overnight train in China and it was so interesting. The train went from Beijing to Xi’an and it was quite cute with the fold up beds with pillows and blankets. The train in India on the other hand was much less fancy, with just a bare plastic bed, but it was still very fascinating to see the countryside roll by and even the traditions on the train, such as the chai (tea) vendors at every stop.

This past weekend I took the train for the first time in Canada. I went to Toronto to visit some of my family and decided that I should try taking the train. It was a very fun experience. The train ride from Montreal to Toronto is not very long (only about 5 hours) so it was not an overnight train but still very cool. The scenery was very beautiful. It was such a different perspective from driving. It was so relaxing, as it didn’t have the stress of traffic. I want to take the train again soon; maybe even an overnight train to Halifax in Nova Scotia or to Gaspésie in Quebec.

Do you like taking the train? Have you ever taken the train in Canada? If so what did you think?

Hello everyone!

We are experiencing some delays uploading our next episode. We have some interesting ones coming up…including the expressions to be handy and to bite off more than you can chew. For those of you who wrote to us asking to know more about Canada, we also have an upcoming episode about Vancouver. 

Here is a video that I wanted to post using the expression from the latest episode No Matter What. It a song called No matter what and the use the expression over and over again. The group is called Boy Zone and they are from the United Kingdom. I hope you enjoy it.

About 3 months ago a friend of mine decided to run a 10km race as part of the Montreal Marathon. After about a week of encouraging her, I decided that I too was going to run the 10km. I had NEVER ran in my life before. I am not a very athletic person but I work out semi-regularly but only ever in a gym. The first time I went out to practice for this race I was able to do 1.3km before feeling like I was dying. I was out of breath and sweating so much.

The more I trained for the race, the more I realized that I loved running. After a lot of training I finally competed in the 10km race last weekend. Even though this was a very competitive race I wasn’t running against people, but instead I was running against myself. This was a personal challenge for me. I went from running 1km on my first day to completing the 10km in my personal best time of 1:10:01. I am very proud of myself for this time even though most people in my category did much better. The race ended in the Olympic Stadium. It was an amazing thrill to run into the stadium with thousands of people cheering.

A full marathon is 42km and one day I might run one. It was an exhilarating race and I’m planning on doing another one in October with my running partner Julie. I have attached a picture of us with our medals (we didn’t win anything; everyone who finished the race got a medal).

I will give an update on my time when I finish my next 10km; I’m hoping to finish at least 5 minutes faster.

Has anyone out there run a 1/2 or full marathon? How was it? Where did you run it?

Harp

Photo by: Joanne and Matt

Hello!!

Today is the last day of our Book Giveaway contest. If you still want to enter the chance to win a free copy of Culips’ new book, English Q & A (in English and Japanese), look at the blog post below and make a comment.

As I was looking back at the previous post and others I noticed that I almost always use the exclamation mark (or exclamation point) in the title of my blog post. The reason I always do this is because I want to express my excitement and interest in what I am posting.

It also made me think about this interesting article I recently read. This article was all about the exclamation mark and how it had become popular again. In the very recent past, it was not common at all to use this punctuation. It was used only in novels and stories or by over-excited teenagers in notes to friends. But as email became more and more popular so did using exclamation marks.

(Here is where I found the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/29/exclamation-mark-punctuation)

The article is not an easy read for those of you who are just learning English. Here is a short list of some of the more interesting points I found.

• In the past many famous writers spoke against the use of exclamation marks. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.”
• The book Send: The Essential guide to Email for Office and Home states that “Thanks!!” is much friendlier than “Thanks” and using an exclamation mark for “I’ll see you at the conference!” shows that you are excited, but without an exclamation mark it is just stating a fact.
• Emails can be boring so using exclamation marks can help make the email more exciting.
• In the past, many typewriters did not have a key for the exclamation mark.
• Females use exclamation marks more often than men.
• Exclamation marks were first seen in 1400 and possibly come from the Latin lo, which means joy.
• Some people like the increase in the use of exclamation marks (like me) and other people do not! 

One more point of advice is that if you decide to use exclamation marks, don’t use too many in one email. It is unnecessary and may be mistaken for sarcasm or insincerity.

We have some exciting Culips news to tell all of you about!

Contest

1. Why do you want to study English?
2. How do you think Culips could be improved?
3. What three topics would you most like us to discuss in future podcast episodes?

Just answer one of these questions and your name will automatically be entered into the contest. We’ll announce the winner at the beginning of September and contact you by email to get your mailing address. So get posting!

Summer in Montreal is the time for festivals. We have already had our biggest festivals, the International Jazz festival and the Just for Laughs Comedy festival. Right now the festival for French music, Francofolies, is taking place in the streets of downtown Montreal. There are also many smaller festivals happening all the time in Montreal!

Recently we also had a festival for African music! My friends at Montrealmusic.tv asked me to help interview some of the English-speaking musicians playing the festival.  You can see me in some of the videos on their site (click here: Montrealmusic.tv), including FreshlyGround, a popular group from South Africa, and Neev, a local Montreal musician.

Thanks Montrealmusic.TV!