’I’ll take you up on that’
Right at the end of the story about the finals, I told you how tough it was for some people to get to Kiev—and, for those who could get there, how expensive the hotels were. Some locals in Ukraine created a Facebook group called “Kyiv Free couch for football fans.” That was a generous offer, right? Soccer fans are pretty crazy, so if you invite them into your home for free, that is very generous. Here’s today’s expression, though. Some fans took them up on that offer. That means that some fans accepted the generous offer to stay on local residents’ couches.
If someone makes you an offer and you want to accept it, you can say, “I’ll take you up on that.”
Let me give you a couple of examples from my life in the past few weeks. JR usually edits the audio of these episodes, but I had last Friday off, so I offered to edit Monday’s episode. He took me up on that offer, since he was in class all day.
I recently ordered a gas grill for my back porch, and the company I ordered from offered free assembly of the grill. I’m probably the last person that should be assembling a complicated piece of machinery, so I took them up on that offer, and they assembled it for me. The first steaks I cooked were delicious, in case you were wondering.
So now put yourself in the shoes of a Real Madrid fan. You’re heading to the finals but can’t afford a hotel room. Would you take a stranger up on his offer to sleep on his couch?
That’s all for today’s episode. One more time, thank you to all the students in Überlandia, Brazil, for listening to Plain English. Keep it up, guys, and you’ll be perfect in English very soon. If you’re a fan of The Simpsons, you’ll want to be listening on Monday, when I’ll tell you where you can find an open-air graffiti museum of Simpsons murals. Don’t miss it.
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