Category: Simple Stories in English

Season 2, episode 15

I love to travel and today I am sharing one of my favorite travel stories. When I went to Ecuador twelve years ago, I had the opportunity to snorkel twice with blowfish, sea turtles and sea lions. The first day was amazing, but the second was a little scary .

Today’s story is mostly in the first-person plural (pronoun “we”) and the past tense. Important vocabulary in the story includes: boat, snorkel, tortoise/turtle, shark, and sea lion.

My Trip to the Galapagos Islands

Twelve years ago, in the year 2013, I had the opportunity to travel to Ecuador with some students. Visiting the nation of Ecuador was an incredible experience. We flew from Denver to Miami and from Miami to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. 

In Quito, we visited churches and old buildings with Spanish architecture. We visited the equator line inside the Intiñan Museum. We put one foot in the northern hemisphere and another in the southern hemisphere while we looked at indigenous artifacts. We saw artwork about the process of making shrunken heads, and we even saw some shrunken heads!

In Ecuador we ate food that doesn’t exist in the United States. We ate the fruit guanábana and we drank the famous Inca Kola. We went to a restaurant that serves guinea pig. It is strange to see a pet in the United States as a food, but I have to admit that guinea pig is very delicious.

Our time in Quito was interesting. We visited the Cotopaxi Volcano and we went shopping. But we didn’t go to Ecuador only to see the capital. We went to Ecuador to go to the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos Islands are a province of Ecuador and form a protected national park. They are located about 850 miles (1000 kilometers) from the coast of Ecuador. You can only arrive on the islands by boat or plane.

My students and I went by plane from Quito to the island of Baltra. Baltra has an incredible and different airport. It is the first ecological, or “green”, airport in the world.

The island of Baltra is not very touristic, so we went to a hotel on the island of Santa Cruz. We went from the airport on a boat. They put all the luggage on the roof of the boat. We were nervous with the luggage on the roof. We were afraid that a suitcase would fall in the water, but nothing happened. We arrived without problems at the island of Santa Cruz. And on the way, we saw a lot of animals, especially sea lions.

We arrived at the hotel in Santa Cruz and we immediately went to the Charles Darwin Research Station. There we saw the main attraction of the Galapagos Islands: the Galapagos tortoise. The tortoises are big and fascinating. They can be as big as 5 feet (150 centimeters) long and 500 pounds (225 kg). The tortoises live 100 years or more and they can live a whole year without food or water. On another island, we had the opportunity to be next to the tortoises. It was a little like being next to a dinosaur.

I liked seeing the tortoises, but there are a lot of animals on the Galapagos Islands, not just the Galapagos turtles. There are iguanas, big lizards, small lizards, crabs and a lot of birds, including pelicans, flamingos, oystercatchers, blue-footed boobies, and penguins.

The most fun animal to see was the sea lion. Sea lions were all over the place. They were on boats and docks and beaches. I took a lot of photos of the sea lions. They seemed cute and docile, but I know firsthand why they are called “lions”.

Our group did a snorkeling trip on the island of Floreana. We put on our snorkel gear and jumped in the water. Under the water we saw all types of marine life. I saw a blowfish that got big when it passed me. I saw a sea turtle calmly swimming. I saw a lot of fish and I saw a sea lion.

My first experience with a sea lion in the water was magical. I saw the sea lion in the distance. It was far away and seemed to dance on the water. I didn’t move, I just observed the sea lion. The sea lion saw me and swam in my direction. I still didn’t move. I was fascinated by the sea lion that was swimming my way. The sea lion stopped a few centimeters from my face. We looked at each other for a moment and suddenly, the sea lion moved its head back a little and blew bubbles in my face. Then it turned around and returned to the sea.

After that experience, I loved sea lions even more. Not only were they cute and docile, they were fun and playful. Why were they called “lions”? They should be called “puppies”.

