BONJOUR TOUT LE MONDE!!!
It has been a long and eventful week here in Quebec, but I am feeling great and am very excited that I get to spend the next couple months living here. Honestly, it feels like I am in a dream. To be in Canada and be surrounded by a whole other culture, language and history is surreal.
I arrived here last Sunday after a full day of travel. Upon my arrival at the Quebec airport, I quickly got acquainted with 3 girls who were also from Calgary. Not only that, but all from the NW part of Calgary - I mean, what are the chances of that!? I have really hit it off with one of these girls in particular, it is so nice to have made a good friend right away! She came to Quebec knowing no french at all, but is learning so quickly! She has asked me to help her practice her speaking and pronunciation, which has ended up being great practice for me as well. Not only that, but she is from Calgary! WOOOO!
The Laval University campus is bigger than I thought, and beautiful. My dorm is right across the street from a park and I am about a 10 minute walk from the building where all my classes are. I am also about a 5 minute walk from a huge mall, and have quickly fallen in love with the store, Simons (I now get what all the hype is about!!). The mall has become a place in which to practice my french, I am getting really good at ordering a coffee. My dorm room is small, but adequate. I have been doing all I can to give it some homey touches so that it feels like a welcome place to come back to after a long day of classes. It is amazing how simple things such as a rug or or pictures make a place feel warm.
The Explore program (the language program that Laval runs in the summer) is great! I am really impressed with it so far. There are 7 levels (7 being the highest) and I am in level 3. A lot of what I am learning is more like review for me, but so far it has been great and is refreshing the french that I have lost in my memory somewhere. My comprehension is a lot better than I thought it was, I am finding the problem for me is just forming complete sentences as I so badly want them to be perfect. I talked to my professor about this and she said this is normal and by the end of my 5th week I will not have this problem anymore. So I am really looking forward to seeing this side of my french improve in the coming weeks. I already can tell I am improving. I am constantly thinking in french (just like when I used to do my jr. high school in french) and the more I push myself to have conversations and ask questions, the more I can feel my confidence growing.
In the mornings we have classes (grammar, phonetics, corrections) and then afternoons there are activities (movies, art classes, dancing, soccer, etc.) and free time. Once a week I have a mandatory conversation class, and a mandatory "fun" activity. Every weekend there are excursions around the city and surrounding area. I am trying to do a lot more of the historical excursions so that I can get to know the culture more. This past week I did something called "Cabane a Sucre" which is translates to "Sugar Shack." Its a farm where they make maple syrup. We went and learned about how they process maple water into syrup and then enjoyed a Quebecois dinner, with everything covered in maple syrup. It was delicious!! They had live traditional Quebecois music and then we spent the rest of the night dancing.
During my free time I have been trying to listen to french music, watch french movies/tv shows or read french articles. I am finding this is helping my french a lot. My vocabulary from prior french studies is starting to come back and as frustrating as it is to not be able to communicate verbally as fast as I would like to, I can tell that each day I am improving!
This week I also met up with my internship mentors, and I love them. Troy and Lorilee are great, and have really made me feel welcome and at home. They have 4 children and I seem to have bonded with them well because I speak english! Over the next couple weeks, I will be working with Troy and Lorilee to figure out what exactly I will be doing while I am here in Quebec and look forward to sharing what we come up with in the coming weeks. They live in Levis which is across the river from Quebec. We walked along the river and heard Skillet playing on the Plains of Abraham from across the St. Lawrence. One of Canada's biggest music festivals (Festival D'Ete) happens here in Quebec each year and it is a full week of musicians from all over and people from all over. Pretty cool. After our walk they took me to a place called 'Chocolat Favoris.' It is really famous here in Quebec. Basically they invented chocolate dipped ice cream cones. But not like what you get at Dairy Queen. These ones are dipped in pure chocolate that is still soft and doesn't crackle like the DQ stuff. It is amazing! (PS. Anyone who comes to visit me while I am here, I will take you to this place and you will love it!). They have 12 different flavors of chocolate to try and I have made it one of my personal goals to try each type while I am here.
Last night I finally went down to the Old City with some of my girlfriends. I have been here before, but forgot how beautiful it is! You really feel like you are walking around in Europe while you are there. The cobblestones, the flower boxes, everyone speaking french. We went and had a great dinner (I finally worked up the guts to try escargot for the first time; verdict: delicious!) and then spent the rest of the night walking around, listening to all the live music and feeling like tourists. I can't wait to go back in the next week and take some tours - in french of course!
I miss everyone in Calgary, but I am feeling great and have no homesickness. But, that being said, I do LOVE mail and so if anyone feels like writing a postcard or something silly, I would love to hear from you (even emails are great)!!!
