Here Comes the Sun...

Finally, after 3 days of horrible and cold weather, it’s finally sunny and warm, mostly in the 70’s-80’s. Everytime I ride my bike anywhere, it’s great because the weather has been good and I get some exercise anywhere I travel….which is good because I feel like I’m eating a lot with 3 huge meals a day. The one thing I’m not used to is how structured the program is. I’m used to going off and exploring a bit and doing whatever whenever outside of work, school, etc. and I think the program is targeted towards students who are younger and less experienced in a foreign culture. Also, I know it’s important to get all the students together for an event to converse with each other and better their French, but with the class I’m in I just feel like I have so much work to do and no time to do it. I love the class and the discussions but I think that two 2 page papers, a 10 page research paper, a presentation on said paper and a final exam is a bit rough. We keep telling the professor we’re only here for 3 weeks but it seems like it’s not a big deal. Either way, I feel like I’ll do pretty well in the class despite all the work that needs to get done.
Already I feel as though my speaking is becoming more fluid and with better pronunciation with my words, and it is because of speaking, reading, listening pretty much 95% of the time here. When I speak with the other people in the program or even natives, it excites me that the words I speak in French are understood by someone who speaks the language. It makes me happy that I can get along in French or Quebecois society without a problem..that’s the main goal for myself and for my future students. Speaking of future students, I’ve already taken a ton of pictures of different signs and stocked up on brochures with French on it…I even bought a book of Garfield cartoons in French and another book to use for a class someday. This is the time as a future teacher to take advantage of all this authentic cultural items!
On another note, I feel like I’m missing so much like the coverage on Michael Jackson…I mean I bought a magazine about it just for the history of it, but it’s not the same as being home and watching it on TV in English. Regardless… I feel like I’ve been doing so much…the school has various activities at night after dinner, like movies, a corn roast the other night which had a great sunset, and a Traditional song and dance which sold good beer which was nice. The music was pretty cool because it reminded me of Irish music and I did some research and realized that in fact there are a lot of Irish/Celtic influences on Quebecois music. Today, we went on an Excursion to the Ile-Aux- Basques, which is an Isle in the center of the St Lawrence that is a 10 minute boat ride from where I am…It was interesting but wayyyy too many mosquitoes and it was driving me crazy. They’re bigger here for some reason and apparently angrier than American ones because they’ll even bite you on your face lol…..
And no, I haven’t had any poutine yet, but I plan on getting some maybe next week just to try it. Anyway, I’ll try to write as much as I can in the next two weeks…