The next day, I had a completely different experience. Once again we went to an island to snorkel. This time we went to  Isabela Island. It is the biggest island of the Galapagos and there were a lot more people. They parked the boat and we divided into groups. We put on our snorkel equipment and jumped in the water.

I immediately had a problem. Water was coming in my mask and I couldn’t see under the water. I had to float and fix my mask. While I did that, the rest of my group was swimming to some rocks. I finally fixed my mask and swam quickly to my group. I passed fish and other people, but I was focused on getting to my group.

The group carefully passed over a wall of volcanic rocks under the water. I also passed over the wall, but I wasn’t careful because I was going quickly because I was behind.

On the other side of the wall of volcanic rocks, I saw a small sea lion close to me. It was a baby. I thought of my experience from the other day and I was happy to see the cute sea lion. But sea lions are called “lions”. They can be fun and playful, but they are also wild animals and the mothers protect their babies. 

I was too close to the baby sea lion. Suddenly, a big sea lion swam in my direction. She opened her mouth and growled. I saw her sharp teeth and angry face and I was scared. I screamed in my snorkel tube. Luckily, the baby swam to its mom and the two went in another direction.

My heart was beating quickly while I looked for my group. I didn’t want another experience with a sea lion in the water. I just wanted to go to the boat and the hotel. I saw my group next to a canal of black rocks. They were moving slowly and I finally caught up to them.

The leader of the group gave instructions to move through the canal with our hands on the rocks and not to swim or kick our feet. He told us to move calmly and not make any unnecessary movements. I passed through the canal with my hands on the rocks. I didn’t pay attention to what was in the water because the image of the sea lion’s teeth was in my head. I tried to breathe and calm down and focus on the present. I moved slowly and focused on the forms below me. When I finally focused on the forms, I realized that I was swimming in a canal of sharks.

Now I know that the sharks were small and couldn’t kill me, but in that moment I was already scared by the sea lion and seeing and thinking about the sharks just scared me more. I wanted to go home.

When I left the canal of sharks, I swam directly to the boat. Other people from the group paused to see a blowfish and a sea turtle, but I swam to the boat.

The rest of the time on the Galapagos Islands was fun for my students and I. We went to a club and sang karaoke and danced. We bought T-shirts and bags. We walked on white sand beaches and black sand beaches. We walked on volcanic rocks and we saw penguins, pelicans, flamingos, and a lot of blue-footed boobies. Their feet are very blue!

On the trip to Ecuador, our guide said that a person who travels lives many lives. I like to travel and remember my other “lives” and I am happy that the sea lion didn’t end my life on the Galapagos Islands.

The end.

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I really enjoy creating and sharing simple, comprehensible stories. I work hard to provide tools and supports for those who want to learn. Please, consider buying me a taco to support my work!

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Season 2, episode 14

I believe that mental health matters. I usually feel like I have a good grasp of my own mental health, but there are days I want to ignore the world and all my responsibilities in it. I have many activities that help boost my mental health and today I would like to share a few.

My Mental Health

Mental health is a very important, but sometimes ignored, topic. Mental health affects every aspect of life. If we are in poor mental health, we don’t eat well, nor do we want to exercise, which affects our physical health. If we are in poor mental health, we don’t want to interact with other people. We don’t want to do the things that we need to do to survive. That makes it easy to fall into depression.

I have always thought that I need to take care of my mental health. I used to believe that I had a lot of things under control. However, a big event occurred in my life in February 2022. This event caused me to evaluate my mental health and the impact of other people on my wellbeing. 

Now I am very conscientious of my mental health. I think about my energy and activities. When I notice that I am in a bad mood, I think about why and I try to fix the situation. 

I do several things to better my mental health. First, I try to think positively. When life is hard, I try to find at least one thing, even if it is small, that brings me happiness. For example, this weekend I felt lonely, as I typically do when my sons are with their dad. So I left my house in search of something to make me happy. The little thing that brought me happiness was a forest of aspens with their yellow leaves. I stopped in the middle of the trees and breathed the fresh air. I listened to the wind and felt the sun on my face. I felt better almost immediately. I still felt lonely, but my happiness was stronger than my loneliness.

