Where the sun is shining, it is nice and warm, and I get to hang out with my sister.
I’m sitting in the Music Library at McGill while Jen has her lesson. Tonight is a mini-concert of some sort – Jen’s teacher calls it a concert, Jen’s not convinced that is what it is. Either way, I get to hear her play recorder live for the first time in ages.
I think Montreal is the most “European feeling” city in Canada. It has the weather (right now anyway) and the buildings are (minus the sky-scrapers behind the heritage fronts) somewhat Parisian. I like it. Jen lives in an apartment across the street from Dawson College (of the September shootings fame) on Sherbrooke street. Pretty much as close to downtown as you can get without being downtown. She misses having a Westmount address by half a block. Just think, half a block from snobbery. Such is life.
After 3 weeks (give or take a few days) in France, and then a month of English-speaking countries, I am having to readjust to French again. However, France french is much easier for me to understand spoken. For some reason, it comes across much clearer to me. And then there is the slang and common words. I had gotten used to France and not using the Quebecois words I learned in school. D’accord is the word of choice in France. Everything is d’accord… oui, d’accord. Oh, d’accord. D’accord, d’accord, d’accord. Here, they don’t say that so much. It is c’est ce. Except it is not pronounced like it supposed to be.
Last night, after I flew in, we went to see my god-sister, Hannah’s school play: La Foret Enchante (The Enchanted Forest). Hannah is 10 and was one of the narrators. Between the fact that the whole thing was in French spoken by pre-teens who either shouted or mumbled their lines (except random bits spoken by the bad guy in English… not sure if that is a language message) and it was quite an abstract/random plot, I really had no idea what was going on. I don’t think it had anything to do with Christmas or any other holiday for that matter. Oh well. Hannah did well, I understood that much!
And now, in random weirdness of my worlds colliding, tonight my cousin Lynne is having a movie night at my friend from Victoria, Tim’s house. Crazy.