REAL English Speaking Lesson About Personal Life Problems

REAL English Speaking Lesson About Personal Life Problems

Welcome to Mind Life In English, hosted by Profe Lao.

In this episode, you'll improve your English speaking skills by exploring realistic conversations about personal life problems. From discussing daily challenges and stressful situations to expressing emotions, giving advice, and offering support, you'll learn the natural English phrases and vocabulary that native and fluent speakers commonly use in real-life conversations.

This lesson is designed to help you speak with greater confidence while talking about personal experiences, relationships, work, family, health, and everyday life. You'll hear practical expressions, useful sentence patterns, and authentic conversational English that you can apply immediately in your own discussions.

Whether you're preparing for English exams, improving your communication skills for work, or simply aiming to become a more fluent speaker, this episode provides valuable speaking practice in meaningful, real-world contexts. Listening carefully and repeating the dialogues aloud will help improve your pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and overall confidence.

This episode is perfect for English learners at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels who want to develop natural speaking habits and communicate more effectively in everyday situations.

Keep practicing, stay consistent, and let every conversation bring you one step closer to fluency.

Follow Mind Life In English for more practical English speaking lessons, listening practice, vocabulary building, pronunciation tips, and authentic conversations designed to help you speak English naturally and confidently.

Hosted by Profe Lao.

Keywords:
English Speaking Lesson, Real English Conversations, Personal Life Problems, Spoken English, English Communication Skills, Everyday English, English Listening Practice, English Vocabulary, English Pronunciation, Learn English, Fluent English, English Conversation Practice, English for Daily Life, Education Podcast, Mind Life In English.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another speak with me video. This video is a little bit special. This is a different one. Lately I've been using some guidelines, some notes, some prompts, some uh context to kind of guide the class, but this one, this one's gonna be more natural, more like bare bones, just raw, real. I'm just gonna wing it. I'm gonna wing it. You know what that means? I'm gonna wing it, is like I'm not even prepared. I have nothing prepared. I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna do it. Come on, let's just do it. Let's let's wing it. I'm gonna wing it. And this is gonna be a little bit, a little bit personal. So very realistic, real life stuff. I'm gonna be talking about what's going on in my life right now, and kind of the whole thought process behind it and and how I am navigating this, navigating this. Because I was thinking about it, I was talking about it, and I realized that there's a lot of words, vocabulary, a lot of phrases, a lot of things that you guys could learn from a real life situation that I'm going through and how I process it, how I think about it, talk about it. Let me know in the comments. You can write down words or phrases that you learned in this video. If you watch the video until the end, please tell me in the comments. I really appreciate knowing that people are watching until the end. And I saw some people did that on my last video, and I really appreciate that. Okay, so let's just get right into it. Let's dive right into it. You might know, you might know if you've been following my videos, my journey a little bit, if you've been paying attention, you might know that I have been in Puerto Rico. That's how we say it in in English, right? Puerto Rico. Yeah, that's gringo uh Spanish. Anyways, so I've been in Puerto Rico for about two months now, like almost two months. We're getting to be we're getting to the end of May. Today is May 22nd. It's getting to be the end of May. I arrived, I got here in Puerto Rico April 1st. So I have been here like almost two months, right? And so far, there have been some ups and downs, and but a lot of good things, like mostly good things. I have been staying with a friend of mine here. And the thing is, is like I had never stayed with this friend before coming here, and I was just kind of taking it, taking a risk, like taking a chance on this, you know, living situation. You know, I was hesitant about it. I was a little bit unsure, uncertain about this prior to coming. But I said, well, you know what, it's just Puerto Rico is very expensive. I want to go there, you know, these are my my friends. I want to hang out and I want to, you know, save money um by sharing the rent, and it's just cheaper, it's easier, it's great. Uh, I like the location. Everything just seemed like this is the way to go. So I've been staying