40 Important Vocabulary Phrases: Walk with me!

Vanessa: Are you ready  

to go for a walk with me? I invite you to join  me in my old neighborhood where I used to live,  

and you can walk with me while I talk about what  I see and hopefully you'll learn some useful  

vocabulary along the way. Hi, I'm Vanessa from  speakenglishwithvanessa.com. And like always I  

invite you to download the free PDF worksheet  with all of today's important vocabulary,  

expressions, definitions, sample sentences,  and at the bottom of the worksheet you can  

answer Vanessa's challenge question so that you  never forget what you've learned. You can click  

on the link in the description to download  that free PDF worksheet today. All right,  

are you ready to get started to go on our walk?  We're just going to go and see what happens.

So here we are. Well, we are here with my baby. We  are here in a downtown neighborhood of Asheville,  

North Carolina. And the only thing you can see  right now is probably this gigantic retaining  

wall. And on the other side are some grocery  stores and on this side there are some houses.  

It's kind of a busy area. Usually here people  will park on the street. If you can see that here,  

people park on the street because they might  have a garage, but a lot of people just have  

driveways. So you can see up here as  we walk by, there are some driveways,  

there's some obstacles in the road. My  husband Dan is recording this and he is  

trying to not fall over. So you can see here  there are some driveways, but usually downtown  

people don't have garages, so they park on  the streets. We call this street parking.

Oh, look at this lovely mural. I love you. Yes, I  think my city, Asheville is kind of known for art,  

known for some other types of music on the  street, these types of things. But where  

we are is a neighborhood and not where people are  playing music on the streets. So let's keep going  

down this street. Actually, what I would like to  do is I'd like to cut across the street in just  

a moment, but let's keep going down here, the  sidewalk is nice and big so Dan doesn't fall on  

his face. These people over here, they were our  old neighbors and they used to have... Talking  

about music, they used to play music on their lawn  out front and just the neighbors would come over  

and listen. It's quite nice. Do you remember this  house? They're always doing construction on it.

Dan: Always doing construction.

Vanessa: They painted it  

like four different times and it looks like  they're still painting it. I don't know if  

anyone actually lives there, but certainly  seems like an expensive endeavor. All right,  

we are coming the end of the sidewalk. Let's  see if we can cross the street. We'll go past  

the old apartment building we used to live  in and you will see one of the most exciting  

houses in all of Asheville, in my opinion.  So let's see if we can cross the street.

Dan: There she goes.

Vanessa: All right,  

let's go over here. We're going to go  down the street away from the grocery  

stores and this is a lovely apartment  complex. This is where we used to live.

Dan: Our old home.

Vanessa: We don't live there anymore. In the US a lot of  

apartment buildings are new, as in they were built  within the last 30 or 40 years. But this building  

is over a hundred years old. I think the 1920s,  which for the US is pretty old. All right, are you  

ready for something very exciting? It is coming  up right here. Some might call this an eclectic  

house. This is where a guy named Jesse used to  live When we lived in this apartment building. I'd  

come down here and he was always sitting on his  front porch around his most precious possessions.

Do you know what these lovely things are called?  Wind chimes. So wind chimes have those little  

metal poles and they clang and dangle in the wind.  Well, when people heard that he liked wind chimes,  

he started collecting so many of them that  now the entire front is covered with wind  

chimes. I think it's pretty exciting.  It's not what I would want at my house,  

but I think it's pretty exciting and it's  kind of one of those things that gives your  

city a little bit of excitement and flare, right,  because as we walk, let's talk about it. Woohoo.

Vanessa: So I want to tell you about the two  

different types of people that live in Asheville.  One are the people who have lived here forever,  

like Jesse. They have these older style houses.  And the second are people like this who build  

either a fancy gigantic new house and they've  moved from somewhere else. And you know what,  

for us, I haven't lived in Asheville forever,  so I'm technically part of the second group. We  

moved here. We are not Asheville natives,  but you know what, it's something that is  

our new home. This is where we live now. So  there's still some empty lots. I guess nobody  

lives here in this special lot at the moment,  but there's other houses. These houses have  

probably been here for a while and because it's  the middle of winter, there's scraggly grass,  

nothing's very green. Well there's some green  grass I guess depending on your perspective.

