French Roast

Today the world politely reminded me that it is not unilingual.  At the exact same time it also reminded me why I am in Quebec in the first place.

This story really starts last night, when our group went swimming, at a pool, oui.  The pool is in a Police Training Academy that is apparently quite renowned and famous in Quebec.  It is this great big beautiful stone building (this sentence can also be applied to 2/3 of every building in this provence) in the middle of town.  On one wing is a fitness facility and a community auditorium and the rest is probably top secret high security business with shooting ranges and dramatic crime scene reenactments.  At least, that is how it is in my head.

I quit swimming early a) because my left ankle decided it would be a great time to swell up to the size of a small mango and b) because i'm fairly incapable of doing front crawl.
(A small aside - Eric greatly improved my stroke when we were in Thunder Bay, but without him by my side I tend to hyperventilate and my flutter kick looks more like a person having a seizure)

Another important fact about swimming:  It's not cool to pretend to be an orca whale, surfacing for air, when kind, elderly men are busy workin' on their fitness in the next lane over.  Martin, with his long hair, fully splashed about 6 people while becoming the human incarnation of Free Willy and I was ashamed to be seen as his swim partner. Especially as my french capabilities are not great enough to defend myself.  I don't think so anyways.  I should put more faith in my language.

On my way back to my locker a nice policelady says things to me in French (Voulez-vous prendre une douche?)  which I take to understand as "Do you want to shower?"...  I also took this to mean "Would you like to shower with me?" as there was no one else in the room and I had not expressed interest in showering prior to this conversation.

Oh.. hmmm... okaay..

This one caught me off guard a little bit.  But, upon looking to my right hand side I discovered there were several shower units... shower units which I was blocking.  So, facial expressions summarized, first I give this person a look of complete bewilderment, then comes confusion, then comes realization that Hey! There are some showers right there! Look at that! You are asking me to move and not to shower with you! Right! and lastly I manage to actually speak, only to spit out, "Oh! Oui" and move out of the way to let her through. Which in hindsight, I realize, doesn't make sense.  "Yes, I'd love to shower, allow me to move away from them quickly."

I wonder if she knows I don't speak her mother tongue or if she thinks I'm just a really clueless francophone with a very expressive face.

I've been having a lot of trouble with this sort of translation, and have now taken to calling it the shower translation; this furthers the confusion I instigate, I imagine.  I've found lately with the whole question asking that is it more intonation changes than phrase changes and I'm not great with voices I'm not used to.

Today at work I spoke more French than usual and I'm not sure why, though possibly just because it's fun to actually talk to the people in the office instead of just sitting around at break time looking at everyone's shoes like some tired puppy.  After work however I had to go downtown (a phrase which is not used in small places like Nicolet where there is no actual downtown) to buy some tape for said mango sized ankle.

No luck at the grocery store less that 30 m away, although a cute boy with snake bites told me to "check street down with colours".  Although this was in English it needed translation.  I came up with few answers but I continued walking down the street to a drugstore which is called Family with a strange ending.  I walk in and quickly find out that the woman at the front speaks no English. Whatever.  I ask her for the medical stuff.  She points left.  I go left. The store isn't very big so left doesn't leave much room.  I find the medical stuff.  A pharmacist finds me. I express my concern.. in English.

Bad move.

She begins to freak out.

"Non! Non! Non! Jenpeuxpasvousaider!"

Oh great.

I say "It's okay, I don't need help" but really couldn't find it in me to say this in French so I just walked away.  I go back to the medical bondage section which is a small section with nothing in it but tensores and polysporin.  Also great.

At this point I was late for dinner and in a mood that may be described as irritated; I just want some stupid tape!

This came out of my mouth accidentally, as I walked down a different aisle so I looked behind me to make sure I hadn't inadvertently offended the poor, hypersensitive pharmacist.

Rounding a corner I run into what appears to be another pharmacist.  I quickly squeak out a "desole!" and try to veer right to avoid any more problems. Possible-pharmacist woman turns to me then and says "The medical tape is over here and the scotch tape is in the school supplies section."
Hallelujah.  When in doubt, get a little bit angry and say something without meaning to near an anglophone! H'okay let's get this tape and go.

