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.

I got home from Ontario last Thursday. Frantically searched through boxes Friday morning until I found a pair of dress pants I could wear for my interview, then took the ferry over to Victoria Friday afternoon. Whew. Saturday was the interview, it went well, although may not need the job after all due to recent developments with SALTS (yay!). I got to hang out with Christine and Georgia (and Ruth a bit) who graciously let me sleep in their spare room on the thermarest! And I saw Robyn on the ferry and over home-made pizza and movies (Little Miss Sunshine is excellent!). Wait… there is more! I ran into Dave and Corinne in MEC… I hope you escaped alright Dave! And then saw Shareen fresh off appendix removal – I haven’t actually seen Shareen since she moved to Victoria. Crazy. Went to church on Sunday and saw everyone there. Miss organization, Megan, got 15 of us out to lunch where the conversation was anything but normal and then invited me to Scott and Holly’s for dinner and now I have finally seen, in person, the cuteness that is Kai! Holly, as soon as I find my USB cord, I’ll send you the video of him dancing! And then I’m back in Vancouver… and I leave again tomorrow for Montreal. I feel like I am still backpacking, except I’ve gone up in the world because I’m using suitcases now. This was sounding so much more interesting when I was composing it in my head. Oh well. Now I’m working on getting some photos developed. It is hard to whittle like 1500 photos into a manageable number that people will actually want to sit and look at. Not to mention that will fit in an album. I lost the album I was going to put them in, so that will have to wait for now…

In the past 4 months, I have been to eleven airports (and am about to add about 3 more to that total this week) and fifteen countries (give or take). I’ve made some interesting observations about security… Granted, in Europe I was traveling with a Dutch passport so I didn’t have to worry about “non-EU” queues at borders, however, I think that there are some interesting things going on. Canada has not had a direct security threat on our airports (that I can think of), yet we are the most anal about security. Sort of. When checking in with WestJet, there is no need to show identification until I get to the gate. So I can check in, go through security, and sit in the boarding area without ever having shown identification. It is only if I try to get on an airplane that they will check and make sure I am me. We also have strict rules about liquids. My coffee mug was inspected (there was nothing in it at the time) and I was told to check my bag because I had deodorant which, apparently, might liquefy and pose a threat to national security – I was told that all liquids had to be in a clear plastic bag and they would not supply said bag. In London Heathrow, where they have had problems with airport security, they at least give me a clear plastic zip-lock bag to use. And they didn’t care about the deodorant. Beijing, Shanghai, Copenhagen, Brussels, Paris, Dublin, Chicago, Seattle, and Prince George (which certainly belongs on that illustrious list) don’t give a damn about what is in your carry on bag unless you have knives or something like that which you deserve to loose if you are stupid enough to bring on an airplane. So someone please explain to me this ginormous contradiction in Canadian security and why we are so stupid about it when no one else really cares? I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this later.