Let's Learn English at the Park! (A New and Improved Lesson!)

120,655 views ・ 2023-07-25

Learn English with Bob the Canadian


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
So I feel like we should go somewhere to learn English today.
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Where should we go?
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I know.
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Let's go to the park.
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Here we go.
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Okay, we're here.
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Let's put the sunglasses on and let's get this English lesson started.
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I should actually mention, though, that I did do this English lesson once before.
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A number of years ago I went to a park and I made an English lesson,
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but I thought it would be a good idea to just do it again.
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Maybe add a few words, make it a little more interesting, and do it at a different park.
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So here we are at my local park.
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Let's get started.
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So what's the first thing you would like to see?
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Oh, a snack shop or what we sometimes call a snack bar.
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Well, there's actually one right behind me.
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If a park is big enough, it will sometimes have a snack shop or a snack bar.
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So if you get hungry while you're at the park and you remember to bring some money,
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you can go and buy an ice cream treat or maybe a hot dog or something.
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So this is a snack shop or a snack bar.
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So there are two main sports that are played at parks in Canada
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at least in this part of Canada.
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One would be the sport of baseball.
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And behind me, you can see what we call a baseball diamond.
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Actually, we shorten it a bit.
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We often call it a ball diamond.
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So this is where people would come to play baseball.
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In the distance, you can see the backstop.
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That's the fence at the back of the ball diamond.
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And if you look closely, they don't have the bases out during the day,
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But you can see in that middle area where they would put the bases.
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So one of the sports that's often played is baseball, and it's played at a ball diamond.
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I'll get to the other sport in a moment, but I just realized
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that I'm standing on a picnic table.
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It's probably not allowed, but often at a park,
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you will see what is called a picnic table.
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A picnic table is a great place to come with your friends or family.
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You bring a little bit of food.
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With this picnic table here, you could watch the baseball game while you have your food.
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Very, very handy place to eat when you come to a park.
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Something called the picnic table.
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So the other common sport here in my part of Canada is, of course, soccer.
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What some of you call football.
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If you look behind me, you'll see that there is a soccer field.
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We don't call it a pitch here.
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We don't call it a football pitch.
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We call it a soccer field.
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And this is where people will come to play soccer.
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The majority of people who play soccer in Canada are kids.
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It's a very popular sport.
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Parents enroll their kids in a soccer league and they come and play soccer.
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This is a regulation size field.
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But down there, I'm not sure if you can see in the distance
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you have some smaller fields for the really little kids.
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They're a little bit too small to play on a regulation size field.
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So they play down there on the mini fields.
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So lately I've been looking for fun places to walk.
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I walk a lot for exercise.
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So lately I've been coming to the track here at the park.
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This is a 400 meter track
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that goes around the soccer field.
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That's a normal distance, I think, for a track to be.
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I come here and I try to walk one lap, and then I try to run the second lap.
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I'm more successful at the walking part, but it's really nice
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to have a track to come and walk on or to run on.
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It's kind of softer than running on pavement or concrete,
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so it's really nice to come and use this track.
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It's also used by our local high schools.
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So when you are in high school, you can be on the track team
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and if you're in the running events, you would come to this track to practice.
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So another common thing you would find at a park, a track.
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So what would you like to see next?
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Oh, the people who take care of the park, they're called the maintenance crew. Hi.
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And they come every day and do their best to make sure everything looks beautiful.
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Thank you very much for the job you do.
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Ah thank you!. No worries.
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So it was very nice of the maintenance crew to say hi.
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I really appreciated that.
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I did want to show you a couple other things when it comes to park maintenance.
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This is the truck that the maintenance crew uses to drive around.
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I imagine they use it to pick up garbage and do other things.
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And way over there is the maintenance building.
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Now, you might think that this looks like a very large building for just one park,
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but it's actually the maintenance building for all the parks in this town.
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This is the biggest park, but there's several smaller parks as well.
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So the maintenance crew has this building to work out of
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and they drive around red trucks like this one.
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Oh, and there's another one in the parking lot right now, driving,
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probably heading out to do some repairs somewhere.
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I'm not sure what's in the back, but it looks like a lot of woodchips.
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So, anyways, maintenance crews help keep our parks awesome.
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So this next thing I'm going to show you actually has two names.
