YOOPER English (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) with my Dad - Learn English with Camille (1)

Hola! Welcome back to my channel! If you haven't subscribed yet be sure to hit the

subscribe button below and activate the bell so that you can see all of the new videos.

Today I am here with a very special guest from the U.P. the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where

I was born. Some people call him Thomas, some people call him Tom, but I like to call him Dad.

Welcome Dad, thank you so much. Oh thank you it's so nice to have you home we don't get to see you

very often. It's true. It's a real treat. Yes yeah I live in South Carolina which is a 20-hour drive

to get to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and so I thought it would be fun to talk to my dad what

life is like here. Dad, what draws people here to the U.P.? Oh it's just such a beautiful place.

No really it's it's where you were the culture, the immigrants moved from Finland and we're kind

of born and I wasn't born here but I was born not too far from here but I was raised and lived here

most of my life and the reason people came here was like their culture in Finland. A lot of the

areas that people who live here are people that moved and migrated from Finland to come to the

wonderful land of opportunity. Yeah. And the climate and the four seasons are much what they

were used to and they like to farm and log and their work and mining was a big thing here so.. So

we moved here and this is home and this is life and you just and you learn to love it.

Yeah so there are four seasons here but I feel like winter is a long season, it gets cold.

How do you handle the cold winters here? Well when I was young like you, you look forward to winter

because you have a lot of different things you do in the winter that you don't do in the summer. We

do a lot of snowshoeing. We love to downhill ski, cross country ski. We got snowmobiles, we got hill

sliding, you know. It's a whole different season and you love to enjoy we're outdoor people so

we love to enjoy the outdoors and and we love the four seasons and winter when you're getting older,

like we are right now in my time in my life, six months of winter does get to be a little

bit long. We have snow that starts in October and in the Spring I watched behind my building

over here where it piles up a little more, the last snow melted on May 17th.

That is a long winter. It's long winter, yeah. Yes. And you mentioned people do mining up here.

What other sorts of things the people do for a living and what do you do for a living?

Probably the biggest... mining was big years ago it still does go on in different parts of

Upper Michigan. Iron mining is a big part of it. There used to be a large iron mine here but

and copper mine actually but it has pretty much closed down now. Right now probably the largest

industry in the U.P. because we're we've got so much forest land and and uh logging is probably

the biggest thing. So we got we got logging and we have a lot of sawmills and personally

for myself I worked at a factory when I first got married. But after that I just wanted to try to

find something to do for myself so I ran across an opportunity where we can provide logging sawmills

and a lot of different types of industry and business with safety and first aid supplies. So

when I was 27 years old I started a business and it's called Mr. First Aid and we sell safety

and first aid supplies to businesses. Yeah and you've been doing that for the past 38 years.

Yes 38 years, Camille. That's amazing! It really is! And my dad raised five girls here. This is

our... we're at home right now, which is pretty amazing. Five girls, no boys. You put us to work,

hauling wood, doing outdoor chores and yeah I feel like we really learned to work hard and learn the

value of hard work. Well there was one saying in our house when you girls grew up and I don't

know if you remember it but there are no wimps in this house. That's true, my dad would say that.

And I'm reminded that often by my eldest daughter. Jessica. Jessica. Yeah Jessica would say that

my dad always said there's no wimps in this house. And there's certainly weren't and you

showed that the other day when you were out there making firewood with us. That's true.

So you are a hunter and a fisherman. Do you feel like that's common in the U.P. as well,

hunting and fishing? It's well we're right in nature there's a lot of lakes, Lake Superior,

inland lakes. There's an abundance of wildlife as far as deer and bear. And it's just part of the

culture, a lot of people do it you know. This is known for that area because there's an abundance

of it and it's healthy eating. You know you got good healthy fish and organic deer. They're in the

backyard, so I just go behind the house and the last several years I have shot my deer behind the

house. Wow I mean yeah and fishing.. we had your amazing Walleye a couple days ago. And gardening

you do a lot of gardening. Right that's another hobby that we like to do. It's very rewarding,

it's just a beautiful thing to see God's creation when you plant the seeds and you see the blessing,

when you take care of it nurture it and you got good healthy food so you can pretty much, up here,

if you really wanted to you could pretty much live off the land. You got your you got your everything

you pretty much need here and uh so you don't need to re rely on the grocery stores and everything if

you don't want to. Yeah and we do a mix yep. Yeah that's amazing. So you mentioned the the

deer meat and the vegetables, the fish, what other things would you say are typical U.P. for eating?