with with a friend here, and I don't want to talk really about the friend or about what you know what uh our interactions are like. I don't want to get into that stuff. It's it's not worth it, and it's like I don't want to talk about someone like that on here or whatever. It's nothing nothing horrible, nothing really bad, nothing whatever, but basically there is some incompatibility with living together. Um it's not that anybody is a bad person or anybody is you know not a good friend or whatever. It's just that we are not um really compatible to live together anymore. And I've been I've been try I've been like noticing that, but I've been trying to just kind of stick it out, we say. Stick it out. So stick it out is like to stay longer, to see if you can just deal with it, you know, keep going and deal with it, um, stick it out, maybe it'll get better, maybe it'll be okay. But it's just gotten to the point where it's too much. It's gotten to the point where I don't want to deal with it anymore. I don't want to share a living space anymore. I don't want to live together anymore. And so the the issue is that I then had to figure out, okay, so if I'm going to leave, where do I go? And what am I gonna do? What is my plan? What's the game plan here? What's what's what what's the plan? What's the next move, right? Where are we going? Because if you don't know, you should know if you're a big fan of this channel. But if you don't know, I am a nomad. I'm always traveling around, always going around. I don't have a home. Like I don't have like a place where I live, I travel and I go back to my home. No, I don't really feel like I have a home, I just kind of go around, right? I'm just always like nomading. So I had to think, okay, well, well, where do I want to go next? But the issue is that I am in Puerto Rico. I am currently in United States territory because Puerto Rico is US territory, territory, and I need to renew my passport, and I have to stay within within US territory to renew my passport. And renewing my passport is gonna take, even if I expedite it, even if I pay extra for expedited processing, so like extra fast processing, it's still gonna take probably like three weeks. Okay, at least a couple weeks, probably three weeks. So I have to be in the US to be to receive it when when they send it to me in the mail. So I can't go anywhere, right? Because I am already thinking about like my next place that I want to travel to, my next country I want to go to is Colombia. I've already been to Colombia a couple times, but I want to go back. I'm planning on going to Colombia uh as my next my next country, but I can't go right now because I need to I need to renew my passport before I leave. Because if I don't do it now, then I'm gonna have to deal with it within the next year because my passport expires a year from now. And I don't want to be stressed, you know, thinking like, oh, I gotta go back to the US and renew my passport. I just want to take care of it now. I just want to do it now, so then it will be valid for another 10 years, and then I'm good. I don't have to think about it. So that's what I'm thinking. I need to stay here, get my passport, and then I can go to Colombia. But I'm in a sticky situation. I'm in a I'm in a difficult, tricky situation. Not really like a crisis, I think that's a strong word for this situation, but I want to leave where I'm currently staying in Puerto Rico, but I can't leave the US. So my options are get my own place in Puerto Rico, like get uh an Airbnb or something. The problem is that the any of the locations that I would want to be in here near the beach area in Puerto Rico, not too far from my friends, is very expensive. It's very touristy, and the Airbnb prices are high because, well, for one, Puerto Rico is part of the US, so it is it is expensive, you know, almost like living in the US, or the same as living in the US. Really, like I go to restaurants here once in a while, and I'm like, this is like the same as the United States prices, like it's expensive here, um, but it's also a popular touristy area. And so so Airbnb prices are just through the roof, through the roof. They're just so high, there's yeah, crazy high. And it's out of my budget. Like, I don't normally pay that much because I don't live in the United States, and I don't really make enough money to live by myself to have my own apartment in the United States. If I if I lived in the US, if I wanted to live in the US, I would have to have a roommate, I'd have to have roommates, I'd have to share an apartment or something because I can't I can't afford it myself. And especially on Airbnb, the prices are even higher than what they would be if like if I actually got a contract and stayed long term, I could probably find a decent apartment in Puerto Rico that I can afford. But the problem is that Airbnb is so much more expensive. The prices are jacked up, we say. The prices are jacked up on Airbnb, they're they're high, they're higher