Tag: reality english

On this page you’ll find:

1. A Reality English Listening Video
2. A blog post explaining in more detail what I spoke about in the video
3. Transcript with explanations of some things stated in the video
4. My current SELFIES I took just for this video!

Reality English Video

Use this method to watch and learn real English.

• Step 1: Watch and read subtitles. Pause and make any notes.
• Step 2: Rewatch without subtitles. Focus on listening. It’s ok not to understand everything.
• Step 3: Watch a third time, and pick up on things you missed the first two times. You’ll surprise yourself how much you learn by rewatching the same video over and over.

Jesi’s Blog Post

I found a stack of selfies from my teenage years while trying to declutter my house. Like most teenagers I see on the internet today, I enjoyed taking a flattering self portrait in my day! As a thirty-something-year-old woman, selfies are rarely taken and even more rarely shared. If any are shared at all, they’re group selfies featuring my beautiful children as the main attraction, and not myself. So, what cured me? What saved me from self infatuation? Possibly a few things in life have lead me, and probably other after-twenty year olds to take and post less selfies.

1. I know what I look like. I’m kind of over it. As a teenager, I was still developing my self identity.
2. I was a lot prettier back then. Beauty is something to be enjoyed.
3. As a teenager I had lots of free time to experiment with clothes, makeup, and scenery.  Now, as a mama to two little ones, I’m just so happy if the laundry is done and the kitchen is clean!
4. For those older folks who still like taking and sharing selfies, there’s a filter for that! A SnapChat filter can make even the most unattractive person look like a model. There are even subtle filters that leave the viewer wondering, “Did she use a filter or is she just that pretty?” So, comparing myself to other women my age who I assume use filters has left me feeling a little less attractive than I’d like. I don’t wear makeup, and that’s on me. But I don’t want to use filters either. That’s just fake. I want to live in a real world where my emerging crow’s feet and uneven skin tone are appreciated!

   

5. Depression (I hate to always bring it up, but it is such a big part of who I am, even if it isn’t with me at the moment.) made me just give up on myself for several years. I went so many years without taking selfies that I just don’t have the desire to do so anymore.
6. There is a selfie overload on social sites, and I’d rather not add to it. I believe it’s starting to curve downward now, but there are still lots of selfies to be seen out there. I’d rather share pictures of my beautiful children. There is DEFINITELY a beautiful-children overload as well, but I just can’t help myself. Many mamas post the same, “Forgive me for all the posts of my baby, but I just can’t help myself.” I’ve seen it time after time, especially while the baby is new. We are just so in love and want to share it with everyone!
7. Taking selfies is associated with mental illness! Now I don’t avoid posting for this reason personally, but it could be a reason other people don’t post as many selfies as they’d like. According the “what  I read online”, posting selfies can be linked to low self-esteem, attention-seeking behavior, and narcissism. And editing them increases the likelihood that some mental disorder may be present.

That’s a lot of reasons I don’t post selfies anymore. So, what am I posting? My personal Facebook page is the account I post to most often, and here is a sample of what I have posted over the last month. Mostly pictures of my kids, with a touch of plants and things I try to sell on Facebook.

As you can see, I haven’t posted a single selfie recently. To get to an actual selfie, albeit one that has someone else in it, I had to go back a year to July 2018 when I was out celebrating the 4th of July with my little family. To get to the first solo selfie I had to go back to September 2015 when I took a picture showing off my first baby bump. But I still kind of consider that a group selfie since the picture was really about my growing baby and not about myself. To get to a picture that is all about ME, I had to go all the way back to February 2014 when I posted a flattering, black and white selfie with the caption “Learning to live.” That’s when I was getting my life back together after the manic depression wrecked it.

Selfies aren’t my thing! But I am glad to share some with y’all every now and then! I just won’t be posting many, if any solo selfies, to my personal profile for all my friends and family to see. If I do take a selfie, it will be safely and privately stored, much like my high school selfies from way back when!

Thanks for reading my blog post! I hope you’re enjoying REALITY ENGLISH from SELVA ingles!

I love hearing from you and get super excited with every comment I receive. So, please share your thoughts! Until next time, take care, and I love y’all!

