Up Too Late: An Endless Search for Mr.Right & Other Important Things in Life

We are having rather routine morning classes. Our instructor, as always, is corrected by one of us whenever he makes a mistake or a typo when writing...

It is funny, though if this course were of extreme importance, I probably would have been angry that I am spending time with someone who knows not to spell.

There are many positive things that I have not mentioned in the past, but have been very glad about. Christophe teaches us about the etymology of French words. It's extremely intriguing and interesting to see how words have traveled countries, only to settle in the mouths of immigrating nomads, who adopted these sounds as part of their culture. An example:

"L'alcool" in French, or "alcohol" in English, derives from "al kohol" in Arabic, which means "make-up pencil for under the eyes"...Where the West adopted "Al kohol" to mean liquor, is beyond me...Hmm, i should look up the etymology dictionary.

Aside from this, Christophe has been teaching us some valuable information on the history of Montréal. In its founding few years, the Ville-Marie, the initial name of the village founded on the island of Montreal in 1642. Ville-Marie had 5200 inhabitants, a far cry from the four million settlers that now live in the same island. The town was created by M.Sieur de Maisonneuve, who, under the authority of the French king, was sent on a holy mission to settle inhabitants in New France.

Christophe tells us about the year when the British took over La nouvelle France. 1759 was the year when, in the Plains of Abraham, French troops lost to the overwhelming majority of British soldiers. There were 5.000 French soldiers defending the city now called Montréal from 20.000 British soldiers who took over Montreal just after the battle on the Plains of Abraham, in Central Quebec.

Voltaire, famous French writer and philosopher reacted to the invasion with a shoulder shrug...For him, it was no major thing. It was the loss of only a couple of piles of snow: "C'est pas grave, parce que c'est seulement quelques arpents de neige". If only there was a way of bringing him back to Montreal of the present. I bet he'd take that comment back.

Every morning, we get into small groups to discuss various issues touching on the culture, history, government and language of Quebec, among other things. Today, we discussed the food...It made us all hungry, so instead of talking about food for an hour, when the lunch break was an hour and a half away, we changed the topic in our group to francism [it's a new word meaning "the adoption of French words in other languages...I just made it up] in Montreal's stores and boutiques. We came up with:

"The Caesar Salad" - Ashley saw this in a resto. menu....It comes from "la salade..." in French..All words must have articles when mentioned in general sense...
Correction, for Francophones who need help: It's the Ceasar salad

"Everys Sundays" - The sign went something along the lines of "Everys Sundays, one new act! One new dancer!", and when I type this, I am not talking about dance lessons. It's a sign that a strip bar on St.Catherine St. had on. I don't know where they get the extra "s" from. I should look into this. I'm presuming it comes from "tous les dimanches", where plural suffix is added to all of the components.

"Nudes Dancers" - Yes, yes, you got it. Just another sign from the vast richness of St.Catherine St.'s not-so-classy strip bars. The error is similar to the one above, adding "s" to adjectives, which is something of a routine in French language.

Last thing was the name of a gay bar I saw walking St.Catherine St.East...Haha, I just laughed so hard I couldn't believe a bar named "Le Stud" existed. Moreover, it's a bear bar :P.

By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 7, 2006; 5:20 PM

PRISTINA, Serbia -- Eliza Dushku is taking back a very particular souvenir from her visit to her father's homeland _ a double-headed eagle, modeled after the one in Albania's national flag.

Dushku, who starred in the TV series "Tru Calling," had the tattoo done on her back during her first visit to Albania and Kosovo.
The 25-year-old actress said she was impressed by the welcome and the honors she received during the recent trip, which included meeting Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku.

"I'm flattered and taken aback, and yet it makes me want to be (an) even louder and prouder Albanian," said Dushku, accompanied by family and friends during her visit to the U.N.-administered province.

She also laid a wreath at the grave of Kosovo's late President Ibrahim Rugova.

"It's very emotional," she said, displaying a rubber bracelet advocating independence for Kosovo. "There's so many emotions running through my soul, my mind and my heart."

Today was exciting in that a dear friend, Angela and her husband Mark, were in town for Angela's art opening. They had long talked about having a dinner when they got here, but I thought they would forget about it and the idea would be just something they said...But Angela sent me an e-mail a few days ago and said she was planning on celebrating the opening with a few friends from Montreal and she wanted me to be there.

So I get the metro directions from STM.info, Montreal's transit authority, according to which my subway gets 500 metres close to Angela's restaurant. I still don't know this city and its many neighbourhoods, so I ask a francophone couple in the subway, [in French] if they could tell me how to get to rue Villeneuve from the subway. They are kind enough to tell me they will get off in the same stop, so they can tell me where to get out and which direction to follow. They then ask me where I am from and as soon as they hear I am from Newfoundland, their faces light up. Both of them have been wanting to see the province for years, as they have friends there who tell them how good a place it is, but due to school and work, they rarely get time off.

