Learn English Naturally: POV of a Native Speaker Vlog | Listening Practice

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hello everybody. Welcome back to another video where we are going to be learning English through my eyes. Right now we are in downtown Riverside in the state of California.

[00:00:17]And Riverside is a city that is really well known for its art. For example, right now we are walking down this alley that is called Mari Posa Alley. You can see right there, that's the name of it.

[00:00:30]Um, and basically it is called Mariposa Ali because Mariposa is the Spanish word for butterflies. So, you can see that there's art that is made to represent butterflies everywhere around this alley. You can also see in addition to all of the butterfly art, there are also some caterpillars right here. Um, and then some cocoons as well. And basically caterpillars will go into a cocoon and they will become butterflies like you can see being represented right there.

[00:01:09]And just all over this alley you will see these butterflies everywhere. All of these butterflies are made out of recycled materials. Um, I think most of them are made out of cans of different foods like tomatoes and they've just built these butterfly um, pieces of art and they have painted them to look very beautiful. One other thing that's kind of cool about this alley is you have this whole other side that has been painted with lots of very beautiful images. Um, most of them are different kinds of flowers like this one right here. looks like it is a sunflower and then you have some butterflies as well. You will also see that there are some words right here that are written down and they are meant to be very inspirational words. So for example, this one says overcome which I guess is supposed to inspire you to overcome um any challenges that you have in your life. But one thing that you will notice is that the words are also written in Spanish as well. So this one says super which is the Spanish word for overcome.

[00:02:27]And if we come over here you can see another example of this. We will see the word success written here. But then you will also see the Spanish word for success which is exto. So you can see that is also written here. And the reason why we see these words written in both English and Spanish. And as well why we see that the name of this alley is Mariposa instead of butterfly alley. The reason why it's written in Spanish is because the city of Riverside has a very interesting connection with the Spanish language and with Spanish culture. This entire area used to be owned by Spain because Spain used to own pretty much all of California and then eventually it was owned by Mexico which is another Spanishspeaking country until eventually the United States took the state of California. So that's why you will see these connections between um the city of Riverside and a bunch of other cities in California and Spanish. Lots of people also come to this place to take pictures, to post on social media. Um, so for example, what what people will often do, is they will stand in front of these butterfly wings right here, like my wife is doing right now, to basically make it look like they have the wings of a butterfly. They'll take a picture of that and then they'll post it on social media. All right, we are going to keep walking and we are going to leave the alley. And you'll notice as you leave the alley, you will start to see some actual real life butterflies. I can see one flying right over there.

[00:04:30]>> There's one.

[00:04:30]>> Oh, yeah. There's one right above me.

[00:04:32]That is perfect.

[00:04:36]Very, very beautiful.

[00:04:41]>> It's almost like that one knew that we were recording a video and wanted to show off a little bit.

[00:04:47]>> The star of the star of the show. Yeah, you can see two more flying over here. Um, so they're kind of all over this whole garden area.

[00:04:56]You'll also see in this garden area that there is some interesting information that you can read about um about butterflies as you're walking around here looking at them. All right, as we walk a little bit further into this garden area, I'm starting to see a lot of things that I didn't even know were here. Um, so let's take a look at some of them.

[00:05:19]>> Wow, look at the water's so blue.

[00:05:22]>> Yeah, it's very blue. They have a like a little pool here.

[00:05:26]>> Um, which I guess would be the best thing to call it with a very small waterfall that's kind of pouring out into here. And yeah, the water, like my wife was saying, is very blue and very clear as well. You can kind of see right through it. So that is really nice. Um, there's another one over here >> that we can take a closer look at.

[00:05:48]Also, as we walk by, I just want to show you guys this right here. This is a statue of a US military soldier. Um, and it says never forgotten. So, it's supposed to be here to basically remember um all of the US military soldiers who have died over the years.

