Today was pretty glorious. I woke up and made myself a heavenly breakfast sandwich. Rye (toasted of course), soy patty, ketchup, and a mound of lettuce. Then I went to French class and was placed into level D3 which stands for Debutante 3. There are ten levels in total D1,D2,D3,$ then Intermediate 1,2,3,4 and then two advanced levels. At the end of every month we will take a test and either move on up to the next level (D4 in my case) or stay in the same level. All of my new classmates hail from different parts of the world including, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Libya, Canada, and Switzerland. I'm the only American in the group. My teacher is very nice and she is from France. The three hours literally just flew by which was great but it was a little sad that after I left I stepped out into a world that feels mostly English speaking. Hopefully though that will change once I learn more French.
After lunch and a nap I met Claire and Liz at Gerts, McGill's on campus pub for a beer. Then I set about trying to find books about Canadian history in the library. The good thing about living in a bilingual city is that I'm always hearing new sounds and experiencing new perspectives. The bad thing about it is that it makes it twice as hard to find what book you want in the library when it's floating in a sea of French titles. It doesn't help either that I don't exactly know what I'm looking for. All I know is that I want to know more about this crazy country they call Canada (formerly New France, formerly Upper Canada). Bottom line:
Library 1
Lissie 0
From there I made my way over to the Concordia neighborhood to search for my vegan friendly grocery store. Concordia is the other major university in Montreal and it's pretty cool. It has a student run co-op that sells bulk items and all natural products. Everything is fair trade and/or organic. It is called Le Frigo Vert and it is roughly the size of my kitchen. Finding le frigo was definitely a success, even though it was a quarter of the size I was expecting it to be. It turns out that they are looking for volunteers so on Friday I'm going to go to a training and hopefully start volunteering there a few hours a week. The cashier was really nice and said that volunteers who work 4+hours a week get a discount. I think it will be a good way to practice my French and hopefully meet some new people:)
Au bientot!
fizz everything you're doing sounds excellent! when i was reading about that coffee shop you went to in one of the earlier posts, the one with all the gadgets on the walls, i was picturing you bopping around the city and i could hear the joyous exclamations of wonder all your discoveries provoke. post some pictures!
ReplyDeleteso so happy for you love. you're on your way to multilingual!!