Well, I'm here. The 26-hour bus trip was surprisingly non-horrific - they let us off the bus at several places so we could get out and stretch our legs. I wasn't mugged during my four hours at the downtown Detroit bus station, which was also a pleasant surprise. I got no sleep, but sitting on the bus with my eyes closed all night was surprisingly restful. All in all, it went much better than I expected (low expectations help here). I'm looking forward to travelling by bus again in the near future.
The whole time I was travelling, though, I kept thinking 'Wouldn't it be funny if I got to Montreal, and my host family there wasn't expecting me until the next day?'
Ha ha ha...
Hilarious.
Anyway, it wasn't too much of a problem. Fortunately they were home, and could let me into my room. I'd e-mailed them in advance, but hadn't gotten a response back, because, as I later discovered, the e-mail address given was a work e-mail for a woman who's now on maternity leave. In the house, I have: 1 father, 1 mother, 1 daughter, and 3 grandchildren, one of them born just a week ago. Both of the other kids go to elementary school, and they're fun to talk to. They all seem nice, and very welcoming.
I had my first classes today. I was kind of worried when I showed up for my placement test and only two other people arrived (this is their slow season), but fortunately there were other students who had been around before I showed up, and didn't have to take the test. So, there are five students in my class now. The class level is a little bit low for me (because there are fewer students than in the summer, they combined a few classes together), but it should be a good way to review, which was really what I'd wanted anyway. The other people in the class seemed nice, and we had some fun political discussions today about how the United States is the root of all evil in the world (well, not really, but I am the only person even vaguely on the U.S.' side in the room. The other students all come from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Wales). It seems like it's going to be interesting, and good practice for my grammar and/or political debate skills.
The language school here shares the 8th floor of the 9-story LaSalle College with the Maritime Institute. Most of the other 8 stories are taken up by the schools of hairdressing, fashion design, and computer science. This must make for rather clique-y lunchrooms, I imagine. It's kind of an adult education/trade school; the international language school isn't really strongly connected to the rest of it.
I've already had lots of chances to practice speaking and listening in French. I've watched four movies in French so far: the Siege, Chain Reaction, Phone Booth, and 40 Days and 40 Nights. My host mother and I spent most of Chain Reaction talking about how stupid it was (which is good practice too).
Montreal is really cool. I feel like I stepped onto the bus in Toronto from the United States, and I stepped out here into Europe. The Metro system here is exactly like Lyon's. The city itself is very pretty, with a mix of Portland greenery and ambiance and French old-world construction of some of the buildings. It's really interesting too, to see how English and French are mixed in different places. I'll hear everyone speaking French in some places, and totally forget that I'm in North America, and then an instant later a group of people will pass by, all speaking English, and it'll be like being back in Oregon.
For years, I've been basing my knowledge of the Canadian/U.S. exchange rate on the backs of books: it always says something like U.S: $7.95, Canada: $14.95, from which I'd assumed that there was somewhere around a 1.5:1 or 2:1 exchange rate. Thus, it came as somewhat a shock to me when, after looking up the price of the language program here and going to a money conversion website to look up how much cheaper it would be in U.S. dollars, I discovered that the currencies were virtually identical: about 1.01:1 at the time (Dang!). The reason Canadian books are more expensive, it turns out, is just that the Canadian booksellers overcharge horribly on books. I just bought one at the local equivalent of Barnes and Noble or Borders, a mass-market paperback. Price: $17.50, after tax. Ouch. That's almost as much as I spent on bus fare to come here...
Anyway, that's all the news for now. I'll keep the rest of you posted.
A bientot!
- Nathan
The whole time I was travelling, though, I kept thinking 'Wouldn't it be funny if I got to Montreal, and my host family there wasn't expecting me until the next day?'
Ha ha ha...
Hilarious.
Anyway, it wasn't too much of a problem. Fortunately they were home, and could let me into my room. I'd e-mailed them in advance, but hadn't gotten a response back, because, as I later discovered, the e-mail address given was a work e-mail for a woman who's now on maternity leave. In the house, I have: 1 father, 1 mother, 1 daughter, and 3 grandchildren, one of them born just a week ago. Both of the other kids go to elementary school, and they're fun to talk to. They all seem nice, and very welcoming.
I had my first classes today. I was kind of worried when I showed up for my placement test and only two other people arrived (this is their slow season), but fortunately there were other students who had been around before I showed up, and didn't have to take the test. So, there are five students in my class now. The class level is a little bit low for me (because there are fewer students than in the summer, they combined a few classes together), but it should be a good way to review, which was really what I'd wanted anyway. The other people in the class seemed nice, and we had some fun political discussions today about how the United States is the root of all evil in the world (well, not really, but I am the only person even vaguely on the U.S.' side in the room. The other students all come from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Wales). It seems like it's going to be interesting, and good practice for my grammar and/or political debate skills.
The language school here shares the 8th floor of the 9-story LaSalle College with the Maritime Institute. Most of the other 8 stories are taken up by the schools of hairdressing, fashion design, and computer science. This must make for rather clique-y lunchrooms, I imagine. It's kind of an adult education/trade school; the international language school isn't really strongly connected to the rest of it.
I've already had lots of chances to practice speaking and listening in French. I've watched four movies in French so far: the Siege, Chain Reaction, Phone Booth, and 40 Days and 40 Nights. My host mother and I spent most of Chain Reaction talking about how stupid it was (which is good practice too).
Montreal is really cool. I feel like I stepped onto the bus in Toronto from the United States, and I stepped out here into Europe. The Metro system here is exactly like Lyon's. The city itself is very pretty, with a mix of Portland greenery and ambiance and French old-world construction of some of the buildings. It's really interesting too, to see how English and French are mixed in different places. I'll hear everyone speaking French in some places, and totally forget that I'm in North America, and then an instant later a group of people will pass by, all speaking English, and it'll be like being back in Oregon.
For years, I've been basing my knowledge of the Canadian/U.S. exchange rate on the backs of books: it always says something like U.S: $7.95, Canada: $14.95, from which I'd assumed that there was somewhere around a 1.5:1 or 2:1 exchange rate. Thus, it came as somewhat a shock to me when, after looking up the price of the language program here and going to a money conversion website to look up how much cheaper it would be in U.S. dollars, I discovered that the currencies were virtually identical: about 1.01:1 at the time (Dang!). The reason Canadian books are more expensive, it turns out, is just that the Canadian booksellers overcharge horribly on books. I just bought one at the local equivalent of Barnes and Noble or Borders, a mass-market paperback. Price: $17.50, after tax. Ouch. That's almost as much as I spent on bus fare to come here...
Anyway, that's all the news for now. I'll keep the rest of you posted.
A bientot!
- Nathan
No comments:
Post a Comment