📙 Part 2: Describe an old friend you had lost touch with and got in contact with again.

You should say: who he/she is, how you knew each other, why you lost contact, how you got in contact again, and explain how you felt after getting in contact again.

This episode's vocabulary

Colleague (noun) - one of a group of people who work together.

Out of touch (idiom) - not informed or not having the same ideas as most people about something, so that you make mistakes.

Extraordinarily (adverb) - very; more than usual.

To engross (verb) - If something engrosses you, it is so interesting that you give it all your attention.

Get-together (noun) - an informal meeting or social occasion, often arranged for a particular purpose.

To catch up on something (phrasal verb) - to do something that you have not been able to do recently.

To reconnect (verb) - to join or be joined with something else again after becoming separated.

To lose track (idiom) - to not know any longer where someone or something is, or to not be able to remember something.

Safety net (noun) - a net put below people performing at a great height to catch them if they fall.

To keep in touch (idiom) - to continue to talk to or write to someone.

Questions and Answers

R: Well, until recently, I hadn't heard from my friend Lisa in a while. She's a former colleague turned friend who I knew from when I was a teacher in Russia. Actually, we started off as friends of a common friend who asked her to deliver a box of cigars to my office one day, which is a very odd way to be introduced, but that's how it happened, and probably that's a story for another time. I wouldn't say that we'd fallen out of touch exactly. We'd just been extraordinarily busy of late and got a bit overly engrossed in our work. It happens from time to time, since I have several jobs, and I need to invest a lot of time and making sure that I do well in each one. And from what I gather, her workload isn't exactly light either. Anyway, regardless of why, we hadn't spoken in quite some time, and when I was speaking with our old mutual friend Lena, she suggested we have a get-together on Zoom. That was easy enough to sort out, surprisingly enough. We just made a group chat and exchanged schedules, and it came together easily enough. So that was quite nice. And it was also very nice to hear from her again and catch up on how things were going in our lives, along with all of our plans for the near future, because it's going to be Christmas soon. So we were gonna do some different things together, and it's good to reconnect. Well, at least it was, it was good to reconnect over all the things we had in common. Even something silly as sharing memes. They also made sure to set up a regular meeting every month. So hopefully we won't lose track of things like that again. But if we do, at least there's a safety net in place, because we still have our mutual friend who keeps in touch with the pair of us, and maybe even a double one, since we have that and we also have this regular meeting scheduled as well.

M: Hey, Rory, thank you very much for your story!

R: That's okay!

Discussion

M: Right, dear listener, if you don't have this person, you should make them up.

R: Well, we've all lost touch with people over the years. There must be people that we went to school with that we don't talk to anymore. Surely.

M: Yeah. But then, like, you have to say that you got in touch with them again. So you kind of, you started talking to them.

R: Yeah. So then you just talk about how you would get in touch with them again, but change all of the verbs to make it seem like it really happened.

M: Yeah. So you start speaking about a person who you lost touch with. You used to be friends, but then you stopped being friends, and then you lie, that, oh, but we got in contact with each other again. Rory told us a story about his former colleague.

R: Former colleague. Current friend, because she turned into a friend. Or former colleague turned friend, became a friend.

M: And you can say like we used to work together, but then she turned into a friend. We started off as friends. So we started off as colleagues, then we became friends, or we started off as friends. We met through a common friend. So we knew one person, and this person introduced us to each other, and she delivered a box of cigars, Rory.

R: Yes. It's a long story, but basically, I mentioned to our mutual friend that I really liked cigars, and our mutual friend had these cigars, so while she was away, she asked Lisa to deliver them, and that's how we met. But it was really weird, because this person obviously wandered into an office filled with teachers and gave me a box of cigars, which is not something that happens every day in a teacher's room.

M: Very interesting. And then we completely fell out of touch.

R: Well, you can completely fall out of touch, but we hadn't completely fallen out of touch. It wasn't like, oh, I'm going to stop talking to this person, or we just don't talk anymore. It was just that we hadn't spoken in a while.

M: Yeah, like we fell out of touch, we were very busy, so we just didn't talk to each other, we fell out of touch. Because we were very busy. Or extraordinarily busy. Extraordinary? Like we have ordinary - usual. Extraordinary - unusual. And we were really busy - we were extraordinarily busy. And we got engrossed in our work. If you get engrossed in your work, what happens?

R: It just means that you're very focused on it, to the exclusion of everything else.

M: C-2, dear listener, C-2.

R: Is it?

M: Engrossed. Yes, to be engrossed in your work, giving all your attention to something. So to be engrossed by something or in something. So we were engrossed in the book, or by the book. Or, for example, Rory told us his story, and we were so engrossed in his story. Yes, you can say like our workload was very heavy. Our work, like we had a lot of work, so our workload wasn't light, it was heavy. We had a lot to do. And we didn't speak in quite some time. So we didn't speak to each other. And then we met on Zoom.

R: Yes, we had a get-together.

M: Yeah, we had a get-together.

R: That must be a C-2 word as well.

M: Yeah, and this is where you start saying how you got in contact with this person again. So like you started off as friends, then we fell out of touch. But in some time, five years later, we had a get-together on Zoom or offline maybe, you met offline. It was easy to sort out, this Zoom meeting, and we made a group chat.

R: It was easy to organize.

M: Yeah. We exchanged schedules, and we agreed on a special time. So yay. And then you say that, Oh, I was happy to hear from her again, or it was very nice to hear from her again. And it was nice to catch up on how things were going in our lives. Right, dear listener? You see? A nice phrasal verb. Catch up on something. Catch up on how things were going in our lives.

R: Get up to date.

M: Like, yeah, get up to date or, like, talk about things in your life. Catch up on something? Like give the latest news, information about something. And we usually use this phrasal verb when we haven't seen somebody for a long time, and then, oh, it was very nice to catch up. It was nice to reconnect after all these years, or it was nice to reconnect and like, remember that we have a lot in common. You have a lot of common things that you both like.

R: And we share.

M: Yeah. You share memes, for example, and we set up a regular meeting every month. Right? So we got in contact? So we agreed to meet up every month. We set up a regular meeting. We agreed meeting every month. Not to lose track of each other, so not to lose each other again. Like, hopefully, we won't lose track of each other, or we won't lose track of things. Like we, for example, we forget to set up a meeting, and then we just, we never meet. So not to lose track of things, we agreed to meet every month. Yay! Rory, could you comment on how you organized this answer?

R: Yeah. Well, I started off with just a comment, which was, until recently I hadn't heard from. Which is great because I was able to say hadn't heard from. Which is like negative past perfect, and that's good to have. And then I gave a little bit of information about how we were friends, so I was like, actually, and then explained why we knew each other briefly. And then I didn't do anything to introduce or anything specific to introduce the section on why we hadn't talked to each other, but I just said there were these reasons. And then I moved on by saying, anyway, we hadn't done this. And then I was talking to someone, and we organized it, and then I launched into how we felt about the experience. It was nice to hear from her again and reconnect. And then I finished off just by saying what we would do to stop it from happening again, which isn't required, but it's just a natural extension of what we would do or what we did when we talked to each other. We're both very organized people, or try to be.

M: Sweet. So dear listener, feel free to lie. Okay? And thank you very much for listening! We'll get back to you in our next episode, speaking part three, and we're going to be talking about people in general, knowing people. Bye!

R: Bye!

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