- [Voiceover] Welcome to The Effortless English Show
with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hoge
where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide
finally learn English once and for all
without the boring textbooks, classrooms
Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn
to speak fluent English effortlessly.
the author of Effortless English:
Learn to Speak English like a Native
and this is The Effortless English Show,
the show that teaches you to speak English powerfully.
And I am finally back after a long break.
that what I was doing during my break
was walking the Camino de Santiago.
What is the Camino de Santiago?
Well, it's a walking path in northern Spain.
But it's more than just a walking path.
It's actually an old pilgrimage.
Muslims have a pilgrimage to Mecca, right?
They're not just going to Mecca for tourism.
So that's what a pilgrimage is.
In India, Hindus have pilgrimages;
Well, this was an old Christian pilgrimage,
especially about, you know, thousand years ago or so.
People used to walk along northern Spain
because at the end, the end point of the walk,
the end of the Camino de Santiago,
And inside that church are the bones,
I'm not Catholic but I just did it as a
I don't know, still as a deeper journey,
an opportunity to walk across Spain,
as a kind of walking meditation.
I went with my good friend, Joe,
so it was also a chance to travel with him
and have an experience with him.
I'm gonna do something a little different.
Normally, I talk about learning English, but
many people have asked me about my trip,
so I thought I would share some of the videos
because during the trip, I took a few videos.
Every several days, I would take a video
and talk about what was happening.
So this is an opportunity for me to share
some of my experiences in Spain
Let's start with the first video.
The first video comes from France.
We actually started in a little town in France
just over the Pyrenees Mountains.
It's just a, like six seconds long;
the day we began, it's Joe and I
But you can see, this is a little town called
I don't know how to pronounce it correctly in French.
But it's this little town and it's
one of the most traditional starting points
And this is just an old little town,
and this was the morning we started.
The next video is several days later.
it was day four maybe of our pilgrimage.
And it's a famous point on the Camino.
In the camino, you walk to these paths,
first we went up and over the Pyrenees Mountains,
which was a beautiful walk, that first day.
Then we went to the town of Pamplona,
and then finally, we reached this point called
If you ever see the movie, The Way,
there's a movie called The Way
it's about the Camino de Santiago.
So if you like, if this is interesting to you,
I recommend rent or buy The Way
and you can use my movie technique,
And my movie technique is described in my book,
if you don't know what the movie technique is.
All right, so this is the famous point along the Camino.
Hello, it's day four of the Camino.
We are at the Alto de Padron, I believe it's called
which is a big top of a big hill;
very windy up here, there are wind turbines
we had a nice rest day in Pamplona
and we are at the half-way point for today
And you can see behind us the statues,
the canvas sculpture, iron sculpture of
pilgrims, you know, walking into the wind
We're doin' well, havin' a great time.
that landscape was very beautiful,
we're walking through the countryside.
The beginning, we walked over the mountains.
For most of it, we were walking through
And then every two or three hours,
we would walk through a small, little town,
Most of them were beautiful towns
very old, 500 years old, a thousand years old,
very, very old stone buildings
from the Middle Ages and beyond,
But...
It was one of my favorite parts,
was number one, being out in nature
and then also going through these beautiful
old stone towns in Spain, was great.
Now,
just as when you were learning English,
and everything feels great and you're excited, right?
Maybe, you just started off with these English lessons,
or you're doing anything that's new,
and it's very easy to be excited at the beginning.
for anything that's a little bit difficult,
there are going to be some bad days,
there are going to be some tough days.
And of course, everyday on the Camino was not easy.
I also had some difficult days.
And the next day, in the next video, I describe that.
So it's early morning, maybe 6:30,
and I'm up because I can't sleep.
And I've to say that the first
miserable day and evening on the Camino.
Yesterday, walking was fine, no problem,
seemed fairly easy, actually, physically.
But then when we arrived into town,
I was just feelin' pretty good.
We arrived in this town, and the town is
I guess, what is basically a Spanish gado,
so just a horrible neighborhood;
lots of these teenage kids standing around
doin' nothing, not even talking,
They're zombies (mimics zombie groan).
Just overall kind of depressing.
And that's sad because most of the towns
have been really pretty and nice and interesting
And we got here and all the accommodation was full
because it's the first of May, May first, it's a holiday,
so it's lots of Spanish people are traveling
so we had a hard time finding a room.
usually, I can put in my iPod and kind of
this time, even with the iPod on,
I could still hear it (sighs).
and we'll see what happens today
because this day has happened.
