I'm sitting in the café and they're playing Noir Désir's "Le vent nous portera". Awesome :) As you can see, my blog still hasn't been updated. I'm not making any promises on when things will be updated. Perhaps I'll do a large update while on the road (I'm touring Canada, you know!). Right now it's a little difficult to catch up because I have my epic essay to write, amongst other fun things.
Something about the café here. There are a LOT of flies. It's terribly annoying. I swear that there are more in here than outside.
I'm off!
Veronika
ps - I posted some pictures of the Vincent Vallières concert to my Facebook. If you're my friend, you can go check it out!
In case you haven't noticed, I am terribly behind with my blog. I hope to do a mass-posting sometime next week, but we'll see.
Just know that I'm really happy here :)  Valeria, Ana, Me, and Catherine
Veronika
In class today, we continued or discussion about the Opérations dignité and talked about their manifesto that we had read (or were supposed to read!). We also compared it to the FLQ (Front de la liberation du Québec) manifesto and because most of us weren’t entirely clear about that one, we went to the computer room and listened to a recording of someone reading it. The guy is (of course) a Québécois, although he is of Haitian decent. The recording was made last year and was fairly interesting to listen to. I hyperlinked the word manifesto so if you want to listen to it, just click on that word.
After that, we returned to class and discussed the two manifestos a bit more before heading home for lunch.
When I got back to school, my film group got together and we listened to some announcements before heading off on our filmmaking adventure (down the hallway)! I’m really glad that we chose to animate people – it’s much simpler and less time consuming than objects… usually. It also helps that I have a “continuous shot” mode on my camera. We’ll see how it turns out! When it’s done being edited (sometime next week) I’ll post it in the videos section of my website!
We had a fairly good group for the film. Most of them weren’t too enthusiastic (although two of them offered to help with editing – so nice!), but at least they spoke French the whole time.
On the subject of speaking French: I can’t recall if I mentioned this in previous blog posts (if I have, forgive me), but it’s still a pressing issue here so I’ll mention it again. There are many people here who are beginners, so speaking French is difficult for them. I understand. However, many of them still make the effort to try and speak French. Then there are others, who can speak French relatively well, and they choose not to! They speak English or Spanish or whatever, even though it’s clearly rule number one! The point of us being here it to learn French and we can’t do that very well if we’re speaking English all the time now can we? I know that many people have already had avertissements (warnings) and after the third one you get kicked out (we based our film on this). It’s just something that annoys me because I feel that if you are here, you’re here because you want to/need to learn French. If people aren’t going to speak French, they shouldn’t be here.
Can you tell I needed to have a small rant?
Moving on!
After finishing our film, I worked on editing it a little, but because there’s so many pictures, editing = waiting forever for things to render. So much fun!
At about 3:45, I went downstairs and got in line to sign up for various excursions (including the Quebec City trip!). I’m really glad my roommates were in line already, saving me a spot, because the line was huge! Finally the line started moving a bit, and before we knew it we were at the Quebec City table. After signing up there, we wrote down our roommates and headed over to the mountain table. There, you could sign up for either Mont Albert or Mont Xalibu. The latter is (according to them) a bit easier to do, so I picked that one. In fact, I had to choose that one because Mont Albert was full.
They gave us a little information booklet, which was great until I started flipping through it. To put it simply, if I survive the climb, I should get a medal or something. It’s a 5-6 hour roundtrip hike and although it’s easier than Mont Albert, it’s still listed as “difficult”. The view better be worth it.
It’s not so bad though, because we’re going to be taking breaks and stuff, but it will still be a challenge to complete. Wish me luck!
After the signups, I went to the Café briefly before heading home for dinner. I was thrilled that it didn’t start raining as I was leaving. For dinner, Joanne and Laval were at their son’s house for his birthday so we had to eat by ourselves. This involved us taking the “paté chinois” out of the oven and serving ourselves. Life is tough. It was really good, and for desert we had cookies. Here, we have desert after lunch and dinner – just like home!
Once we were done eating, we went to the school for a screening of “Les Choristes”. (Click for a preview of the film). If you have not yet seen the film, you really are missing out. It’s an absolutely beautiful film and deserves all the success it has achieved. Even if you aren’t really a fan of choral music, you will still enjoy this film. So what are you waiting for! Go out and rent/buy/borrow/steal the film!
As we were leaving, a few of the students invited us out to the Maison d’écrivain to celebrate another student’s birthday. It was pretty fun. Everyone was pretty relaxed and wasn’t too ridiculous, so it was good! After a while, we were feeling kind of tired and Catherine was loosing her voice (she needed it for a presentation tomorrow) so we decided to head home!
And so ends another day in paradise (aren’t we cliché!)
Veronika
Today I miraculously woke up on time, at 7am. A miracle, I know, but somehow I still managed to be a few minutes late for school. My mornings are weird.