than if you live here and have a contract and pay rent normally. So I am discouraged, totally discouraged from renting, from getting from getting an Airbnb here in Puerto Rico. And I was just thinking about my other option, which my other option is to go back to Maine, where I'm from, and to stay with some family, some family members. And I thought about it a lot, and going back and staying with my family, it wasn't on my radar. It wasn't on my radar, it wasn't something I was planning to do, I wasn't expecting to do it. Honestly, I I was kind of procrastinating about it, I was kind of putting it off. I was putting off visiting my family, like, you know, pushing it, pushing it away, like, ah, no, I'll do it later. I'll do it later in the future, sometime. I don't know. I've been procrastinating about it because it's a whole ordeal. It's a whole hassle, hassle, uh, an ordeal. It's a whole big thing. It's a whole process. It's a it's like I have to get on a plane and go all the way up there and then all the way back down when I want to leave. It's more money, it's more flights, it's it's it's like totally the opposite direction of Colombia. Like it's, you know, like I want to go south. I don't want to go north, right? Like, it's just it, you know, Maine is all the way up like on the border of Canada. It's, you know, northeast, the most northeastern state of the country. Um, and so it's just it's a whole ordeal, it's a whole hassle to go up there. And now, this is like first world problems. I'm I am obviously like complaining or exaggerating. You know, I'm I'm I'm talking about something that's really not that big of a deal, and I'm making it seem like it's such a big deal. Um obviously this is a a minor problem compared to you know much bigger problems in this world and you know that some people have. But I'm just being honest about the like these are the things that I consider, you know. I can it is it is you know the other direction, it's out of the way, it's out of the way, it's more money, more flights, you know. I don't like planes, I don't like airports. Um, you might not expect this about me because you might think, oh, she's a nomad, so she loves to travel. The truth is, I don't really like to travel. I like to be in different places, I like to see different places, I like to experience different places. I don't like airports, I don't like airplanes, I don't like the process of traveling. I just like being there, you know. As the years go by, as the months go by, I'm really getting more and more tired of traveling. So my plan once I, you know, go to Colombia is is to slow down my traveling and to try to stay as long as I possibly can in each location that I go to. Try to stay like the full amount of time that I'm allowed on a tourist visa. So, like in Colombia, for example, if you extend it, you can stay up to six months in a year. So, you know, the older version of me, I mean the past version of me, me in the past would maybe just stay like two months, three months, and leave. But I am gonna try to stay as long as possible in each place I go because I need to slow down and not travel so frequently for many reasons that I'm talking about right now. But yeah, so that's my my plan. So so it's like painful to like go up to visit my family for just a few weeks, all the way up there for a few weeks, and you know, and you could say, Oh, well, why don't you stay for a long time so it's worth it? Because I'll go crazy. That's why I can't stay with my family for like more than a month. I think I'd go crazy. I don't even know how I'm gonna do like a few weeks or a month. Like, I love my family, and I uh I love certain things about being there, but I I also sacrifice a certain level of freedom, of independence, of convenience, of accessibility, of um just my normal life when I go there. Um, because my family doesn't live in cities where I can walk to places and um take public transportation. Like in the United States, that's not even really that common of a thing, anyways. But if you live in like a super big urban area, then yeah, it's it's a thing. But my family doesn't live in cities like that. So I can't walk anywhere. I can't I can't go anywhere because I don't have a car, so I depend on them to go anywhere. Um, I basically don't have a social life outside of my family when I go. My whole social life is my family. You know, I can't I can't go to the gym, I can't like there's certain drawbacks, like negative things, like cons, certain drawbacks, certain cons of being there, certain things I sacrifice by being there. There are pros and there are cons of visiting my family. And so, so I'm just kind of weighing these pros and cons in my head. I'm kind of weighing them. So I th I thought about it a lot, and basically it got to the point where I just thought that this is this is probably the best option. Um, my family really wants to see me. My family always wants to see me, they always want me to visit. They're very welcoming, they're very