 Hello and welcome to a real conversation between two native English speakers. I'm Adam Novus. I'm here with Liz Wade. Hello, Liz. Hi, Adam. And today, we are talking about a program called Giving Thanks for the Harvest. If you have not listened to that program, make sure you go and do that. You can listen to either our classic or advanced. The advanced is the same program at a little higher speed. There's some other things, but we won't go into that right now. If you are watching this on YouTube, we ask that, of course, you like and subscribe. If you want to join, click that little join button, you get some bonus extras. And if you're maybe watching this through our website, which is www.spotlightenglish.com, and you want to get a script every week sent to your email inbox, just click the little button on the home page that says Scripts by Email, or Scripts by Mail. I don't remember. You'll figure it out. Easy, easy. I think it's Scripts by Email. Scripts by Email. For a couple bucks each month, you can get them straight to your inbox and not miss anything. This is a fun program to talk about. It is around the time of year that we in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving, which is our harvest festival. But of course, harvest festivals are not just a thing for the United States. They happen all around the world. So, Liz, let's talk about both Thanksgiving and giving thanks for the harvest. Yeah, I was just going to say, wow, what cool wordplay, Adam. Yeah, and I have to say, today, when this video is coming out is Thanksgiving, but we're cheating a little bit, and we're recording this a little bit early because this is a huge holiday, like Adam said, that everybody in the United States does celebrate. So, we're taking a little bit of time off this week. Do you enjoy taking time off, Liz? Are you good at taking time off? Sure, sometimes. Yeah, we do actually, we like putting out a new program every week, and we do a lot of work. And yeah, sometimes we need a little break to spend time with our families and to set aside that time to give thanks, actually. So, yeah, where I want to say, first of all, happy Thanksgiving to all of you listening and watching. And one of the things I know that both you and I are thankful for is all of the people who are watching this or listening to our program, who are part of this spotlight community. You guys are wonderful, and we are very thankful that you kind of hang out with us and listen to what we have to say. I know that we always say, spotlight listeners and viewers are the best. We always say this, and I think, well, I hope people don't think we're just saying that, because honestly, I really think they are. You go to some places on YouTube and people are so mean, and they're being mean to each other and saying terrible comments, and like, here, it's like a little utopia in YouTube. Everybody is so kind, even when they disagree with each other. And what I really love is people who learn from each other, too. Some people will say, they'll write a comment and they'll say, please correct my grammar. And then someone else will come in and say, oh, well, you got this right, but you got this wrong, and they'll learn from each other. And I think that's so great. So I, along with you, Adam, I'm very thankful for spotlight listeners and viewers. Well, and they are kind of our harvest that we take in, because of course, I do not grow any of my own food. Liz, I don't know if you grow some of your, you have some things that you try to grow. I am actually very, very bad at growing food and plants in general. Plants do not like me. I have a brown thumb. I basically, if I get a plant, I kill it, not on purpose. You make it sound like on purpose. No, no, I try. I love plants. I try to keep plants alive. But a little bit earlier this summer, we grew some tomatoes. We grew some green beans, which did not turn out. We grew one squash. Right. We got one squash. And we had raspberries this year, but that is about, oh, and some peppers. Right. But those are all the things I've grown, and we harvested them long ago. Right. So we should explain, maybe this is obvious to people who, to everyone, but if you live near the equator, you have a very long growing season. You can grow food almost all year long. So you will be like, what's the big deal? Why are these harvest festivals happening? We can get food whenever we want. But when you move both north or south towards the poles, you will have a much shorter time. You have to grow all your food and then store it and gather it really fast because the ground is frozen. You can't do that. So these harvest festivals, I'm making a guess here because I don't remember if this is in the script or not. If these harvest festivals happen more towards, like, in a certain range or if they also happen closer to the equator. I know there's one in England. I know, well, that we talk about, there's one, there's the Harvest Moon Festival. And so that's more in parts of Asia, China. And then there's one in Argentina, I believe. Yeah. So we're talking kind of mid-latitudes, 45s. But I would be interested, if you do live near