Okay.
As you can see, I was not in a good mood
I was tired, that was very early in the morning.
This happens when you're learning English.
You're gonna have some tough days.
You're going to have days where you feel like
For a while, you're excited and you feel like
you're doing well and you're improving,
but then you have some bad experience,
maybe you tried talking to someone
and you can't think of what to say
or you can't understand what people are saying
and you feel depressed and (sighs)
Yeah, you're gonna have those days.
Now on the Camino, the thing is
because we had that big purpose,
right, it's kind of a deep meaning
like we're gonna go all the way to Santiago,
and I could feel that this was an old
hundreds of thousands, I don't know,
have walked this same path for over a thousand years.
And so in my mind, it was this great big purpose
to get to Santiago, the end point.
And so because I had that big purpose,
I never had the thought to quit,
not one time did I think I want to quit,
even when I had a miserable day.
I just got up in the morning and (sighs)
that felt bad but, of course, I knew
And that's why with your English learning,
you also need a bigger purpose,
because if you're just doing it for a test
if you don't have that bigger purpose,
then it's very hard to keep going
when you have the difficult days.
If you don't have a big purpose,
But if you have a big inspiring purpose,
something that is deeply meaningful for you,
I don't know what that is for you,
maybe it's to get a much better job using English,
maybe it's to travel the world
and be able to speak English to people,
maybe it's to study in a university
in the United States, or Canada, or England,
or something like that, I don't know what it is
but something that excites you and inspires you,
So when you have those bad days, and you will,
you'll never have the thought of quitting.
Now let's go to the next video.
Huh, today we are walking from Santo Domingo
to Belorado, two very small towns.
And all day today, we have a very strong head wind,
meaning, the wind is blowing directly into our face.
We'll have to fight the wind as we walk.
You can probably hear it, it's very strong.
And during the day, it's getting stronger and stronger.
So, even though today we only have
I don't know, 22, 23 kilometers,
12, 13 miles,
but it's a little difficult because of the wind.
it's difficult to talk to each other.
the wind and the clouds are keeping things cool
'tis tough walking in this strong wind,
we were in the mountains and the hills for a while,
then we got to this very flat part,
maybe a little longer than a week, actually.
The flat part is called the Meseta,
So you climb up and there's just this long, flat part.
You could see there are really no trees
probably more like 10 days on the Meseta,
I don't know, seven to 10 days.
We're just under the sun and there's no shade at all.
Some days it was super windy like that,
And other days, there was no wind but then the sun
was just beating on us the whole time.
And some of those days were also quite tough physically,
especially when we're under the sun the whole time
without any shade, which you'll see in a later video.
Again, you know, these are challenges that
just like anything that's great in my life.
I've noticed, anything that's a great experience,
always, there's a mix of challenge
Right, challenge and enjoyment, we could say.
So on one hand, it's very enjoyable,
I loved being out in nature walking everyday,
we met so many wonderful people
during the Camino de Santiago.
And I'm still emailing some of them now
because they're just such wonderful people
and I want to keep that connection.
Going to the towns, it was great.
Meeting Spanish people was great.
I got to listen to Spanish almost everyday.
You'll see me wearing earphones in many videos
'cause I was listening to Spanish lessons.
I got to chat with Spanish people
and eat the Spanish food, and all,
the whole thing was such a wonderful experience,
there was also a lot of challenge, right,
The wind in our face at that whole day
kinda made you crazy sometimes.
Just walking all those kilometers,
because we were doing, you know,
on our long days, we would do 40 kilometers.
Short days, we would do less than that,
maybe 30 to 25 kilometers,
but every single day with a backpack.
sometimes I couldn't sleep because
either I just couldn't sleep, I don't know why,
my body just would wake up or my mind would wake up,
or for a while, Joe was snoring a lot,
eventually we got separate rooms so that I could sleep,
but there were challenges like that constantly.
But it's overcoming the difficult things
and also enjoying the wonderful things,
that combination gives you such a wonderful
deep feeling of excitement and pride and...
It makes the experience deeper, I think.
If it was just all super easy,
So today, a very, very long day,
36, 37 kilometers walking
under the hot sun with no shade.
In fact, most of the day today was just
along this long straight dirt road
the sun got hotter and hotter.
