Tuesday, December 7, 2010

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!)

2 comments:

  1. when i become famous im going on this show skating with the stars. the schroder fam jam is proud of you and your new job. i hope you learned lots about religious stuff in their home. at the moment i am watching 16 and pregnant.. your probably really jealous. sometimes i think about making one of these blog things, but these thoughts are short because i decide that it a lot of hard work and i would fail, i am proud of you for keeping this up my friend! and it makes me very happy! :) also if this "Super C" has bags with a sweet "Super C" logo, you bringing me one home would make me happy!
    love cydney breabstick

    ps- was that good enough? i had none of the "you made me do this" bs.. till now

    pps...pss..psps..ppss umm... psx2 - i have yoga tomorrow at 7:15 with kerry :)

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  2. I gotta say..I'm starting to get attached to little town Nicolet.
    I also enjoy working with you. I wouldn't pick anyone else to pull me out of the snow :) Well, maybe Jake Gyllenhaal, but he's kind of unavailable at the moment, so I'll just stick with you and Jessie.

    p.s. your friend Cydney makes me laugh.

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