little by little.

small victories today:

finding the canadian equivalent of target!

getting over my fear of lighting a gas stove.

homemade cinnamon applesauce.

finding another huge grocery store right by the apartment! with peanut butter! and hummus!

  

and THE victory of the day:

finally feeling like the cat hair is gone from this apartment!

(reminder to future self.  don't rent from a cat owner)

it was boilllling hot here today, 90 and humid.

reminded me of midwest days.

but don't worry, i'm not fooled.

i've already seen (on 4 separate occasions)

people replacing and repairing roofs.

and i know why,

even though i don't really want to think about it.

rumor has it, is that it's going to stay toasty all the way till november this year.

but not for very long afterwards!

tomorrow night is the graduate students wine and cheese orientation night.

which i'm very excited about!

i feel like the last few transition weeks have been realllly long.

can't wait to meet my classmates and professors!

a+

alli

does it shape you?

an interesting article.

having lived in france for 3 (2 consecutive) years...

conducted my life in two languages...

been in a relationship with someone who's mother tongue is different than mine...

recently moved to a country where the language is both familiar and foreign...

i've thought a lot about language.  

about how it forms us,

our thoughts,

our prejudices,

like it or not.

is it something we can overcome?

should we overcome it?

when is your mother tongue mindset a positive?

and when does it hinder? 

would we even recognize a situation like that?

and once you acknowledge that language shapes you,

how do you become conscious that others are shaped just as you are.

but in completely different ways.

this is something that became interesting to me 

during an intercultural management class i took in france.

it picked up again when i had classrooms full of french teens and middle schoolers.

and now that i'm starting a masters program 

all about education across borders,

teaching and learning in the past and future,

learning in a different language,

i think this is something i'll be revisiting quite often.

give it a glance

how are you influenced by your mother tongue?

a+

alli

photo & article via

first impressions.

montreal is almost a french chicago.

there's an exhilarating zip to the city.

part of the campus i'll spend the next two years at.

notre dame church in la vielle ville.  

inside is made entirely of wood!

a modern chapel with an amazing fresco in bronze i believe.

if you can see, there are three gates with people walking up through them

up to the dove at the top.

one of the gates is at the end of childhood,

the next at the adulthood,

and the last, for when the soul has matured beyond than the body.

i like that.

the botanical gardens.

our first montreal day visit.

to a tiny village on a lake,

oka.

we went on a little hike that wrapped around 4 old calgary chapels.

lots of colorful fungi.

the last and biggest of the chapels was across from a wonderful outlook.

oka.

ferry boat from oka to hudson.

it was a bit windy.

next, we found a great little verger. 

french for u-pick!

i like to think we got the best pick, since we were a little early for the season.

and this is what came from it!

mmmmmm.

 and many more recipes to come i suppose.

apple sauce

apple turnovers

apple crisp

apple salsa?

it's a big bag after all.

any suggestions?

a+

alli

land of les quebecois.

2,388 miles. 3843 kilometers.

37:17 total time in the car.

one italian restaurant in laramie, wyoming.  stumbled upon while searching for some mexican food.  

a couple bags of beef jerky, pretzels, fig netwons and nutter butters.

4 books on tape, two thrown out before the 3rd chapters.

one dinner in granger, indiana with old friends.  ice cream shared on a summer evening.

one impromptu family reunion off of highway 44 outside of cleveland.

a zig zag track through ten states (one of them new on my list).

a 2 hour wait at the canadian border.

a rainy drive through ontario and quebec.

and here i am, nearly a week into my stay in montreal.  

i'm still getting my bearings here. 

sometimes it feels so much like home- english drifting from store fronts or metro conversations.

others, i wonder where i could possibly be.  these people around me, 

they're speaking a language i usually understand quite well.  

the only way i can find to describe the way it sounds to my ears here...

is to say it's like hearing a duck trying to speak french.   

how do you concentrate when a duck is speaking to you in french?

what i feel about the city so far, is such a mix. 

sometimes i stroll across french-named streets. 

boulevard st. laurent, chemin de côte des neiges.  

others are clearly anglophone.  

sherbrooke, ontario, westmount. 

but no one seems shocked. 

i feel like i'm in the french version of the film, spanglish.  

i order at cafes in french, which turns to english.  

i spoke to my banker in french, before she switched to an unaccented english somewhere in the middle.

listening to peoples conversations on the streets are just as amusing and mysterious.

i heard this on the walk to the metro tonight:

"ca va bien?  hi how are you, this is my friend valerie.  oh, tu étais là?  c'est super, wasn't it?"

it's fascinating at moments.  

to be fair,

i can't tell you the number of times 

i've been in the middle of an english conversation 

and wanted to use a french word or phrase to convey something.  

it just seemed more the better way to express myself.  

it's also happened in french- there are no french equivalents of 

nasty, creepy, or awkward 

that satisfy me, so sometimes i just throw those in for fun.  

imagine life in a culture where you really don't have to choose between languages, 

just throw in some of each.  

this could be fun. 

 if i can just concentrate long enough to get past the duck. 

move in to the new apartment is sunday, 

orientation is on tuesday, 

and i have my first class on thursday.  

stéphane is making fun of me because i've already been to the library, 

and can't wait for it all to start.  

not too long afterwards i'm sure i'm be eating my words.

a+

alli