Show 218 Thursday 7 December

Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
Yesterday I got some sad news. A family friend passed away.

One of the downsides to living so far away from home is times like this. I would have really liked to visit him before he died and it would be really nice to be with friends and family right now.

But thanks to this great technology I could make him a video message. Well where I’m from in New Zealand is in the wop-wops so they don’t have broadband internet ... so I made a DVD and posted that.

And he really enjoyed that. He wrote me an email to say thank you. He was such a warm and positive man ... I said that he must be in pain... but he said he was “mostly cruising in a beautiful, peaceful place thanks to drugs”.

I am just happy that this kind of technology exists so I could say what I wanted to say to him which was thank you for the love you gave me and goodbye.

So, sadly, I’m not going to be at the funeral on Saturday to celebrate his life with his friends and family. So I thought I’d talk a little bit about him today.

STICK NEWS

Kia ora this is Stick News. Thousands of people died all over the world yesterday. One of those people was a beautiful man from New Zealand.

The world’s population is estimated to be 6.5 billion. Thousands of people die every day and the world keeps spinning. But for some people it seems to stop.
Yesterday a New Zealand man called Bryce spent his last day on Earth.
Bryce was a potter. He had 3 daughters. When his youngest daughter was three years old his family met another family with three daughters.
Two of the girls became best friends and spent hours playing together deep in the peaceful wop wops of the Coromandel Peninsula.
Years later one of the girls had moved on from tree-huts and midnight feasts to playing with a video camera on the other side of the world but she never forgot the love she received as a child from the people in the valley where she grew up.
A few months ago something started to go haywire in Bryce’s body. He gradually grew weaker and weaker but his spirit never faded.
Bryce’s body has now gone but the warmth of his love remains in the hearts of his friends and family.

And that was Stick News for Thursday the 7th of December.
Kia Ora.

the snow report

I didn’t feel like snowboarding today, so I took the day off. It snowed a lot in the early evening. I went for a walk to the convenience store and there was a lot of fresh powder. This is a picture on a garage door near my house.

conversations with sarah
#130 When did he die?

Step 1: Repeat Ric’s lines.
Step 2: Read Ric’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Ric When did he die?

Sarah Yesterday morning.

Ric How old was he?

Sarah In his 50s.

Ric That’s too young. Was it cancer?

Sarah Yeah.

Ric Were his family around him?

Sarah Yeah. Two of his daughters were living in the UK and they came back to spent the last couple of months with him.