Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. I’m Conner from polyglossa.com, and you’re listening to Episode 15 of the Listening Time podcast.

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In this episode, I’m going to be talking about my recent road trip that I took to Jiquilpan. If you’ve listened to some of my other episodes before, you’ve probably seen by now that I like road trips. This is something I like to do when I have the chance. So, I’m going to talk about another road trip today. And so remember that with each episode, you have the transcript available. So, make sure to access that in the Details part of the episode if you need to read the text while you listen. This can help you understand all the things I’m saying if my voice or my speech is still a little bit too fast for you. So, remember that you have that available in the Details part of the episode. Also, remember that to help me out, to help this podcast grow, it’s important if you can give this episode or this podcast a like, a rating, a review. And please share it with anyone that might find this podcast helpful for them so that you can help them with their listening and you can help this podcast grow. So let’s get started.

Okay, so today, we’re going to talk about my recent road trip to a small town in Mexico called Jiquilpan. This town is not very well known, so I’m sure none of you or almost none of you have heard of this town unless you live in this region of Mexico. If you don’t live in the region around this town, you probably haven’t heard of it. But I’ll talk a little bit about this to you guys today. So first of all, let’s remember what a road trip is. I think this is the third episode already where I’ve talked about road trips, but it’s good to refresh our brains on vocabulary that we’ve learned. When you “refresh” yourself on something, this means that you remember it, you review it, so that you can remember that idea.

So, a road trip is a type of trip that we take by driving a car. Instead of flying, or taking a train, or something else, we drive. So, in America, for example, road trips are very, very common. I know that in many other countries, road trips are not as common, because the infrastructure might not be suitable for road trips. The word “suitable” means that something is good enough, or something is appropriate for something else. So, in many countries, the infrastructure isn’t suitable for road trips because, maybe, the highways are not well-connected, or maybe the roads are not well-maintained, and they have holes or other damage.

And so, I’ve had students from many countries that have told me that they don’t take road trips in their country because it’s dangerous or it’s not fun because there simply isn’t the right infrastructure for road trips. But in the US, the highway system and the infrastructure is very very good. So it’s really easy to take these types of trips, and it’s very comfortable because there are many gas stations, and rest stops, and diners available all throughout the country along the highways. So, you have everything you need.

But the road trip I took this past weekend was in Mexico, not in the US. So, the infrastructure is not as good, obviously, but it was okay. So, most of the way, most of the time I was driving, there were two lanes going in each direction on the highway. The word “lane” refers to one space on a highway. So usually, you can have one lane or two lanes or more lanes that go in one direction and then you have other lanes going in the other direction. So, the lanes on Mexican highways are… there are usually one or two lanes depending on which highway you’re taking, but the highway I took had two lanes for most of the way. But then in certain parts, there was only one lane. And this is a little bit annoying because you have to pass a lot of cars. The word “annoying” is another way of saying frustrating, or something bothers you. So it’s a little annoying to only have one lane going in each direction because if there’s a slow car in front of you, you have to pass them. And this can sometimes be dangerous, or sometimes you can’t find the right moment to pass this car. So, at certain times, there was only one lane on the way to Jiquilpan.

But overall, the highway was okay, and we had no problems, so that’s good. So, the location of Jiquilpan is in the state of Michoacán, but it’s very close to the border of Jalisco, which is the state where I currently live. So, this town is in Michoacán, but it’s very close to Jalisco. It’s on the southeastern side of Lake Chapala. This is the biggest lake in Mexico, and it’s one of the biggest lakes in Latin America. If I’m not mistaken, I think it’s the second biggest lake in Latin America. This phrase that I just used is good to memorize. If I say, “if I’m not mistaken”, this is a phrase I can use to introduce a thought that I’m not 100% sure of, but I think it’s true. So I can say, “If I’m not mistaken, this is the biggest city in the region”, for example. That means that I don’t know for sure if that thought or idea is true, but I think it’s true.

So, the location of the town that I traveled to is not very far from where I live. It was only a two-hour drive, I think. So, one notable thing about this town is that it’s the birthplace of a Mexican president from the past. This president’s name was Lázaro Cárdenas. This is a very famous name in Mexico. If you go to any major city in Mexico, you’ll see many streets and buildings or neighborhoods named after this president. When we say that something is “named after” something else, this means that it received its name from that person or that thing. So if I say “I’m named after my grandpa”, this means that I received my grandfather’s name. I’m named after him. So, there are many streets and neighborhoods and buildings named after Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico. So, this president was very popular. He was the 51st president of the country. And he was in office from 1934 until 1940. So, he was an important figure in Mexican history. So, the town of Jiquilpan is the birthplace of this former president. So that’s one notable thing about this town.

