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

and grammar drills.

Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn

to speak fluent English effortlessly.

- Hello, I'm AJ Hoge,

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.

As some of you know

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.

A pilgrimage is a spiritual

or religious trip or journey.

For example,

Muslims have a pilgrimage to Mecca, right?

They're not just going to Mecca for tourism.

It has a deeper meaning.

So that's what a pilgrimage is.

In India, Hindus have pilgrimages;

Buddhists 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,

there's a big church.

And inside that church are the bones,

the body of Saint James.

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,

from Learn Real English,

so it was also a chance to travel with him

and have an experience with him.

So I thought, in this show,

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

that I took during my trip,

because during the trip, I took a few videos.

Every several days, I would take a video

and talk to the camera

and talk about what was happening.

So this is an opportunity for me to share

some of my experiences in Spain

just about a month ago.

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;

it just shows me

the day we began, it's Joe and I

starting our Camino.

Here it is.

We're beginning the Camino.

Okay, well that's it.

We're beginning the Camino.

But you can see, this is a little town called

St. Jean Pied de Port.

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

for the Camino de Santiago.

And this is just an old little town,

and this is where we started

and this was the morning we started.

The next video is several days later.

I can't remember,

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

the Alto de Perdon.

It has a nice sculpture.

It's on top of this hill.

If you ever see the movie, The Way,

there's a movie called The Way

with Martin Sheen,

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,

using that movie, The Way.

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.

I'll show you the video now.

Hello, it's day four of the Camino.

We are at the Alto de Padron, I believe it's called

or Perdon,

Alto de Perdon,

which is a big top of a big hill;

very windy up here, there are wind turbines

you can see.

We're feeling really strong;

we had a nice rest day in Pamplona

and we are at the half-way point for today

onward to Puente de Reina,

which is our next stop.

And you can see behind us the statues,

the canvas sculpture, iron sculpture of

pilgrims, you know, walking into the wind

which is famous little

waymark, or landscape mark

on the Camino.

We're doin' well, havin' a great time.

So as you can see

that landscape was very beautiful,

these big, these green hills.

For most of the Camino,

we're walking through the countryside.

The beginning, we walked over the mountains.

For most of it, we were walking through

hills or plains, flat area.

And then every two or three hours,

we would walk through a small, little town,

a little Spanish town.

Most of them were beautiful towns

with the old stone buildings,

very old, 500 years old, a thousand years old,

very, very old stone buildings

from the Middle Ages and beyond,

and more recently, too.

But...

It was one of my favorite parts,

was number one, being out in nature

and walking around every day,

and then also going through these beautiful

old stone towns in Spain, was great.

Now,

in a journey like this,

this journey took 32 days,

we walked for 32 days.

And just as in life,

just as when you were learning English,

many times when you begin

and everything feels great and you're excited, right?

Maybe, you just started off with these English lessons,

you're very excited,

or you're doing anything that's new,

and it's very easy to be excited at the beginning.

But what always happens

for anything that's a little bit difficult,

a little bit long,

anything challenging,

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.

(water rippling)

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

honestly just horrible.

We walked through,

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,

it was kinda weird.

They're zombies (mimics zombie groan).

And there's trash everywhere.

There's trash all over here,

even by the little riverside.

Just overall kind of depressing.

And that's sad because most of the towns

have been really pretty and nice and interesting

so this one, not so much.

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.

Finally found one.

Then I woke up at 5:00 a.m.

'cause Joe was snoring.

He snores every night and

usually, I can put in my iPod and kind of

get back to sleep, but

this time, even with the iPod on,

I could still hear it (sighs).

So anyway, pretty miserable

evening and night

and we'll see what happens today

because this day has happened.

Okay.

As you can see, I was not in a good mood

when I made that video.

I was tired, that was very early in the morning.

I got no sleep that night.

It was a tough day.

This happens when you're learning English.

You're gonna have some tough days.

You're going to have days where you feel like

you can't speak at all.

For a while, you're excited and you feel like

you're doing well and you're improving,

and you are 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)

you know, it's quite tough.

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

walking path, very old,

and that thousands of people,

hundreds of thousands, I don't know,

maybe more than that,

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 kept going.

It was easy to keep going.

I never had the thought to quit,

not one time did I think I want to quit,

I want to stop,

even when I had a miserable day.

I just got up in the morning and (sighs)

that felt bad but, of course, I knew

I was going to continue.

And that's why with your English learning,

you also need a bigger purpose,

because if you're just doing it for a test

or a grade in school,

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,

it's easy to quit.

But if you have a big inspiring purpose,

something that excites you,

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