accommodating. My family is great. Really, they're great. If they weren't, I wouldn't go, but they are so great, really, in many ways. And they want me to visit, and they they get so excited when I visit, and they they wish that I visited more often. They wish that I lived there all the time. Like it it's hard for them to deal with the fact that I don't want to live there and I'm always, you know, out of the country. Um, it's hard, it's hard for them, and I feel guilty a little bit. I feel a little bad about it. Like, I I don't feel guilty because I don't think that I am doing anything wrong. It's not because that I think I'm doing something wrong. Like, I think I'm totally fine with, you know, my choice of lifestyle, but I feel a little guilty because I know that I could go visit them like once a year or something. Like I could make more effort and I don't. And I just feel I don't know. I just feel a little bad. I feel a little sad for them because I know that like they want me to visit more and stuff. I miss them sometimes, but I don't I don't feel like oh I gotta see them. Like it's I don't know, it's not the same. Like I love them, but I don't feel like that is my home. Even though I grew up there, even though I grew up in Maine, I don't I don't go back to Maine and feel like, oh, I'm home now. I don't feel like that at all. It's like I don't feel homesick, I don't, you know, I don't feel like any sadness at all about that. If anything, I feel sadness about like missing Latin America when I'm in Maine for too long. Like when I'm in the US for too long, I miss, you know, I miss Latin America. I feel I feel homesick. So yeah, so so basically that's the question I've been asking. That's the thing I've been dealing with. And I decided to go home and visit my family after all. After all the the thinking and contemplating and and you know, mulling it over, mulling it over, thinking about it, contemplating it. I decided to to go. Yeah, it's just I think it's the best for everybody. I think it's the it's the gonna be the best for me and for my family and for um even my friends here in Puerto Rico. Um, you know, we're still friends, we're everything is good, we're you know, everything's fine, but I think it it was a lot to live together when we're not super compatible to live together. And we have some things in common, but we have other things not in common, you know. So um I think it's just gonna be better for everybody for like just kind of a separation, a change, a break, or not a break, but like a you know, just me go with my family, and yeah. Let me be more specific because I'm just saying my family, but the truth is that I'm going to stay with not my parents. So, okay, so I so if you've been watching my videos for a while, you might remember that my mom died and I don't talk to my dad. Um, he's not even my biological father, anyways, but I call him my dad because I grew up with him as my dad and whatever, but I don't talk to him. The people that I talk to that I have good relationships with are my stepdad and my stepmom. Yes, I know it's very strange to understand, but my parents are out of the picture, but my stepparents are in the picture. And then there's other people too, like my brother, my aunts, and my grandma, and whatever. So that's like what I mean when I say my family. But specifically, I'm going to stay with my stepmom who has remarried. She has uh a new husband, she has um a daughter who's like 12, and they live in Maine, and they live in a house in the woods, very just like just like how I grew up. I grew up like in a house in the woods. It's not like extremely remote. It's a it's like a 30-minute drive from a small city in the airport. It's still like I guess rural, I guess like small town, um, mostly houses in the woods with the trees all around, you know. It's a house in the woods. So the great thing is that the they have water that comes from a well, and you know, it's like nature, it's peace and quiet. There are pros to being there, of course, with you know, it's that location. Um, but um, but it it is it does feel a little bit isolating for me when I'm used to being in cities, when I'm used to I usually travel around to to big cities. So I'm yeah, like a lot of the times I'm in big cities, I'm in capital cities, you know, I'm in places like you know, New York and uh Los Angeles, but like the Latin American version or the Asian version of that, not in the US. But so to be in my family's house in the woods in Maine is like um, yeah, it's a little bit of PTSD from my childhood. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I I love nature and I love the countryside, and I have spent most of my life there, and I love gardening and I love, you know, stuff like that. But I want to have that and access to more community and social life and stuff. But when I only have that in my family, like my blood family, it feels like not enough to, you know, long term. Like short term, it's okay, but not not long term. I'll start to go a little crazy. Uh I just start to get like kind of depressed, you know. Um, but I'm I'm feeling good. I think I I'm gonna be there for a short amount of time. I think everything's gonna be fine. Um nowadays, at this point in my life, I have a good mentality, my mental health has been really good lately. And I have been um I've been consistently working out, and I'm gonna, even though I can't go to the gym, I'm gonna continue to find ways to work out even there in the house in the woods. I'm doing my work, and you know, normal life will continue just there. You know, I'm still gonna be around uh people to interact with. It's not like I'm gonna be completely out in, you know, by myself. So it should be fine. It should be fine. I will be fine. Another thing is that I am vegan and nobody in my family is vegan, and my family doesn't really understand veganism. They're they're very like accommodating and like generally pretty respectful. Um, even though they don't really understand it very much, they yeah, they don't really understand it or know anything about it, but they they don't give me crap for it. Like they're they are respectful of it, they they have no issue with it, they don't tell me anything bad or you know, whatever. So they they respect it even though they don't really understand it, but but yeah, so that's another thing is that also it's hard for me as a vegan, like because I'm used to I'm used to being by myself, like living in apartments by myself, or here in Puerto Rico, I was staying with um my vegan friend. So I'm used to that. So when I have to stay with carnists, that's what we call non-vegan people, carnists, carnists. This is not a word that a lot of people know, but it's a word that vegans use. It's it is a bit like strange for me, like mentally. It is it is hard for me because I'm not just a vegan, I'm a vegan activist, and so um, and if you don't know, if you haven't seen other videos about, you know, where I talk about this, um, veganism is not a diet, so it's not just like, oh, I just eat different things in my family. Veganism is a is a an ethical stance against the exploitation of animals. So when you are vegan, like truly vegan like that, you see everything differently. And so when I'm living with people who don't see animals the way I see animals, it's hard because a lot of a lot of things, obviously food, but also other things come up. You wouldn't expect it comes up so much, but it does come up into conversation. It comes, you know, people um you know do things. I mean, simple little things like my family going and you know, get buying an animal from a pet store, something that you know vegans were against because we're against like breeding animals into existence like as products, you know. Um we're only in support of rescuing. Um so it's like not just the food, but everything, right? It's like everywhere I I look, there's like things that are difficult for me to be around as a vegan. That's that's another thing that I have to deal with when I stay with my family. I'm often biting my tongue. That's an expression that means like I'm not saying what I really want to say because I'm trying to keep the peace. So even though I'm a vegan activist and I normally um will not be silenced and I will stand up for for animals and I will stand up for what is true and for defending other sentient beings and whatever, even though I I do activism and normally that's how I how I talk about the the the issue and when I talk to strangers on the street or whoever, this is how I talk about it. But when I go with my family, when I stay with my family, I I kind of bite my tongue. I kind of like, you know, try I don't say everything that I want to say, and some of the things that I say, I try to say it in a certain way that's not going to cause problems, right? Like I'm not I want to keep the peace and I don't want to have issues. So that's something that's difficult to balance is when you're vegan among a non-vegan family and you go and stay with them. It's it's a bit of like a mind, uh like a mind fuck, I would say. It's like a you know, it's it's a little bit challenging, uh to say the least. It's like, imagine this. Imagine that, you know, if you were all of a sudden you had to go live with a family of people who, you know, they they eat dogs and cats, and they're they're talking about dogs and cats as if they're, you know, just like steaks and burgers, and how would that make you feel? Or may let's say you don't care about dogs and cats. Imagine that you are against human slavery. So you think human slavery is totally wrong, horrible, and then you go stay with your family, and your family is in support of slavery, human slavery, and they they pay for it and they they buy slaves, and they you know, like imagine how that would feel, right? So that's that's what it feels like for me. So I have to just kind of remember that the world that they live in mentally is different than me, and they don't they don't see it the