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We sometimes call these bleachers or we just simply refer to them as the stands.
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When you come to watch a game, you can sit on the bleachers or you can sit in the stands.
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I'm not sure why I use “on” for bleachers and “in” for stands.
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Interesting.
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I just learned something myself about the English language.
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Anyways, if someone you knew was playing a game,
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you could come here and sit in the stands, or you could sit on the bleachers.
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So let's say you're at the park and you need to go to the bathroom.
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What do you do?
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Well, you have a couple of options.
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You could use one of these porta potties.
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A porta potty is kind of like this portable bathroom that they put at different locations.
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I'm not going to open the door because these things always smell for some reason.
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And if you wanted to and if they were open,
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you could head over to the snack shop and hope that the bathrooms are open.
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So let's check if the bathrooms are locked today.
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So we can come to the bathroom door here.
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And yes, they are locked.
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Now, you might be wondering, why are the bathrooms locked?
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Well, parks in Canada are used a lot in the evenings and on the weekends.
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And it's the middle of a weekday right now.
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There's really
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not a lot of people here at the park, so they generally keep the bathrooms closed.
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But they are open on Saturdays and Sundays and throughout the week in the evening,
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when there's lots of people here playing soccer or other sports.
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I should mention, though, in Canada, we also call these washrooms.
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We sometimes call them restrooms, but bathroom is kind of the most common term.
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If you're speaking English in Canada or in America.
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So bathrooms, another thing you can find at the park.
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So sometimes when you're at the park, you're looking for a nice, shady place to sit.
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You could, of course,
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sit under a tree if you wanted to, but sometimes you want something bigger.
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This is a pavilion.
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A pavilion is a large building at a park.
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Sometimes you actually need to pay money to use the pavilion.
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It provides lots of shade if you want to get out of the sun.
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And because this one is being built, there's a truck inside right now.
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But once it's done, you could rent this on a Saturday.
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You could invite your whole family to come to the park, and you could all sit
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on picnic tables in the pavilion in the shade, enjoying some time together.
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So you might be wondering,
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what is the difference between a pavilion like this one and a gazebo?
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Well, a gazebo is smaller.
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A gazebo is good for a small handful of people, or just one or two people.
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A gazebo is a great place to stop if you're on a walk with one or two other people
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just to get out of the sun and to sit and have small conversation.
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So a pavilion is great if you want to meet with a bunch of people.
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And the gazebo is smaller and good for just a small handful of people.
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So one of the reasons why this park is so nice
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and tidy is because there are garbage cans everywhere.
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In Canada, we call these garbage cans.
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I thought there would be recycle bins as well, but I don't see any.
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All I see are garbage cans.
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I'm happy that most people who use this park are very, very tidy.
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They really are good at remembering to throw out their garbage when they have some.
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So that's why the park is neat and tidy.
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There's lots of garbage cans and people use them.
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So I mentioned that a lot of our sports are played at night and you might be wondering
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how do people see at night to play sports?
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Well, this park has lights.
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So one of the ball diamonds and one of the soccer fields have lights.
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This is the little utility building where they can turn the lights on and off.
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And what that does is it allows people to play sports at night.
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So if you bring your dog to the park, you must keep your dog on a leash.
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And if your dog goes poop, you must scoop up the poop.
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I like it when people clean up after their dogs.
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It makes for a much nicer park experience.
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So no park would be complete without a playground.
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You can see the swings behind me and other things for little kids to play on.
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A park is a great place to come if you have little kids.
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Kids love going to the park, playing on the swings, playing on all of the other things.
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And I did mention earlier that I thought the truck had woodchips in it.
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Often our playgrounds have woodchips.
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In Canada, we have a lot of trees, so we use wood for a lot of things,
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and one of those things is to make the playgrounds soft and fun to play on.
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So once again, if you have little kids,
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the park is a great place to come because there's usually a nice playground.
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Sometimes you're a little bit tired and you want to sit down.
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Or maybe you've come to the park in order
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to read a book, or just sit and enjoy the great outdoors.
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You would then use a park bench.
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This park has lots of park benches.
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This particular park bench, I think, is most often used by parents
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as they watch their children play on the playground.
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But park benches, what a nice invention, a beautiful place to sit when you're at the park.
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Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson at the park.
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Remember, if this is your first time here, don't forget to click that red subscribe button.
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why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson?
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