Oh right. Cash register. From personal experience on both sides of a till, language barriers with money are relatively easy to solve as numbers are still numbers and it is general knowledge to have basic 1-10 in another language down by age 6.  I give the girl my card and she tells me my total.  AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN.

While I'm punching in my pin the girl asks me "Voulez-vous un sac?"..

Don't be alarmed though, I was well prepared from the evening before and breezed by with an ultra cool, "Non, merci" as though I had never freaked out at intonation-type questions before in my life.

Bon Nuit!

Petra :)

The Last Days of TBay - a Pictoral Edition

Bonjour,

That's it for the French, chill out Rossland. (and others.. dare I say I have other followers?)

As you may have realized, I do in fact, have a terminal condition which prevents me from uploading, posting and taking photos. I've had it most of my life but must have figured I could overcome it by promising multiple batches of pictures on my blog. It's a mildly contagious predicament which sometimes results in lack of evidence and irritated family members.  But as I am a firm believer in overcoming illnesses (especially, hypothetically speaking here, those of the mental variety) I have decided to upload several photos.

This is me hanging from a rafter at our rotation camp destination.  We went to a really cool conference centre on the outskirts of Thunder Bay.  The man who built it is a closet engineer who built off the grid because his wife has multiple chemical allergies related to urban living.  The basement has a swimming pool which heats the rest of the house and the lodge we were in.  It would be the perfect ski lodge, complete with customer kitchen and cute little tablecloths.  There were however, no ski racks and though it was close to a ski hill, it was not close enough.  "Rotation Camp" is where all Katimavik groups in one district get together and break down the rotation (aka, 3 month period) but as we were 5 hours from the nearest group, it was just us.  We played some awesome games and talked about moving to Quebec; we also slept sans thermarests, thus, sore backs in the morn.  

When we got back from the conference centre our house was occupied by the next program leader who was setting up for our sister group to arrive.  We spent the night at The Boys and Girls Club of Thunder Bay - one of the first places we came to when we arrived in Thunder Bay.  The club has pool tables and xboxes and rock band and other great things which kept us amused well into the night.  Our plane was due to leave at 6:30am the next morning and we had to be at the airport for 4:30am because we are a large group.  So, naturally, we didn't sleep but instead chose to take advantage of the 5m x 15m bouncy castle the club had nicely packed away in storage.  This event was accompanied with streaking and a rush to get packed when we became aware of the time.

Temporarily stuck..

A few days before our rotation camp we went to the university fields to play some snow football because  a certain group member who goes by the name of Scott is flippantly obsessed with football.  Afterwards, we went to his billet family's house to watch the Grey Cup.  It was a fun time but unfortunately I have no photos from the Grey Cup and I don't remember the score, nor do I really care.  I considered writing that after watching the match I realized that I like MLB much more than CFL but if I put that my parents will probably celebrate to the point of extremism which could dangerously affect their so far healthy ageing.  I'll just say CFL is ridiculous.

I had this brilliant idea to crochet Sarah (first program leader) a hat for a goodbye present.  At this time I was not exactly great at making hats.  Maybe I'll post a picture of the first hat I crocheted.  Maybe not.  Anyways, several of us in the group crochet like we've got no other purpose in life and it was kind of a theme in our house in Thunder Bay so I thought it would be cool to make Sarah a hat with a line crocheted by each of us. 6 girls 5 guys.  I figured this would be a challenge as most humans of the male array are somewhat incapable of touching yarn let alone crocheting.  

(Just telling it like it is, hats off (ha) to those beautiful men who do) 

Halfway through the hat-making process Sarah says "Can I crochet a line?".  Who was I to deny my dear friend a line in her own headwear? She's up there with the rest of us, the red one, right in the middle.  <3

(result - she had no idea, and was seemingly quite pleased! ..

..though possibly blinded by it's intense colour scheme..)  

On the way to the conference centre (yea, I'm back to that, I like to jump around) we stopped at Kakabeka Falls, a beautiful landmark near Thunder Bay.  This is one of many attempted group shots.  The falls were frozen on the outside which led to an impromptu snow ball throwing competition to break through the ice.  Eric won.

Dre, Me and Sam on our first plane ride of the greatest day of airports in my life. Note our smiling faces.