[00:06:08]Um, and I think apparently this one is dedicated to a specific soldier and this is his name right here. And it looks like he fought in World War II and he died in 1945, which is actually the last year of World War II. So, it looks like he died fighting in World War II. I did not know that this statue was here. So, that is very, very cool to see. But here is the waterfall that I was telling you guys about.

[00:06:41]And this one is really cool. Again, the water is very clear and the waterfall is super super tall.

[00:06:48]>> It's a clock. Look it. There's a clock up there.

[00:06:51]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:06:52]>> Yeah.

[00:06:53]>> Let me get a closer look. You can see it looks like it's a clock right here. Um, so I think the dials in the clock move basically to represent the time. All right. But we can see that there is another area right here that is supposed to uh basically commemorate um soldiers who have fought over the years. Um so there's this whole sort of uh stone plaque that basically tells you some information. Um, you can see a bunch of American flags over here leading the way to this spot right here, which is called the Riverside Military Wall of Honor. Uh, which I think this one is just a list of a bunch of names of soldiers who I would imagine uh died during certain wars. So, you can see that this whole section right here is for the names of soldiers who died during World War I. And then I think it is going to go um as we go to the next one, it'll be a war that happened later.

[00:07:58]So we'll kind of move forward in time.

[00:08:00]You're going to see World War II. And this is a a very big list of names. You can notice that the amount of soldiers who died in World War II. There's a lot more of them. And I imagine all of these people are probably from the Riverside area, although I'm not totally sure, but I would imagine they lived in this area.

[00:08:19]You can see Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf Wars.

[00:08:27]Um, and then this one just has peacetime losses, which I imagine are soldiers who died during um a time where the United States was not involved in a very big war. One thing that I want to show you guys is this symbol uh which represents the city of Riverside. This is just a trash can right here, right here. So, it's nothing cool to see, but you can see the symbol of the city of Riverside is this bell right here, which is kind of a big part of their Spanish history.

[00:08:59]Um, because you'll see these big um church bells in lots of places in Riverside. And then there's also this little symbol right here, which is an important Native American religious symbol uh for some Native American groups that live in this area. So, this symbol kind of remembers both the Spanish history of the area, but also the Native American history of this area before the Spanish arrived. Look, you'll see that there's lots of these lamp posts right here that at the very top show the symbol of Riverside that I showed you guys earlier. You'll see these pretty much everywhere throughout downtown Riverside. Here's one of them.

[00:09:46]You'll see another one further down over here. Another thing you'll see a lot of in this area are these super tall palm trees um right in front of me. Some of them are kind of thicker and they're a little bit shorter and then some of them are super tall and they are incredibly thin. You can see how thin and tall this palm tree is. And these are very very famous here in pretty much the uh entire state of California or probably more so Southern California specifically. We are very well known for having lots of these palm trees everywhere and it's very popular to have them in this style where they kind of run along the main street.

[00:10:35]All right, we are going to cross the road right here to the other side. This is a pedestrian crossing. So, we're able to cross right here because I want to show you guys a building right here that I think looks very, very nice here in downtown Riverside.

[00:10:52]This is the Riverside Courthouse, which is a pretty old courthouse that was created in the year 1903. You might be able to see sort of at the top of the building, it says that it was created in 1903.

[00:11:12]And the design of it is very pretty.

[00:11:15]>> There's like orange trees like next to >> Oh, yeah. I didn't even notice that. My wife just pointed out that there are some orange trees um on both sides of the courthouse. Um but overall the design of this courthouse is very nice and to me it looks very similar to buildings that I have seen in Europe when I have been to Europe. And this is because like I mentioned earlier um this whole area has a distinct Spanish feel because this whole area was at one point owned by Spain. So you can see that this whole style of this building is very European. It looks very similar to kind of the Roman architecture that is very popular in Europe. You can see a bunch of different statues over here um representing lots of different things. I don't know what all of these statues represent um but they are very nice looking. You can also see that there are lots of these columns all over here.

[00:12:20]These right here are called columns. Let me give you guys a closer look.