It’s hard to be positive when I am with negative people, so I try to ignore negative voices. There is a difference between constructive comments and negative comments. A single negative comment can ruin my whole day, even if there were ten positive comments. That’s why I decided to ignore negative people. 

I spend time with positive people. I have fantastic friends that listen to me and help me. When I have a bad day, I call my sister or I talk to a friend. They listen to me and offer support and, sometimes, solutions. I try to do the same for them.

There is a lot of negativity in the world. If I focus on negativity, I turn into a negative person. So, to avoid it, I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. I know that social media also has positive aspects, like photos of my nieces and nephews or students and cat videos, but in general, I don’t feel good after spending time on social media.

In addition to thinking positively, I exercise. I believe that my physical strength is connected to my mental strength. When I am physically strong, I am also mentally strong. When I can, I lift weights. I don’t have space for a gym in my house and I don’t have time to go to one, so I move my table and I life weights in my dining room. Lifting weights is not my favorite activity, but I always feel good afterwards.

When I am angry, I run. I don’t like to run much, but when I am angry and full of adrenaline, I feel much better if I run. I have a treadmill in my dining room and I run until I can’t run anymore. Then I walk until I can run again and I repeat the cycle. At the end, I am too exhausted to be angry. My mind fills with endorphins and I feel much better.

I can’t lift weights or run every day, but I can walk. I walk every day during my 30 minutes of lunch. I teach classes from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. My only break in all that time is lunch. I eat quickly and then I go outside with one of the English teachers and we walk. We walk in circles around the school. We normally do two circles, which is more or less a mile. 

While we walk, we talk about our classes, students, and lives. Sometimes we think of solutions for school problems. Other times we talk about what we did during the weekend or our plans for vacations. We feel the sun and breathe the fresh air. When we finish, we are renewed to teach three more classes.

I know that food is important for mental health. When I eat poorly, I feel bad. I try to eat well, but sometimes it is hard because I don’t like to cook at all. I eat protein and vegetables. To be able to walk during my lunch, I bring a lunch that I can eat quickly, like a sandwich, a yogurt with granola, fruit, cheese, and nuts. I also drink a lot of water. I drink two to three liters of water each day.

Physical and mental health are connected. However, we need to do more than physical activity to take care of our mental health. Another thing that I do every day is read. I read a physical book, because I believe that reading from an electronic device doesn’t have the same effect on me. When I read, I calm down. I escape my world and my problems for a moment. I learn about historical momentos or I feel empathy for groups of people with problems much worse than my own. I believe that reading is so important that all my classes begin with six to eight minutes of reading, not only because it is an excellent way to learn Spanish, but also because it has a lot of benefits for mental health.

Sometimes, I watch a movie or a television program that makes me laugh or cry. I especially enjoy watching stand-up comedy. Just like a book, I escape into the story and I find happiness.

It’s hard for me to be still, so I typically knit or crochet while I watch. Creating something with my hands calms me and helps me concentrate. Also, at the end I have something pretty. Sometimes I knit during meetings or during church.

My religion helps me a lot with my mental health. When life is hard and I feel like I can’t take it anymore, I talk to God. I sing religious songs, I listen to spiritual music, and I read the scriptures. My faith is an essential part of my life and my mental health.

Sometimes it is hard to maintain mental health without professional help. I participated in therapy that helped me a lot. My therapist helped me recognize my emotions and the causes of my emotions. She gave me ideas to change my mentality and control my reactions.

There are moments when I simply don’t want to do anything, when life seems too complicated and hard. Those days, I put on fun music. I get up and dance, clean my house, or drive to a remote trail. I push myself to walk, or if it is winter, to ski, for hours and I spend time in the curative presence of nature. When I see the beauty and grandioseness of nature, my problems seem small. I remember that I can do hard things and that I don’t need to do them alone; I have my family, my friends, and my God. 