My address here is:
It has been a long and eventful week here in Quebec, but I am feeling great and am very excited that I get to spend the next couple months living here. Honestly, it feels like I am in a dream. To be in Canada and be surrounded by a whole other culture, language and history is surreal.
I arrived here last Sunday after a full day of travel. Upon my arrival at the Quebec airport, I quickly got acquainted with 3 girls who were also from Calgary. Not only that, but all from the NW part of Calgary - I mean, what are the chances of that!? I have really hit it off with one of these girls in particular, it is so nice to have made a good friend right away! She came to Quebec knowing no french at all, but is learning so quickly! She has asked me to help her practice her speaking and pronunciation, which has ended up being great practice for me as well. Not only that, but she is from Calgary! WOOOO!
The Laval University campus is bigger than I thought, and beautiful. My dorm is right across the street from a park and I am about a 10 minute walk from the building where all my classes are. I am also about a 5 minute walk from a huge mall, and have quickly fallen in love with the store, Simons (I now get what all the hype is about!!). The mall has become a place in which to practice my french, I am getting really good at ordering a coffee. My dorm room is small, but adequate. I have been doing all I can to give it some homey touches so that it feels like a welcome place to come back to after a long day of classes. It is amazing how simple things such as a rug or or pictures make a place feel warm.
The Explore program (the language program that Laval runs in the summer) is great! I am really impressed with it so far. There are 7 levels (7 being the highest) and I am in level 3. A lot of what I am learning is more like review for me, but so far it has been great and is refreshing the french that I have lost in my memory somewhere. My comprehension is a lot better than I thought it was, I am finding the problem for me is just forming complete sentences as I so badly want them to be perfect. I talked to my professor about this and she said this is normal and by the end of my 5th week I will not have this problem anymore. So I am really looking forward to seeing this side of my french improve in the coming weeks. I already can tell I am improving. I am constantly thinking in french (just like when I used to do my jr. high school in french) and the more I push myself to have conversations and ask questions, the more I can feel my confidence growing.
In the mornings we have classes (grammar, phonetics, corrections) and then afternoons there are activities (movies, art classes, dancing, soccer, etc.) and free time. Once a week I have a mandatory conversation class, and a mandatory "fun" activity. Every weekend there are excursions around the city and surrounding area. I am trying to do a lot more of the historical excursions so that I can get to know the culture more. This past week I did something called "Cabane a Sucre" which is translates to "Sugar Shack." Its a farm where they make maple syrup. We went and learned about how they process maple water into syrup and then enjoyed a Quebecois dinner, with everything covered in maple syrup. It was delicious!! They had live traditional Quebecois music and then we spent the rest of the night dancing.
During my free time I have been trying to listen to french music, watch french movies/tv shows or read french articles. I am finding this is helping my french a lot. My vocabulary from prior french studies is starting to come back and as frustrating as it is to not be able to communicate verbally as fast as I would like to, I can tell that each day I am improving!
This week I also met up with my internship mentors, and I love them. Troy and Lorilee are great, and have really made me feel welcome and at home. They have 4 children and I seem to have bonded with them well because I speak english! Over the next couple weeks, I will be working with Troy and Lorilee to figure out what exactly I will be doing while I am here in Quebec and look forward to sharing what we come up with in the coming weeks. They live in Levis which is across the river from Quebec. We walked along the river and heard Skillet playing on the Plains of Abraham from across the St. Lawrence. One of Canada's biggest music festivals (Festival D'Ete) happens here in Quebec each year and it is a full week of musicians from all over and people from all over. Pretty cool. After our walk they took me to a place called 'Chocolat Favoris.' It is really famous here in Quebec. Basically they invented chocolate dipped ice cream cones. But not like what you get at Dairy Queen. These ones are dipped in pure chocolate that is still soft and doesn't crackle like the DQ stuff. It is amazing! (PS. Anyone who comes to visit me while I am here, I will take you to this place and you will love it!). They have 12 different flavors of chocolate to try and I have made it one of my personal goals to try each type while I am here.
Last night I finally went down to the Old City with some of my girlfriends. I have been here before, but forgot how beautiful it is! You really feel like you are walking around in Europe while you are there. The cobblestones, the flower boxes, everyone speaking french. We went and had a great dinner (I finally worked up the guts to try escargot for the first time; verdict: delicious!) and then spent the rest of the night walking around, listening to all the live music and feeling like tourists. I can't wait to go back in the next week and take some tours - in french of course!
I miss everyone in Calgary, but I am feeling great and have no homesickness. But, that being said, I do LOVE mail and so if anyone feels like writing a postcard or something silly, I would love to hear from you (even emails are great)!!!
My address here is:
Université Laval
c/o L’Équipe d’animation
Rebecca Trask
Pavillon Charles-de Koninck
Local 1231
Québec (Québec) G1K 7P4
CANADA
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