Video Transcript with Phrasal Verbs Explained

Hi, it’s Jesi and this is Reality English with SELVA ingles. I haven’t long been moved home. I moved away for a little while, like a year and a half or so, and we’ve been back in our house now for about six months. Well, I have two babies that we’ve added to the house and all their stuff and all my stuff. It’s a lot of stuff. So I’ve been trying to go through the stuff and get rid of the stuff.

• go through – revisar
• get rid of – deshacer

I’ve already done this once. I had a great yard sale. I made two hundred dollars. For a yard sale I think that’s super. Ok, but anyway. Anyway, um, I want to show y’all what I found and it’s a box! And it says, “The Class of 2002.” That’s right. That’s the year I graduated high school. What’s in this box is something that’s super cool. They’re my memories, not all of my memories, but they’re my selfies. So, I took selfies in high school and a little bit before when selfies weren’t even cool and you didn’t even share selfies with anybody. So, I’m about to share some of my selfies with you from when I was a teenager. So, here we go. This is me when I was probably, maybe a teenager. I don’t even think I was a teenager yet. Yeah, it’s blurry. So this is like one of the first selfies that I found. Here’s another one. This is little Jesi taking a selfie before selfies were cool. And no, I didn’t share these with anybody. These were just for me. I started off taking some selfies when I was really young.

• start off – empezar

Maybe like I don’t know. I think maybe eleven or twelve there. Then I progressed into those sexy teenager selfies. Oh, look at my makeup. I know I am not a makeup wearer. I didn’t wear makeup then either. I just put it on in my bedroom and took a picture. And I still don’t wear makeup, but you know what, I’ve actually been thinking about the makeup thing and I’m thinking now I’m like thirty-five years old. So, yeah, I think it might be time to start putting on some pretty stuff on this face. Anyway, I’m not going to share all of them with you because it’s a lot. Here. You can’t see that way. It’s a lot of selfies.

• I should have said used “there are” and not “it’s.” This is a very common southern English error. They just come out of me so naturally! I’ll try to point my errors out if I think you should avoid them.
  • “I’m not going to share all of them with you because there are a lot (of them).”
  • “There are a lot of selfies.”

But you know what? Compared to what’s on your phone this is actually not a whole bunch of selfies. I mean this is my whole childhood, my whole teenagehood, we should say. So, anyway, just going to share some with you. I was looking a little sexy showing off some cleavage. I like my eyes here. Look at my skin. Man, didn’t I have some pretty skin! All teenagers are pretty. Oh, here is when I had some braces. I had on a bathing suite in this one. Alright, I started trying to get a little creative by taking some selfies outside. Still not the best at taking selfies, but hell, who is? I mean selfies are hard to take. When you see people who take really good selfies you think, “Damn, she practiced a lot!” or “She took a hell a lot of pictures to get that selfie!” You know this is like with a camera, a film camera, like click and you’re done. So, I think I did well with that. Looking cute. Ok, I can’t show you these. Here’s a selfie I took with my mom, a group selfie. She never really smiles in pictures. Oh, here’s one that I look pretty young in looking all model like. That’s young model Jesi. I hope y’all are liking these. Cowgirl Jesi. Who likes a good cowgirl? And y’all, don’t look at my fingernails. Y’all know that I work with plants. Y’all do know that, right? I don’t have the luxury of having pretty fingernails no matter how hard I actually try because my hands are always in soil and dirt and just ugly stuff. So, you know, don’t ever look at my hands. Don’t judge me. Hair down and straight. I don’t have straight hair so I must have worked really hard for that one. I really like this one. It’s one of the cutest ones. I loved loved loved that sweater. I think with the pigtails braided and that makeup I should’ve worn that out but I guarantee you I stayed in my bedroom and looked super cute. A back shot with my hair and my Levis. I love toboggans. I thought that looked really cool with my braids. Um, a goofy selfie. Who hasn’t taken a goofy selfie? Here’s another selfie. This is my bestfriend, Carmen. Or was my bestfriend, Carmen, when I was a teenager. I miss her a lot. I told y’all I wouldn’t cry. I said I wasn’t going to cry. Ok, Carmen passed away.

