Learn the English Phrases COME OUT OF THE WOODWORK and COME ALIVE

In this English lesson I wanted to help you

learn the English phrase, come out of the woodwork.

This is what people do after you win the lottery.

They come out of the woodwork.

This is a phrase that means that people show up,

or it could be animals, or something else,

but things show up, people show up

after something good has happened to you.

Here's a good example, we'll talk about the lottery.

If you won the lottery,

I'm sure that people would come out of the woodwork.

Friends that you haven't seen for years,

relatives that you didn't even know you had,

they would come out of the woodwork

because they would want money from you.

I think this phrase is similar

to when you drop some food on the floor

and insects, ants and stuff,

come out of the walls of your house to eat it.

They come out of the woodwork, literally,

and people come out of the woodwork

if you win a lot of money.

The second phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase, to come alive.

People come alive when,

if they normally don't do a lot of things

where there's a lot of activity

and then suddenly do them.

A good example would be this,

when I was a kid, I had a little fish,

so it can be more than just people,

I had a fish in a fish bowl,

and it would kinda swim around slowly until I fed it,

and then it would certainly come alive.

It would swim up to the top of the bowl

and eat all the food.

Sometimes, I've noticed at wedding receptions,

after the wedding ceremony there's a reception,

and sometimes they play music,

and older people might come alive

when they hear a song that they knew

or that they used to listen to when they were younger.

They come alive, they might even dance a little bit.

So anyways, to review, when people come out of the woodwork,

it means they show up,

usually after something good has happened to you.

I think if you were to become the mayor of your town,

old friends and relatives that you didn't even know you had,

might come out of the woodwork

and try to get you to do favors for them.

And then the phrase to come alive

simply means to act in a lively fashion,

usually after not acting very lively.

So you come alive.

I usually come alive as soon as

I hit the start button on the camera.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Yaroslaw, and the comment is this,

"I miss your Geoguessr lesson, teacher Bob."

And my response was, yeah, sorry about that.

I've had to make a decision about that,

and I probably won't be doing them again anytime soon.

It was just one thing too many.

So I think all of you are familiar with the fact

that in life you decide to do certain things,

and sometimes you decide to do one thing too many.

So when I was doing the Geoguessr lessons,

I was noticing that I was talking a lot every week.

I was doing a lot of live streams, a lot of videos,

and so I thought to myself, I need one day a week

where I don't do a lot of talking, maybe two.

So I've decided that on Sundays and Tuesdays,

those would kinda be my days off

from doing anything where I needed to talk.

So, sorry about that.

There will probably be no Geoguessr

for the foreseeable future.

Maybe in the fall if I have a bit more time

and my throat, my throat's just a little bit

sore all the time, and I don't know why.

Hopefully that gets better soon.

Anyways, I wanted to show you the zinnias today.

Let me do that fun thing where I spin the camera around,

and then I can keep talking and show you the Zinnia beds.

So the Zinnia is one of my favorite flowers

because it produces a lot of blooms,

and it produces them in a variety of colors,

which is really good for us as flower farmers.

Hopefully you're not getting seasick.

So I love the zinnias, they look great this year.

I take a little bit of credit for that

because I'm the one that prepares the soil,

so I think I did a good job.

Anyways, I'll give you a nicer view.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you in a couple of days

with another short English lesson, bye.