On one of our first evenings in Nicolet Sam took this photo.  The sunsets over the river are so gorgeous.  Please observe my t-shirt.  Please know that the next morning we received 6 inches of snow.

And an ending note from my dear friend Sam Middleton, an avid Katimavikker.

"Roses are red,

violets are blue

some poems rhyme

and others don't."

Bon Nuit.

PetraFied

Nicolet QC, in all it's glory

This post is a little late (huge surprise there) as I thought I should wait a little while and not write on first impressions.  So instead here are some third, fourth, fifth and six impressions.

Nicolet is pretty small. Nicolet has one grocery store.  Nicolet got 7 inches of snow yesterday.  Nicolet has protective females.

An extension of these facts.

Nicolet has 7,800 people.  But don't be fooled.. many of those people live on rural property outside of town so the so called "main drag" we live on gets about.. well it doesn't really get any traffic.  Our Katima-house is five minutes from downtown which includes but is not limited to: several restaurants, a post office, a library, a drugstore, multiple bars and a hardware store that appears to only sell snowblowers.

The grocery store is called super C and it is a 30 minute walk down the strip of highway that Nicolet is somewhat built around. We take the van.

On Saturday we went to work on a vineyard 30 minutes out of town.  The man who owned it was really interesting and he and his family have been running a "Medieval Children's Camp" on their property every summer for a few years.  They also had a guest house with a hot tub which we will be going to for New Year's day.  As a small aside, I had a lot of fun on Saturday.  Our group is kind of ridiculously exuberant when given physical tasks so the work was a lot of fun and didn't take long.  It's the best kind of work when it just feels like hanging out.  He (I've clearly forgotten his name.. :( ) was very appreciative and made really good soup for lunch.

When we got back from their place I walked around town at about 5:00pm in a t-shirt and jeans.  Sunday.. not much difference, beautifully clear day.. Monday.. torrential down-flutter (well you can't really say down-pour, work with me here) of snow.  Today, Sam and I had to practically pull each other out of the ditches we sunk into on the way to work.  We have a foot of snow.  Guess what? It's snowing again tonight.  J'aime Canada.

On Thursday night when we got here a few of us went for a walk with Valerie, our new program leader and afterwards we went to a bar.  There were a few locals who appeared to live at the bar on a permanent basis and several people who said bonjour to us.  We figured petite ville Nicolet was nice and friendly.  Then we went to the bar on Friday night.  Our pretty faces were not so warmly welcomed.  We got glares.  French glares.  One particularly intoxicated young lady told us (en francais) to "not kiss her boyfriends".  But all is well now as we met some of them at the next bar and they were "merely interested as to know who we were because we did not look familiar".  Which is cool.  Our English probably helped them come to that conclusion.  Small town Quebec = also not very bilingual.

We had work interviews yesterday (en francais, s'il vous plait) and right after them we were given our work placements.  I had really wanted a daycare job that was split with an out of town job where you would shadow a biologist working with the large swan population in the area.  (Nicolet is home to a bird sanctuary)  My second choice was working at an Arts Centre.. moving chairs and tables, setting up for events, cleaning, shovelling snow, joking with the funny guys who work there. (Rosslanders: picture a much larger Minor's Hall with an arched ceiling that looks like the inside of a great ship.)

Buuuuut in the end I got a job at the musee des religions de Nicolet.  It's one of only 3 museums in the world and the only one in North America that focuses on all 5 main religions.  Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  It's a beautiful building, the staff members are great, and on top of that Jessie and Sam both work there as well.  We will be switching jobs weekly so hopefully it won't get too boring and repetitive.  The job I'm doing this week (get ready to shake your head and blow me kisses from wherever you are..) is scanning religious images. All day. For a week.  Just that. Yup.

Jean-Francois, the director and our boss, is super sweet though and gives us lots of breaks and is nice to chat with. He is more or less the only bilingual staff member.. which is difficult, oui.  My french improves chaque jour.  But don't blow me too many kisses because it will be a fun job.. The scanner is really slow which allows for optimal movie watching, music listening and reading time.  I forgot my book at home today so when I was at work I picked up a casual copy of the Satanic Bible.