The other notable thing is that it’s a magic town. If you’ve listened to my other road trip episodes here on the Listening Time podcast, you know by now that magic towns are distinction… a distinct title given to certain towns in Mexico that are good touristic places to visit. They have some touristic value. They’re usually beautiful and well maintained, and they usually have some cool historical significance. So, this town is also a magic town. And we stayed at an Airbnb. My preferred way of traveling is to stay in Airbnbs. I don’t usually stay in hotels or hostels or any other type of accommodation because Airbnbs are convenient and cheap and easy. So I’m sure a lot of you also prefer Airbnbs as well. They’re very popular nowadays. So we stayed in an Airbnb very close to the center of the town. It was only like three blocks away, or something like that. So, of course I chose this Airbnb because of the location… because we wanted easy access to the center of the town. So it was a nice place… where we stayed. It was small, but it was all we needed in an Airbnb.

So, the center of this town has a plaza. A “plaza” is kind of like an open square where many people can walk and sit down and just hang out. We often call this type of place a “plaza”. So, the center of this town has a plaza that’s really cute. The adjective “cute” is used to describe people or animals or things or places that have a nice look… a nice appearance. They look kind of beautiful, but we use the word “cute” to talk about small things, often, not always, but usually if we say something’s cute, it kind of sounds like it’s small and beautiful. So the plaza of this town is very cute. It has a lot of trees and benches and restaurants around it, and it’s a nice place to sit down with your spouse or your family, and just enjoy an afternoon or an evening there. So we spent a lot of time sitting on the benches around the plaza and just people-watching. The verb “people-watch”… “to people-watch” means to watch people, right, to sit down and observe the people around you as they walk by. So, I like to people-watch.

So, this plaza is the main part of the town. This is the area where people meet with friends or hang out outside, because it’s very cute, as I said. There’s also a pretty big park, or I think there are two parks, actually. These parks are located on the south side of the city. And these parks are very nice. They have a ton of trees and shade, and you can just take a nice walk there, or relax. And so we did that. We took a nice stroll in one of these parks. The word “stroll” just means a nice walk. Not a very fast walk for exercise… it just means you take a nice slow walk, and you enjoy the scenery around you. We took a stroll through one of these parks. However, it wasn’t completely peaceful because on one of the days that we were there there were several political rallies. A “rally” is some type of event where people are showing their support for a political candidate. So, if a political candidate wants to generate more support or excitement for his campaign, then he might, or she might hold a political rally to do this, to generate this support or excitement.

So, when we were there, we saw two different political rallies on that same day. So, when we were in the park, they actually had a big political event there. And then later in the day, when we were sitting down at a restaurant in the main plaza, there was another political rally very close to the plaza, and it was very loud and it kind of ruined the atmosphere of our lunch that we were eating. So, I’m not a fan of politics, or politicians. I think that almost every high-level politician is bad, and I’m not interested in political parties or rallies. So, this type of thing, is pretty annoying for me. So, I was glad when the events ended. The word “glad” just means happy or content. So if I say, “I’m glad to hear you’re doing well”, I’m just saying that I’m happy to hear you’re doing well. So, I was glad when these political rallies ended that day.

So, lastly, just a little bit about the food in this town. This town is not known for having really innovative or exciting restaurants. Trust me, I tried to find these types of places, but I couldn’t. They don’t exist there. But what is good about the food in this town is the very traditional Mexican food. So, there aren’t many fancy restaurants or really exciting places to eat, but there are several really good traditional Mexican restaurants. These restaurants are very informal. They have… like plastic chairs and just have many different waiters or cooks that are just running around, and taking everyone’s orders, and just trying to do their job and get the food to your table. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s not really great service or great atmosphere or really nice style or, or ambience, as we might say. “Ambience” just means the environment, the atmosphere. It doesn’t have any of this, but it has good food.

So, in particular, we ate at one of these restaurants twice: on both of the mornings that we were there. And we had some traditional Mexican food, and we really enjoyed it. And the best part of this meal, in my opinion, was the fresh, homemade tortillas that they provided for us to accompany our main dish. To “accompany” something means that something goes with the other thing. So if I say that “We had bread to accompany our pasta”, it means that we ate bread with our pasta. We had bread on the side. So, we had some tortillas on the side that were freshly made by hand, and they were extremely good. So, I love homemade tortillas.

Alright, I think I’ll stop there for this episode. Overall, it was a nice short trip to Jiquilpan. Alright, remember to give this episode a like, a rating, a review. And if you need more practice with your listening, please join our one dollar Listening Practice seminars at polyglossa.com so you can practice your listening more. And of course, come back for our next episode, and tune in every week because we have new episodes every week to help you practice your listening skills. So, thank you for listening to this episode, and I hope you’ll come back next time for Episode 16 of the Listening Time podcast.