the equator, let us know. What's your harvest season? Do you have a harvest festival? I feel like it might be a little bit like how Christmas has gone to everywhere and some people celebrate Christmas even if it's not a religious holiday. It's a holiday that people celebrate. I feel like Thanksgiving might be a similar thing. Yeah. I mean, we do know there's a Canadian Thanksgiving that happens about a month earlier. So I think it's good. But giving thanks is, I feel like it must be a sort of human urge. I think so. Life is better if you live thankfully, if you live grateful for. There's plenty to complain about, but I think taking a time and just being thankful, it's a lot harder to live your life that way. I think, I don't know if you find yourself pulled towards the darkness, but it's hard to choose to live in the light and be like... You know, Adam, we've been friends a long time. You know that I tend towards the rage. I have a very strong sense of righteousness. Righteous indignation, yes. Yes, righteous indignation. So I think that for me personally, I am thankful for a lot of things, but thankfulness is probably not one of my first instincts. Well, so when you gather, I don't know what you traditionally do with your family, because Thanksgiving in the United States is a time when families usually get together. So if you were going to get together with your family, what are some of the things that you'll be thankful for this year? Well, this year will be different than normal thanksgivings. In normal thanksgivings, we usually spend the weekend before Thanksgiving with my extended family, my wider family with my sisters and my dad. And then the week on Thanksgiving, usually we travel down to my husband's family and we stay with them and we have a wide family gathering there. But this year, we are staying home and we're making our own Thanksgiving dinner. Not me, because I'm terrible at cooking. So no plants, no cooking. Yeah, I'm not cooking. My husband is cooking. But he makes delicious food, so that's great. And also I might make a pie. Last year, I made, because famously in the United States, there's pumpkin pie, right? But there's a sweet potato pie. Yeah, sweet potato pie I made last year for the first time and my family was like, this is amazing as they were eating it. So I might do that. Well, there you go. Yeah, how about you, Adam? Well, my mother, one of the ways that she likes to show love is to make food. So we'll go there and we always say, what can we bring? How can we contribute to the meal? And she'll be like, well, you could bring a pie, kind of like what you were saying. But we know it's pie number three or four that we're bringing. Because she's just going to make pie herself. She's going to be like, well, we have to have apple pie. And we have to have like maybe you can bring a pumpkin pie or something. So you end up eating just a small slice of each of everything. You have a smorgasbord. Yes, smorgasbord. Borg. Borg. Borg. Anyway. So yeah, this is a great program to think about. We want to hear like, do you have a harvest festival where you live? What are you thankful for? If you're thankful for Liz or Adam, you could let us know about that as well. This is a, I'm just going to take a minute and say like, we really appreciate all of you. And we really try to make this program a program where we are, we don't focus on, we do focus on some terrible, terrible things. Right. War and, you know. When we're talking about the world and our programs. When we're talking about the world, because the world is, has some really bad stuff in it. But yeah, let's just make a resolve. 2022, it's going to be a year of being thankful. You know, this reminds me of sometimes on Facebook around this time, like in November, people will make like a grid or like a calendar. Okay. You know, sometimes people send out these things anyway, and it will have like a list of things for each day. So like on the first day of November, like what is one season you're grateful for? And then, you know, for November two, it's like, what is one family member that you're grateful for? And it will kind of give you a guided, like a guide. Yeah. And it will give you the month of November so that you can be thankful for something every day. Because I feel like sometimes when I do try to be thankful, it's, it's for the same things every time. Right. Your family, you know, your work, you know, the house that keeps you warm and safe, which are all good things, right? So maybe we could, maybe we could do that something for that, like this week for Thanksgiving. Seeing it, we're planning ahead. Yeah. Well, this has been a lot of fun to talk with you, Liz. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, even if you're not going to see the people who you traditionally do. And as you think about what you're thankful for, I hope that you just, you have tons of ideas because you're just so, so thankful. You too, Adam. Thank you. Well, make sure you check out this program, do all the things like liking and subscribing to our channel. And until next time, we hope you listen, watch, practice and learn Spotlight Out.