Don't worry, I felt morally confused scanning First Communion images from 1924 Italy while reading verses from the Satanic Bible.  Little bit of a paradox, yea. The museum has some pretty great reading material though, and lots of French children's books for me to practice reading with.

Tonight I had a 2.5 hour French lesson.  You could probably blow me some more kisses now.

Actually it wasn't really that bad but because it was our first one it was a big review of highschool stuff.  French lessons every week will be good though, and we didn't have them in Thunder Bay so we're all really behind.

We've been planning excursions as a group and it looks like we will be making one to Montreal, one to Quebec City and on top of those we also have 48 hours off in January when we can go wherever we want. And on top of that we are  also going to Trois Rivieres to stay with the another group of Katimavictims for New Year's Eve.  FUN STUFF.  For Christmas Day we are going to our French teacher's house but are also having a dinner at our place.

I plan to have more adventures soon so as to not fill blog posts with boring things like grocery stores in rural Quebec. My sincere apologies.
Now, I will blow you kisses!
Bon nuit
Petra

Pictures coming soon (just for you, Anthea/Scot!)

Thought #1 - Flow vs. Follow

Don't be alarmed.. I've had more thoughts than just this one since birth.

Last night, 10:45pm - somewhat bilingual young man named Martin picks me, Sam and Dalandrea up at our new house in Nicolet.  Sam met this boy the night before at the bar down the street, Bavaroise, so he wasn't entirely a stranger.. right?

11:00pm - Find myself mildly alarmed at the speed this young man is able to push out of his poor sunfire, as we reach about 130 km/hr, the casual driving speed of the French.  

11:01pm - kindly try asking the young francophone to slow down, in french. (moins vite, s'il vous plait? - all I could think of at that hour..)  He responds by turning up the music.

It was at this point that I turn to Dalandrea in the back seat and we both begin to laugh.  WHERE ARE WE GOING? we both ask each other, and as difficult as it was to scream over the music, we ask the boy as well.

He tells us he is taking us to Trois Riviere, the city nearest Nicolet, to go to a club; like it was just something one might do on an idle Sunday, right after taking the dog for a walk.  This is the part of the story where I should probably mention that Dalandrea and I were merely along for the ride, just playing wingman for Sam.  Apparently one is not wise to trust French boys after just meeting them.  

Okay cool, I'll go to a club in my dirty jeans and sneakers, whatever. Thanks for telling us this crucial piece of information before we left the house. I suppose that would have been a little difficult considering the whole I-have-to-translate-every-word-of-my-texts-before-sending-them-to-Sam-which-sometimes-allows-for-large-errors-in-grammar thing he had going on.  Tough luck for us.

I guess the point of all this is to question whether or not we were going with the flow of it all or merely following.  Following, because it would be immensely difficult to extricate myself from that vehicle at that time without obtaining severe road rash in the process, or going with the flow on the simple basis that we were accompanying our friend for safety and comfort. 

I had this same experience when I found myself in a white minivan on the way to the dump with a man named Lloyd just outside of Thunder Bay. (see previous post "Weekend of What?"            no really, do it.)

More and more with this whole Katimavik business I ask myself where I am.  Because it changes too frequently to be aware of as it happens.  One minute I am in an airport and the next I'm on a bus.  Thunder Bay was finally getting familiar and regular but then suddenly they shipped us off to a retreat camp and then onto a plane at 6am.  Talk about disorienting.  I've tried to avoid feeling like a pilot-program kid who has all arrangements made for her and actually has choices, but when it comes to transportation us Katimavictims have no say whatsoever.  Feeling like herded sheep in these situations motivates our group more to go out on our free time (something I should probably be doing right now) to see and do what we please.  I can't complain.  The last time I bought my own food was early in October, and I sleep in a bed every night in a house I don't pay rent for.

The club was amazing but for all the old people in it, and none of us were prepared to pay the $12 cover for the top part which probably had live entertainment, more young people and less creeps.  I had a fun time dancing with Dre. We obviously got home safe and sound and before curfew (boo curfew!).  Martin explained to us on the way back that he liked going to Trois Rivieres better than staying around Nicolet because it is richer and has more people.  Fair enough, Martin.  Just don't beat up your car too much over the winter. 

Tonight I'm working on a resume.. en francais.

I like bilingual places.

Petra J.