When I have a bad day and none of my activities help me, I always feel better after a hug from my sons. I have two marvelous sons and I am very thankful to be their mom. I want to give them a good example of physical and mental health to carry into adulthood. 

What do you do for your mental health?

The end.

You can also watch a video of this story on YouTube!

I really enjoy creating and sharing simple, comprehensible stories. I work hard to provide tools and supports for those who want to learn. Please, consider buying me a taco to support my work!

You can download a printer-friendly PDF of this story.

Season 2, episode 13

I teach Spanish, but I am not a native Spanish speaker. Learning Spanish was not easy for me. I struggled a lot. But I am very grateful to be bilingual. Today I would like to share my language journey and why I chose to learn Spanish.

My Language Journey

Like many people in the United States, I did not have the opportunity to take language classes at school until I was 14. In my school, there were only two options: Spanish or German. I decided to take Spanish because I believed, at 14 years old, that it was a more attractive language than German, a more romantic language.

That first year of Spanish was not easy. I had to memorize a lot of information. I had lists of vocabulary and verb conjugations. I didn’t know how to put information in context. Up to that point, school was easy for me. Spanish was my first challenging class and it wasn’t a complete failure, but I did not do well.

Even though I didn’t understand much Spanish, I did like the class. I liked the videos we watched about culture. I liked learning about food. Above all, I liked the music we listened to.

I decided to continue my Spanish studies and I enrolled in the second year. I had a different teacher my second year. It was still a lot of grammar and vocabulary. I had a lot of homework for the class. I distinctly remember that for each question in the book I had to copy the question into my notebook in Spanish, translate the question to English, answer the question in Spanish and translate my answer to English.

While we worked on the grammar and vocabulary practices, my teacher, Mr. Franklin, took out his guitar and sang to us. He liked singing songs by the Eagles, like “Desperado”. The work of copying and translating was less terrible with the live music. And that is one of my favorite memories of that class.

During my second year of Spanish, I went with the school choir to New York. There I had an experience that impacted me. We visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Ellis Island is an important place in American History as it is where many immigrants arrived to the United States. In those two places, there were people from all over the world. I am from a small town in northern Minnesota. We had a few foreign exchange students, but by visiting these landmarks and seeing all those people and hearing all those languages, I realized just how big the world really is. I heard several languages and I thought it was so cool. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to speak and understand more than just English.

There was another girl in the choir that was in my Spanish class. She and I tried to speak Spanish to be “cool” like the tourists that spoke other languages. In that moment, I decided that I was going to take another year of Spanish.

In my third year, all the vocabulary and grammar from the first two years began to make sense in my mind for one reason: stories. In my third year of Spanish we read, and we read a lot. We read short stories and novels like a simplified version of “Lazarillo de Tormes”. As I read, I understood all the words and verb formations I hadn’t understood before. 

I discovered a love for Spanish. I actually wanted to study. I bought CD’s of Ricky Martin and Shakira (it was the 90’s) and I listened to them all the time, dancing and singing in my bedroom. We had foreign exchange students from Spain and Colombia that year in school. I practiced my Spanish with them when possible and I learned a lot from those conversations. 

In class my fourth year, we watched more movies and we studied the Pre-columbian cultures of the Americas. We played Scrabble in Spanish and we memorized poems. During that year I decided that I was going to study Spanish in college to become a teacher.

When I was eighteen years old, I went to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota to study Spanish and theater. I took classes on grammar, literature, cinema, and translation.

During my studies, in 2002, I went to Spain to spend a semester. I attended the University of Navarra in Pamplona because they had an exchange program with Concordia.

I made a lot of friends in Spain and I took classes on literature, geography, history and grammar. I participated in events at the university and I went on trips with my new friends. I practiced all the time and I fell in love with Spanish even more. I even visited one of those foreign exchange students that helped me so much in high school.