In class, we discussed the previous day’s trip and went over the “Operations dignité” and what it means. Basically, it was where many small villages got together and resisted the closing of their village by coming up with alternatives and banding together. It’s actually fairly interesting. Quebec has such a cool history!
Midway through class, we went outside for our class photo. The class before us had about 20 students and tried to squeeze them all onto one bench. We probably could have fit our entire class on one bench, but we decided to be a little more comfortable.
After class, we all went to the church and took a school photo. There were so many people! I really hope that we get copies of the photos. Someone said that we buy them at the end of the session. I’ll definitely be getting some!
I went home for lunch and then returned to the school for our atelier’s photo (so many pictures!). Then because we were making our film tomorrow, I was free for the afternoon!
Not sure of what to do with my time, I went to the café and worked. A lot. No, not on my grand essay but on my blog. It’s much more important than my essay, especially because I was four or five days behind. Once I was done with my blog, I sent around some emails and got some things organised until it was time for me to head home.
I gathered up my stuff and went to go get my bike but stopped because it was raining. A little rain, not such a big deal! I put on my rain jacket (I’m always prepared!) and grabbed some napkins to dry my bike seat. Almost as soon as I unlocked my bike, the rain started to pour. And by pour, I mean torrential downpour. And by torrential downpour, I mean that I thought I was going to drown while biking home.
Needless to say, by the time I got home (maybe 5-10 minutes later) I was drenched. I didn’t mind too much though – at least I was home. I’m actually surprised that I made it without running in to a car or something because the rain was coming down so hard that I couldn’t actually see anything! It was especially fun coming down the big hill (read: mountain) towards my house.
For dinner I wore my pyjamas. Although I found the situation kind of funny, I still needed some comfort and had unfortunately eaten all my Toblerone and fudge – pyjamas had to do.
After dinner it stopped raining and I went outside to call my mother dearest (now that I have minutes again. Yay!). It feels like it’s been a month or so since I left Terrace, but it’s only been a week and a half. It’s so weird.
Since I’ve been here, I have constantly had French songs in my head. I need to find more French music to add to my repertoire. Jacuzzi on repeat in my head can get annoying after a while (I know, crazy right? Who can get tired of “Je porte un grand fur coat dans mon Jacuzzi”?).
As well has having French music in my head, I’ve also been thinking in French. To be honest though, I was doing that before I came to Quebec. I just do it all the time now. That is, except when I blog or talk to my family on the phone. Then my mind is in English and I find myself accidentally saying something my roommates in English. It’s horrible. But as soon has the words leave my mouth I realise what I’ve done and quickly apologize and repeat what I said in French. I’ll have to work on my “language switching” abilities, or whatever you want to call them!
Later that night, I went to a murder mystery night at the Forge à Bérubé. It was a lot of fun. We were given a sheet that explained what had happened – a millionaire had been murdered and we had to find out who the killer was. Some of the animateurs and teachers dressed up like the various suspects (about six or seven of them). My two favourites were this Peruvian embassy person (who spoke French with a Spanish accent and did weird little dances. You really had to be there to experience the awesomeness) and an archaeologist (who spoke with an English accent and apparently learned how to speak French in Trois-Pistoles). It was really fun to watch. All of the suspects acted out five different scenes where different things were revealed. At the end of each scene, the detective answered any questions (vocabulary/comprehension-wise. He couldn’t tell us who killed the millionaire!). At the end, we went through all the suspects and voted on who we though was the murderer. Valeria and I guessed correctly – it was the maid! *gasp* The two guys sitting next to us guessed incorrectly and they said that it was because we were women that we guessed correctly. Us women understand each other and our motives (the maid was a woman, in case you thought otherwise).
Overall, minus me almost drowning while biking, it was an awesome day!
Veronika
I'm not sure why, but for some reason not all of my pictures loaded on to this site. I'll try and load the rest on now. Enjoy! :)  This is my Quebecois history and culture class. We're missing a guy named Jack, but otherwise that's everyone!  The church on a very foggy day. Almost ominous!  'Is it a boy or a girl?' 'It's beer!' - during the Rally around Trois-Pistoles  The cinema animateur, Valérie, at the art expedition in Rimouski  An interesting section of the museum - there were hundreds of little photos backlit so that you could properly see them. Unfortunately, I was too short for a few of them!  We came one night to a little surprise - our host dad Laval left us each a bar of chocolate for doing well on his quizzes. I love my host family :) That's all for now. Expect more photos in the future, as well as our animated film! It should be online next week some time :)
Veronika
The Improv Everywhere group in New York City are amazing. Below is their most recent video where they staged a reenactment of a scene from Star Wars. They do lots of stuff like this - definitely check out some of their other videos!
Veronika
 Theodore and I at Hell's Gate  A clock, yes a clock, at the Abbotsford airport. So awesome!  A crop...triangle? Taken while flying over the prairies.  Air Transat - the same airline that took us to Cuba!  The ice cream shop in Charny. Lovely little place!
After this, there will be a flood of posts with pictures. Well, 12 pictures for now.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
Veronika
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