In the US we have these big trash bins that we  use to collect trash and recycling. And on certain  

days the trash collector will come and you wheel  them. We use that verb to wheel. We wheel the  

bin to the road and the trash collector comes and  dumps it into the back of the trash or recycling  

bin. We never sort recycling in North Carolina.  It's just everything in one recycling bin, glass,  

paper, anything like that. It's all just in one  spot. Oh, you have to look over here and see this  

amazing tree. Isn't this tree so cool? Has this  giant bulbous? I think it's probably not healthy  

of that giant bulb, I'm not sure. But this tree  is so magnificent, especially in the springtime  

with all of the leaves. And I love that it's  on the hillside. So cool. I love those little  

things in a city. All right, let's go down here.  We are actually going to cross the street here.

Now there's no street crossing, so we're going  to have to just be careful. Maybe technically  

it's jaywalking, but in the US people don't  care. I just have to be careful that nobody  

hits my baby. Let's take a look. No one's  coming. Let's go. So here we are going to  

go down the street and cross what's called Five  Points. This is the Five Points neighborhood in  

Asheville. And that means there's five different  roads going into it and we are going to attempt  

to cross the street without Dan smashing  himself and recording at the same time. Let's-

Dan: Appreciate how hard this is.

Vanessa: Let's give  

it a try. Going to push the button. I don't  actually know which one goes where. I think  

this one is for here. I just pushed both of  them and we're going to cross the street,  

but we have to wait for the hand to turn  green or the little man, a little walking  

man to be over there. All right. I always try  to look, even though the signal says it's okay.  

In the US we always do right, left, right.  At least that's what I was taught as a kid,  

right, left, right. Right now we're walking along  Broadway, which is one of the main streets. Wow,  

do you hear that hawk? I love hearing Falcons,  birds of prey. It's always so exciting. So we  

are headed towards the greenway and the greenway  is an area that has no houses on either side.

It's just a public, almost like a park, but  it's just a sidewalk going straight through  

a natural area. So we are walking down  one of the main streets in order to get  

to that greenway. Let's go. All right, before  we cross the street and go into the greenway,  

I wanted to show you this lovely iron fence.  Back here is a little creek and the neighborhood  

behind me is called Montford. It's one of  the historic neighborhoods of Asheville.  

There's a lot of big older houses. And  when I say older, I mean older for the  

US. If you're from Europe and there's houses  from the 1300s, well it's not that old here,  

but for the US it's old and I feel like the  US doesn't really do a good job of preserving  

historical places. So when there are historical  places to see in the US, it's kind of special.

All right, let's cross the street and go to the  greenway. There is indeed a little crosswalk here,  

so hopefully it's okay. And this area, a lot  of people jog here. I used to go for a run  

here when we lived in this neighborhood.  It is really popular for walking dogs,  

just for going for a walk. But there is one thing  that probably I wouldn't go here after dark still.  

That might just be my own personal preference,  but it does feel a little bit like there might  

be sketchiness after dark so I generally try to  just do those types of things, especially where  

you're not near other people. This is somewhat  isolated, especially other parts of the greenway.  

You're kind of isolated from the neighborhoods  and whatnot. I don't really want to be there  

after dark alone or with my baby, but in the  daytime, this is a great place to go for a walk.

Well, thanks so much for going on this quick walk  with me through a little bit of a neighborhood in  

Asheville and also a little bit on the greenway,  some urban areas, some more natural areas. And I  

want to know for you, do you live in the city or  do you live in the country? We used to live in the  

city now we live a little bit more in the country,  but it's always nice to visit both. So thank you  

so much for learning English with me. And don't  forget to download the free PDF worksheet with  

all of this wonderful going for a walk vocabulary.  These natural phrases that come up along the way  

as you're having a conversation. You can click  on the link in the description to download that  

free PDF worksheet today. Well, thanks so much  for learning English with me and thanks for  

going for a walk with me, Matilda. Thanks Dan for  risking your life walking backwards to film this.

Dan: You're welcome.

Vanessa: And I hope to see  

you again next Friday for a new lesson here on  my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want  

more? I recommend watching this video next where  you will join me in the garden. Some more natural  

space outside, and you'll learn some important  expressions for talking about vegetables and  

flowers that are doing well and some that aren't  doing so well. I hope to see you in that video.