Living in Spain was a great experience. I lived with a lovely family. The mom was from Valencia and she prepared the best paella. The dad watched soccer games at night. I would watch with him. I especially liked the team from Galicia because their goalie was very good looking!

I returned to the United States determined to continue with Spanish. I had excellent professors at the college that came from various countries, including Paraguay, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Peru and Minnesota. When I graduated from college, I found a job and I started teaching.

In 2014, I decided to return to my studies and get my masters, or postgraduate degree, in Spanish education. My children were three years old and two months old when I started my first on-line class, but I worked hard and finished the program in two years.

As part of my masters degree, I spent two weeks in classes in Costa Rica. I also studied more about the political history of Latin America and Hispanic cinema.

My Spanish journey has not ended. I continue studying Spanish all the time. I listen to music, watch programs, read, and speak in Spanish every day. Sometimes I forget the intricacies of some grammar rules and I need to research and practice a little.

Spanish has been part of my life for over 25 years now. I am thankful that I began my Spanish journey and that I decided to be a teacher. I can’t imagine my life any other way. Being bilingual has opened doors. It has brought friendships that I wouldn’t have without Spanish. Learning a language gives me the opportunity to share this journey with you all and share this desire to learn and communicate with the world. And I am thankful for that every day.

Not every language journey is the same, but I hope that my experience learning Spanish can help or inspire you along your way to learning English. And I am honored to be a part of that journey.

The end.

You can also watch a video of this story on YouTube!

I really enjoy creating and sharing simple, comprehensible stories. I work hard to provide tools and supports for those who want to learn. Please, consider buying me a taco to support my work!

You can download a printer-friendly PDF of this story.

Season 2, episode 12

Hello and welcome to season 2 of Simple Stories in English. I love the theater. I love acting and singing and being in front of an audience. I haven’t been on a stage in years, but I have wonderful memories from my time in the theater and I use my experience now to tell stories. Continuing with this season of personal stories, this episode explores my short-lived life on stage.

This story is in the first person and the past tense. Important vocabulary in the story includes: skit, play, stage, and theater. 

Life On Stage

When I was 8 (eight) years old I participated in a program called 4-H. One activity that I did with my club was write and present a skit that represented the values of 4-H. Those values are head, heart, hands, and health. We created a skit with action and music. We did a great job. We won a trophy and got to present our skit at the state fair. It was my first time acting and I loved it.

When I was 10 (ten) years old I joined the school choir. Choir taught me to breathe correctly and to project my voice. I gained confidence and, with practice and experience, I learned to control my nerves.

When I was 12 (twelve) years old, I acted in another skit about a scientist. All the kids in seventh grade participated in the skit, but I had one of the leading roles. I was very proud of myself!

I wanted to act more. In high school there were three theater productions per year: one in the fall, one in the winter, and one in the spring. The fall play was a drama or a comedy. The winter play was a short one-act play for competition. The spring play was always a musical.

I had small roles in productions of “Charlotte’s Web” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, but when I was 15 (fifteen) I got what I considered to be the best role, the role of Annie. It was very special for me to be on stage and sing the famous lyrics: the sun’ll come out tomorrow! Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun.

My school’s auditorium is a special place. As a matter of fact, the whole high school is special. The construction of the school lasted 3 years and cost $4 million in the year 1922 (nineteen twenty two). The auditorium copied the Capitol Theater in New York and has elegant architecture. The walls are decorated with paintings with gold detail. The six crystal chandeliers were imported from Belgium. The organ was imported from Germany and is one of only 3 that still exist from that company. There is a balcony and seats for almost 2000 (two thousand) people.

The auditorium also holds a lot of mystery. As it is a very old space, there are stories of ghosts. Even I have stories about the ghosts there.

One Saturday I was working with three friends to clean the prop room, the room that holds all the objects we use in theater productions like cups, bags, dishes, fake flowers, and more. I went down to the stage and I heard something. A lot of tourists come to see the auditorium so I wasn’t scared. However when I looked out at the seats from the stage, I didn’t see anyone. I was about to return off-stage to the prop room when I heard a girl crying.