Probably one of the biggest, most famous things for the U.P. is the pasty. Pasties it's true.

What is it a pasty? A pasty is like a homemade meat pie, it's it's a flour crust you put meat,

potatoes, carrots, and a little bit of rutabaga in there and you put it up like a little pie. It's

like a one size serving, maybe a maybe a pound. And the reason it became famous is because the the

miners used to take it down in the mines when they used to for their lunch and you could heat it up

or you could eat it cold and it's just it's just a really good healthy entree. It's delicious. Yeah

and people who don't know what a pasty is often time they say pasties but no no no. That's true,

I'd like a pasty. No pasty! What just speaking of words, what do you think are some things that we

say in the U.P.? I know our accent is different, it's more Canadian. We're close to Canada,

it's on the other side of lake superior. So I know the pronunciation of words like I would say bag

or tag. It's bag, tag. What would be maybe some words that we say up here? Hey that's a good idea!

No really because we are we say hey a lot before we address any situation. hey should we go out and

make some wood? Hey do you want to play some ball or hey should we go fishing? We say that at the

end of sentences too. Like that's a good idea hey? It's almost like the Canadian "eh". but it's hey,

very common up here. Right. Yeah. Other than that we're probably about the most normal humans

that there are, right? I guess so. I feel like it's so set apart up here, it's so different.

Something else that I'm remembering is like in the south, we say y'all. Up here we say yous guys.

Yous guys, which is very unique and not proper english but it's something that I feel like we

say. I grew up saying that. Do you guys, do yous guys want to come with me? Yeah that would be a

saying that you would say without really giving it a second thought you know. You guys what do you

guys want to do and it's yous guys are you know and uh it's got that little bit of a, we basically

you could say it's a little bit of a Finnish accent. Yeah so when you guys listen to this video

you might be wondering what language that I'm speaking. But it is english with just a touch of

genius added to it. Oh my gosh, that's true dad, that's true. Oh so speaking of Finland do people

here know Finnish? Your dad was fluent in Finnish but. My father, right my father was raised in a

home that spoke Finnish. His great-grandfather moved from Finland and they lived just outside

of Duluth, Minnesota area and that's where I was actually born. And I lived there till I was,

I moved here when I was going to eighth grade. And my father moved here to pastor a church.

And oftentimes he was asked to speak in Finnish. So he did speak.. Okay. Finnish sermons and yeah

correct. But personally myself, I never really learned Finnish. Okay. But you being a language

uh person, I'm sure that it's part of your list over here to learn your part of your native

language in addition to all the other languages that you learned. Yeah I've thought about learning

Finnish but wow it is a hard language for sure. Have you ever ran into the problem

of somebody not understanding your Yooper accent? I wouldn't say they really don't understand it. Um

oftentimes they say where are you from? What part of the country do you live from?

Yes. And of course what else can you say when you live up here? We live in God's country, paradise.

Paradise, right. Yeah it is beautiful. I feel like being back home as an adult I appreciate the

nature, the lakes, the wildlife so much more than when I was a kid. I feel like when you're

a kid ,you just it's normal right. You don't necessarily value it. Yeah you don't really

know what you have until you leave. That's true, that's true. When you come home, when

you've been home here now for a while, it's just like I can't believe how beautiful everything is.

I can't wait to move back to the U.P., no. But overall here the life is good,

it's it's uh you know like Camille was saying the winters are long and they are cold and

how do we survive in the winter? It can be very expensive to live here because in the winter time

the average temperature oftentimes it gets maybe 20 below zero, whatever that is celsius.

I don't know, I'm talking fahrenheit yeah i don't understand the celsius stuff. But

but uh anyway it's uh it can be very cold 20 below. And and often times I remember one year

we had 73 consecutive days of measurable snow. Wow. So it's not at all unusual to get 300 inches

of snow and oftentimes we need to be shovel off our roofs two or three times a year because the