way I see it. Like they don't think that it's bad, and so it's not that they're bad people, they're just doing something that they've been kind of programmed to do and not question. They haven't put on the glasses that I have seen that I have put on. Yeah, it's like any time in history when something horrible was normalized and most people just accepted it. It's like if you were the only person who saw that it's actually horrible and everybody else is like, oh, this is totally normal, you know. That's what it's that's what it's like to be a vegan in this world. So that's that's another issue on top of just going to visit my family, right? But obviously, I'm very grateful that I have a family to receive me, that they're very welcoming and loving, and they they always try to make my stay good and to take me where I need to go and to make sure that I have food to eat that I like and um a roof over my head and I'm comfortable and whatever. Um, yeah, especially my stepmom, she's very, very accommodating, and she's always trying to make my stay more enjoyable. So I really appreciate that. Um I'm just being totally honest in this video about everything that I really think and feel and deal with um when when kind of navigating this this issue. That it's not really an issue, but this thing about my life where you know I'm this nomad who's traveling, you know, mo by myself most of the time. I'm vegan, whatever. Um normally I c I come into contact with people. If I like them, great. If I don't, I can just ignore them and go on my my merry way, I can just continue with my life. But when you have blood family and you want to have good relationships with your blood family and you want to keep the peace with them, you know, you have to kind of um make effort to do so, even if it doesn't really go so perfectly with your lifestyle. Like, you know, they want to live in a totally different place than me, they want to live a different kind of lifestyle than me, they have different views than me, they have whatever. And so it's just about what are your priorities? And I think the younger version of me, you know, was just like, I don't care, I just want to do what I want to, I don't want to make any compromises, you know, for anybody. But, you know, you get older and you're like, I don't want to burn bridges, I don't want to cut ties with everybody. With some people, yeah, but not everybody. So I pick and choose like who are the people that I really can't stand, I can't deal with them, and who are the people that I can tolerate and I want to make the best and I want to keep that relationship and I wanna I wanna I wanna hold on to that. And so that's that's what I do, and and I'm just trying to to make the best of of the family ties that I do have and that I do uh tolerate that I can tolerate and I and I and I do prefer having because I prefer having some family ties, some ties to my blood family, than none at all. You know, I prefer having some than none. Um, you know, some people have really horrible families and they just, you know, they don't have a relationship with any of them. And uh and then some people have really great families and they have relationships with all of them. You know, it's uh we all kind of just got born into whatever families we got born into, and we're just trying to navigate with what we got. I got some some people in my family who are pretty good, pretty good people, and like I don't want to lose those relationships, those bonds. So so I'm gonna go visit them and I'm gonna renew my passport, and then I'm gonna be back traveling the world. Then I'm gonna probably go to Colombia and um yeah, my adventures in Latin America will continue. My adventures in South America, to be more specific. South America. In the Spanish-speaking world, uh Spanish-speaking countries that I love so much. Those aren't the only countries that I love, but uh, you know, you know you if you if you watch this channel, you know I have a I have a preference for my because I love to speak Spanish, what can I say? I love it, I love it. Uh it's a little hard for me when I go back home. I c I can't speak Spanish with anybody. It's a little sad. It's a little sad, I must say. So I'm gonna have to call up some of my friends and talk in Spanish on the phone, you know. Uh I have some books to read. I'm gonna read some books in Spanish. Um, so that's good. That's good. Alright, well, next time I film a video, next time I see you guys, I will be in uh my family's house. I will be in my stepmom's house. Her name is Nicole. I will be at Nicole's house, and I don't know where I'm gonna be filming videos there, but I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching to the end, and I'll see you in the next one. I hope you got something out of that video. Let me know in the comments if you learned anything from that that big monologue I just gave you. And yeah, this is real English, baby. It doesn't get realer than this. This is this is the real deal. Alright. Bye.