Today, no wind but it was very, very hot.
And it felt a little bit like one of those cowboy movies,
you know, the cowboy movies where
they're walking through the desert
for hours and hours, or days, and they're thirsty
and the sun's beating down on them
and there's no towns, nothing at all,
that's kind of what today was like.
We finally came to this little town.
The town is down on the valley so
we never could see it when we're walking on the road
Long, hot, dusty, tiring day on the Spanish Meseta.
Time for a shower, time to get some food,
you know, the meseta is a plateau, right?
You go up to it; we had to climb up to the Meseta
and then it's just flat for a long time.
That's called a plateau in English.
What's interesting is, when you're learning
English, for example, or learning anything,
you will also experience a plateau.
you improve quite quickly at some points,
but then, after a time of improvement,
you'll notice that everything seems to be flat.
continue listening, continue practicing,
but nothing seems to be happening.
You seem to not be improving at all.
and it's kinda like my experience in Meseta.
I can just feel like it goes forever,
like this plateau will never end.
You're just going forward, going forward, going forward.
You keep practicing, you keep practicing,
in my case, I kept walking, kept walking,
And the plateaus can be quite tough,
it can be difficult to keep going
when you feel like you're never going to arrive
at another point of improvement.
But the good news is, plateaus do eventually end.
So we are a couple hours outside of Astorga,
We have one final day on the Meseta.
Today has been a long, flat day.
And in fact, we've had no shade.
There are a few little bushes and small trees,
but the path has no shade at all,
And so you could see that I was expecting.
I thought we were almost finished with the plateau,
we're almost arrived to the next mountains
where we're gonna go up again, but
nope, still had to keep going;
And this can happen in your learning, too,
where these plateaus seem like they will never end.
And there's nothing you can do during that time
but just keep practicing, keep listening.
I promise you, eventually the plateau will end
and you will start going up again.
And we've been dropping, dropping, dropping now
for the rest of the day down into this nice valley.
Still quite dry here, lots of brush,
but again, lots of beautiful colors, wild flowers.
Again, just nice to be back in nature.
Little tough on the legs, though,
and we have very, very rocky tough trails
Okay. So you could see we got up,
and we went up over this high point
going down was more difficult than going up,
and especially with those rocky paths,
it was very difficult on our knees and our legs going down.
But as you can see, the best thing to do when you're,
when you have a rocky time, a tough time
is to try to enjoy your surroundings.
I was noticing the wild flowers.
And you just have to enjoy the moment,
(water rippling, birds chirping)
So, we have seven or eight days left
Today, we leave the province of Castilla y Leon
and we will be going into the province of Galicia.
For more than half of the day today,
we will be walking along this road.
And we also have this nice stream next to us
We're walking through these mountain valleys.
real trees this time, not the little bushes
from the Meseta or even yesterday.
There's clearly more water here.
We're definitely in the mountains now.
today for about two thirds of the day,
And then, at the end of our very long day today,
we have the steepest climb of the Camino.
Not necessarily the highest point but the steepest--
So, you can see this point where we've gone through
some hills again, and then getting
ready to go into a very tough, big climb,
the first true forest we've been in
This is nice, we're not near any kind of highway.
This is just a mountain path, a dirt path
through the mountains, through the forest.
Now we're climbing up to the town of O'Cebrerio,
or Cebreiro, something like that.
our place is just a little bit farther beyond that.
And you can tell by the way I'm breathing
but it's beautiful, this is what I love;
It's joy being up in the woods,
away from all the cars and buildings
this great point that this thing, I loved it.
When we got to Galicia and all the trees,
and being out in nature walking,
at that point my body was quite tough.
And I didn't mind the tough climbing.
It really didn't feel that bad.
I was breathing heavily in that
video, but thoroughly enjoying the experience.
And I think that's just good in life in general,
that to learn how to enjoy those tough challenging times
'cause they can be quite enjoyable.
So we sometimes get in our mind that it's so
you know, that was a tough climb,
physically, that was difficult, but
at the same time, I loved it, it felt great.
'cause my body was quite strong at that point.
I was enjoying just being out in the quiet of nature.
And you, too, can enjoy the process of learning English.
Even during those tough times,
it can still be fun, it can still be enjoyable.
your big purpose, your big success:
learning to love the experience,
This time we're getting up towards the top here.