[00:12:28]These are all columns right here. You can see we have one, two, 3, four, five, six columns right here. And then there are some smaller columns on either side.

[00:12:40]And these are super cool as well. I really like these very old looking buildings. You can see that there is writing on this mural right here that says this mural is dedicated to the native tribes of Riverside County. Um, and this mural shows you some pictures of some of the nature of this area and also some Native American women right here. I don't know a ton about this specific mural, but it does look very nice. All right, I just did a little bit more research and I was able to figure out what this writing at the very top means, which is written in um some type of Native American language from this area, from one of the tribes in this area. And basically it translates to we are still here which I guess just represents the fact that a lot of people don't really realize that there are still Native American tribes living in all parts of the United States that are still practicing their culture that are still speaking their native languages.

[00:13:53]And sometimes people feel like these tribes have now disappeared but in reality they are still here. Here we see a famous quote by one of the early founding fathers of the United States.

[00:14:08]Basically the people who first created the country um this one's name is Benjamin Franklin who is one of the most famous of all of these original people who created the United States. He also was very famous for being a very very good scientist as well. Um and basically this quote is just talking about the importance of freedom of speech, the importance of people being able to speak what they want without being arrested, without the government telling them they can't say what they want. Here's one of the big parking buildings in downtown Riverside. Um, it's kind of hard to park here sometimes because it can get really busy over here, especially at night and on weekends. So, sometimes you have to park in these big parking buildings.

[00:14:59]This is one of the main streets here in downtown Riverside. And you can see it's not super busy right now. You can see that there are some cars driving on the road. There are some people walking on the side of the road, but overall it's not super busy right now. Um, it'd be a lot busier if it were a weekend right now, but we decided to come here on a Thursday instead. You can also see that if you walk a little bit further here, there are some people that are sleeping on the floor. That's because there is a very big homeless population here in Riverside. And in a lot of cities, very big cities in California, you'll see lots of people who do not have homes, so they have to sleep on the streets. I really like the look of this little alley right here, which um was right near this area that we were walking down. Um I'm not really It looks like they have a place where you can eat and um drink some beer as well. Um but overall, I just really like the look of this. I like sort of the I don't know if you would call these vines right here, but you can see that there are some plants um that are kind of hanging down on this wall. And I just think this looks really cool. Riverside as a city is pretty well known for its art. We saw some examples of the art in Riverside.

[00:16:18]And you'll also see businesses like this one. This is an art gallery right here where you can see people's art. And then this store right here um I believe sells art supplies. So basically anything that you might need to create art you can buy here. There's also some really tall buildings here in downtown Riverside.

[00:16:39]Um, you can see there are this is a pretty tall building right here. Pretty tall building over here. Um, and I think these are just like different office buildings where people work at. Um, overall not the city in California where you're going to see the tallest buildings. You're going to see much taller buildings in cities like San Francisco, but still some pretty tall buildings over here. You can see another nice sort of fountain right here. Um, there's I don't know what that is in the water, but there's something in the water, but I'm not totally sure if that's supposed to be there.

[00:17:12]>> It's supposed to be connected to one of those stuff here, but I think it's >> Oh, yeah. I think it's supposed to be >> or here >> somewhere on the ground, but it it kind of came off. Um, and you can see my daughter right here is really enjoying being out of her stroller finally. Um, and just she enjoys being out here in the wind. Um you can see some other statues over there. Um and again there's some restaurants on both sides of me.

[00:17:40]Right here we see a statue of a very famous figure in US history whose name is Martin Luther King Jr. Um, and he was a very famous activist who advocated for the rights of African-Americans in the United States during a time when African-Americans [music] in the United States did not have equal rights with white Americans. You can see at the bottom is a very famous quote, probably the most famous quote by Martin Luther King Jr. which says, "I have a dream."

[00:18:16]which is a very famous line from one of his speeches where he talks about a dream for the United States where all people can live peacefully together with equal rights. All right, we are going to start heading home now. I hope you enjoyed this video learning English by exploring downtown Riverside with