• to pass away – fallecer

The last time I cried this much I was pregnant. Some more of those outdoorsy woody selfies. Now technically this is not considered a selfie today but I took this selfie, so by my definition it’s a selfie. This is the woods behind my house where I grew up.

• to grow up – crecer

I love staying in the woods. If I could stay in the woods all the time, I would. I mean, but there are snakes and ticks and redbugs and…that’s pretty much all I don’t like out there. Um, so, those things are out right now in the summer. Now in the winter, you can go walking through the woods and it’s really nice. Looking sexy right there! Hahaha. Look at my thin eyebrows. I used to tweeze the hell out of these things. Y’all see those thin eyebrows? Uh, I let them go. That was a lot of work. Not worth it. Here are the braids without the hat on. That was a lot of work, too. Some bubbles. Here’s a model walk, y’all. I really liked this one. Look at those curves. Right when I was first getting my curves I thought I was the cutest thing ever. There’s another one from that day. Another selfie with my friend Carmen. We had a lot of fun on that trip. This is a belly selfie. Now, cause I liked my belly. I showed my belly a lot. I actually wore a lot of crop tops, um, so I thought, “Yep, I’m gonna take a picture of my belly. That belly ain’t always gonna look that way.” Alright, now here is a full body, well, minus the legs anyway, bikini shot. I don’t wear bikinis anymore either. That’s a thing of the past. Yep, thing of the past. A little selfie on the ground, on the floor. And, oh here’s another young Jesi one, really young. And we’re getting to the end. And here’s the last one I’m going to show you. It’s not any like…I didn’t save it for last or anything, but it’s just…just me looking like a little model. Ok, so I just showed y’all like all my secret selfies from when I was a teenager that I’ve never shown anyone. So, I hope you liked them! I wanted to talk a little bit about selfies, too, before I let you go. So, um, I am not selfie taker today. Like at all. I could show you my phone I have very…I might have like one selfie on here, seriously. If I take a selfie it’s with my babies. That’s when I take a selfie now. It’s like if my kids aren’t in the picture, I’m not taking a picture now. No! Unless it’s for y’all. Only for y’all. That’s it. If it’s just to post to Facebook, no, I am not doing that. But a lot of people talk bad about people who do selfies. And it’s like there is borderline thing. It’s like are you doing selfies for yourself, are you doing selfies for other people, like why are you sharing them everyday. You know, so many people have problems with people who share selfies every day. I mean you don’t have to look at it. You can click “unfollow.” You don’t have to “like” it. But, um, they say that it can cause…it’s like linked to mental disorders. Posting selfies every day is linked to mental disorders. So, I’m not sure if I had what they call on Wikipedia selfitis, selfitis. Selfitis is when…here it is. Selfitis is a condition described as the obsession, obsessive taking of selfies. Although, it is not currently listed as a mental disorder. And it says, “Obsessive taking of selfies and posting to social media has been found to be linked to many symptoms common to mental disorders. These include narcissism, low self esteem, loneliness, self-centeredness, and attention-seeking behaviors. So, maybe we should give that person a little extra love that’s posting pictures every day, but maybe not on the selfie itself. Maybe like send them like a message or something and say some other thing not related to the selfie. Like don’t reward that they put a selfie up because then they might put more selfies.

• put something up – subir algo a un sitio

But hell! Who cares? Hahaha. I don’t think I had selfitis when I was a teenager. I think I was a normal teenager like lots and lots and lots of teenagers do today. They take lots and lots of selfies and as we get older we seem to take less selfies, but you know, anyway. Or at least we share less selfies. Maybe we’re still taking them in private like, but we’re sharing less, I think. I sure don’t share mine. I don’t even take them. But I’ll take a selfie for this video though. Sure will. Oh no. So, if you want to see the selfies that I took just for this video you’ve gotta go to my website, selvaingles.com/selfitis. There you’ll see all the selfies that I took just for you and also, I wrote a blog post on this topic. So you can read about it there. And one other thing, the transcript from this video is there and I have little side notes on there explaining some things here and there. Anyway, there’s a lot more information on my website and I hope to see you there! Bye bye!

Jesi’s Current Selfies!