I said hello, but there was no answer, the girl kept crying. I looked through all the seats and I finally saw her in the balcony. I didn’t understand why she was on the balcony. Tourists entered the auditorium through a specific door and all the other doors, including the doors to the balcony, should be locked. The girl was very young, six or seven years old. She had brown hair and was wearing a white dress. I talked to her. I told her that I would come get her and we would find her family.

I left the stage and ran to the balcony stairs. When I got to the doors to the balcony, they were locked. I couldn’t get in. I returned to the stage to tell the girl that I was going to look for help and that everything was going to be okay, but when I looked at the balcony, the girl wasn’t there. My friends were on the stage and I asked them if they had seen the girl on the balcony, but they hadn’t seen or heard anything.

The most famous auditorium ghost in my old high school is in seat J-47. There are a lot of rumors about that ghost. The most popular rumor is that a man died in that seat during a play. Now he watches all the productions from that seat. There are even photos of the ghost in his seat, but a lot of people say they are fake. I saw those photos in person in the 90s and the camera that took them. I don’t know if they are real or fake, but I do know that there is a presence because I have felt it.

The seats in the auditorium bounce upright, unless someone is sitting in them. Seat J-47 is almost always down, like someone is sitting there. Also, the space around the seat is always cold. But the biggest reason I know there is a presence is because I have seen the ghost during theater performances and practices.

In my last year of high school we did a very fun comedy musical called “I’m Sorry the Bridge is Out, You’ll Have to Spend the Night.” It is a funny musical about a couple that has to spend the night in Dr. Frankenstein’s house during a horrible storm. The doctor has other guests like Dracula and his girlfriends and the wolf man and his mom. Each person in the mansion wants to use the man or woman to advance some evil plan.

I played the woman in the couple and it was my favorite role. The play began with a completely dark auditorium. Andy, the man, and I walked to the middle of the auditorium and I screamed – it was what I was supposed to do. After I screamed in the dark auditorium, we turned on flashlights we were carrying and a spotlight lit us up. Then we slowly moved to the stage.

One night after my scream when we passed seat J-47, the air got very cold and the flashlights in our hands stopped working. I saw a figure in the seat and I wanted to scream again, but I had to keep acting. I saw the figure a few more times during the performance. I asked my friends about it and a few of them said they saw something white in that area too.

I loved my high school theater. I was in it almost every day. My last role in that special auditorium was not planned. I dreamed of becoming a director after graduating, so I took the position of Assistant Director. Unfortunately, the leading actress lost her voice and then had a family issue. She couldn’t continue and we didn’t have an understudy. I had two weeks to learn all her lines and songs. At least I already knew all the stage directions.

On opening night I was very nervous that I was going to forget something, but everything turned out really well. After finishing I went out to greet the public. My dad was crying, which isn’t a big deal because my dad always cries. He hugged me and told me that one song I sang in the play was very special for him. It was a song he heard on the radio with his dad. My grandpa died when my dad was only 23 and hearing that song brought him back to his childhood.

Love makes the world go round, love makes the world go round. Somebody soon will love you, if no one loves you now. High in a silent sky, love sings a silver song. Making the Earth whirl softly, love makes the world go round.

I studied theater in college. I took part in several plays on stage and behind the scenes. I worked in a costume studio and with lightning equipment. I directed skits and a complete play. I acted, danced, and sang. But none of that impacted me as much as my time on stage in my beautiful high school auditorium.

I have not been on a stage for years and I really miss it. Each time I see a play I remember the energy and emotion I felt. Maybe someday I will act again, but for now I am content with my leading role of mother, teacher, and storyteller. Thank you for being my audience.

The end.

You can also watch a video of this story on YouTube!

I really enjoy creating and sharing simple, comprehensible stories. I work hard to provide tools and supports for those who want to learn. Please, consider buying me a taco to support my work!

You can download a printer-friendly PDF of this story.