It gives you a little scene of the top.
went up and over the mountains.
It came a little more flat again, just little hills
and then we started getting very close
That's a picture of the paths that we walked through.
So today is actually our last day on the Camino.
We have decided to push forward
and just do a long day in our last day.
We're both feeling quite strong.
and you know, we're well-trained;
our fitness is very, very good now.
We were gonna stake near the airport
and then have a short day tomorrow but
we decided the airport probably is an uglier area
so anyway, we're on to Santiago.
We will arrive today and I'll do another video
So my feelings today about the Camino,
really go back to the beginning
because the same things I mentioned
and loved in the beginning of the Camino
are still what I have enjoyed and still enjoying now.
So number one, the simplicity.
focusing on, you know, getting up, and
just wakin' up and focusing on food,
None of the complications of city life
I have hardly been online at all,
so, on a computer or anything.
Also, just being outdoors for most of the day.
there you could see that's my last day.
feeling a little sad, actually, too,
that the Camino was going to end.
And the point I said, that the thing I
was the simplicity of the Camino,
of just getting up everyday and walking outdoors,
meeting people, just chatting,
focusing on food, eating, walking,
For me, that was just absolutely wonderful.
It had a deep purpose but not complicated.
Simple. Getting back to the basic parts of life.
And I think this can apply even to learning English,
in my book, Effortless English,
in the Effortless English system,
we try to make the system simple,
not a lot of complicated stuff.
You're not trying to memorize a lot of complicated grammar.
If it's too complicated, you can't actually use it
but you can't use it during a real conversation.
So you want to keep your learning simple.
That why we focus mostly on listening,
lots and lots and lots of listening,
and that listening eventually leads to effortless speaking.
It's a very simple but powerful system.
And finally, you will arrive at your destination
just as I did, arriving here in Santiago.
This is the plaza, that is the church,
We're going to get our official compostela,
which is like the certificate.
We gotta go to the office and show them our
little stamps that we got all along the way.
All right, now I'll play one more video here.
So, here again in the plaza of Santiago.
That is the Cathedral of Santiago
which is the official certificate
Joe and I both have them now, so
Whew, it's quite a feeling of relief and gratitude.
I don't know, don't quite know how to
We're gonna meet up with some friends
that we've met along the way tonight, celebrate.
that we've been walking with tomorrow
Bye from Santiago. We made it.
All right. And my final video.
So I'm in the Plaza de Santiago again.
This is the next day after we arrived.
And this morning, we're going to the Pilgrims' Mass,
maybe, they might have the big famous
giant incense burner that they swing over the crowd,
We've heard they may or may not do it,
but anyway, it'll be exciting and fun to see
many of the people that we walked with,
most of whom are finishing today.
Like they just saw (audio drowned out)
they're walking with quite a while in a cafe.
They just arrived this morning.
So I'm so excited to see all these people
that we met and connected with
And I think I'm gonna finish there because you could see
that my final thoughts on the Camino was
really about the people we connected with
We shared this journey with them.
We shared the difficulties and the challenges with them.
We shared the fun and the good points
and the excitement of the Camino with them.
And it's the same with your English learning.
Just doing it alone in your room or at home
It's much more meaningful when you share
your journey with other people.
It's one of the great things about the
which you see on my Twitter page,
in our VIP member program especially,
that there's this special connection between the people,
because we're all sharing this journey together,
the journey of, certainly of learning English,
But also of just learning all the other things
that we learn in the Effortless English community
because we also learn strategies for success.
We also learn how to overcome difficult problems in life.
And we just create real strong friendships.
You know, after the Camino, I met my wife
and then we went to Barcelona.
And we had a member meeting there,
our Effortless English members.
We met Mira and Julia and Jean Jacques,
and just so many wonderful people,
And this is the super special thing,
the thing I love most about Effortless English
so that you enjoy this journey of English.
Because there are challenges, there are tough points,
and there's also excitement and great things about it.
And it's all more meaningful when you share
that journey with other people.
Get on my Twitter and connect with our other members
then don't just join and be silent.
Join and write on our VIP blog and
write on the Facebook page, whatever.
And if you can, come to a live Effortless English meeting
because it really makes the experience
And this was certainly the case for me
These wonderful people that we met
made the experience so much deeper,
It was a life-changing experience for me,
one of the best experiences of my life.
I'm gonna end the show here today with that.