I am introduced to Jean-Patrick and Stephanie, who are two francophone Quebeckers from the country. Jean-Patrick is 5'11, is thin, has green eyes and is blond. He has a good sense of style from the clothes I see him wearing. He works with a non-profit legal agency that works in rebuilding judiciary systems around the world. He tells me their newest projects are in Afghanistan and Bosnia. Jean-Patrick gives me his agency's name and web address, but I quickly forget it. When I ask Jean-Patrick what he thinks of his job, he tells me he likes it, but he would have preferred to work in the outdoors. He tells me he is not an office person and though he likes what he does, he would have preferred to do his work in the country or in the green outdoors.

Stephanie is also from "la campagne." She is just as tall as Jean-Patrick, probably 5'11, slim, has brown hair, brown eyes and looks sporty. She looks more like a "Mountain Co-op" person. She is studying geography at UQAM. I can sense she is also very passionate about the outdoors. She tells me about the environmental problems of Montreal and how sometimes, she thinks about going back to her town/village.

They then ask me what I am doing here and when I tell them I am studying French, they seem happy and content. They talk to me off and on in English and French, but I always talk in French..Our conversation continues in the subway and goes on up until we get out to the street and they direct me to my restaurant. I am pleased I've had a good conversation with some strangers I just met and will probably never see again...It's refreshing.

Fearing that I will be late, I show up at the resto at 7:45, where the original meeting time was for 8 pm. I tell the waiter about Angela's booking and look around the restaurant if I can stop "my people" anywhere, but the waiter, who looks very cute, but also very snobby and mean, aka like a true Quebecker, tells me he has no Angela booked in his reservations list. I am surprised. I tell him to look again and this time, he comes back, looking angry, sort of giving me the "why are you making me look at my list when I know what I booked?" look. He tells me he has a reservation for Mark at 8:30....So I now see that Angela booked half an hour later than she'd told me,

I get out of the cozy and small restaurant filled with dressed up Quebeckers and tourists and walk in no direction in particular. I get on the Avenue Mont-Royal and browse a few shops, including a video store, where I buy "Rare Birds" for $5.99 on the clearance rack [i guess the film wasn't that popular] and a relatively new French film I heard much about, titled "Gregoire Moulin contre l'Humanité." After my 30-minute walk, I notice it's 8.40, which means, I am fashionably late..but I am on time or "à l'heure" in French.

At the restaurant, I notice Angela looking her best. She must be excited about her opening tomorrow...I know she worked hard to finish up her paintings on time. Angela, a producer for a national radio show and an artist in her spare time [though knowing her, she would do it full-time if it was affordable], is from a relatively small town in Newfoundland where she must have gotten the urge to travel because she's seen half the world. Angela lived in Brazil, Italy, Montreal and a few other places that I can't recall. When talking with her, it is easy to notice she is down to earth, though, judging from her CV, no one should be.

As for her look, she is about 5'10*, is thin, has brown, short hair, cut in the 1920s dancer style, has green eyes and an incredibly unique, artsy sense of style. It is sure that when Angela wears something, few other people in town will have it.

Mark, her husband, is easy to define by his kind smile, his 5'10* height, the brown curly hair and the blue eyes, and of course, his freckles. Mark is lean, as well, though not slim. He is very kind and very friendly. His point of view is defined by the fact that he went to journalism school.

Mark, sitting opposite Angela, is giving off a greeting smile as he indulges himself in a glass of wine the waiter just gave him to taste.

Next to Mark and Angela are two of their friends, Michael and... [I already forgot his name, but I'll call him John]. Michael is an architect in the city and is busy working on a piece for an international exhibition. He is originally from Grand Falls and has known Angela since high school.

Opposite him is John, who just moved here after 13 years of living in Newfoundland [he is from NS], teaching college students English. He now teaches high school students here English, as well.

The food the waiters bring is good, but in minimal amounts, meaning, if I wanted, I could eat the food on the whole plate with one bite. It is pretty good, though, for the three courses before the main course, as they prepare me for the delicious venison that they serve us. It is quite delectable.

Angela pays at the end of the evening, which bothers me because I want to pay, but the bill is so high! She says she expected she would pay when she invited me. I feel good knowing Angela has just paid almost $90 for a meal for me. That is awfully kind of her.

At the end of the evening, my daily total:

4 new friends from Quebec
1 less dinner to have to think about spending money for
1 great evening with friends
1 good walk around the Mont-Royal neighbourhood
2 dvds I am looking forward to watching

Note: The height described in this post is estimated...no precise measurements have been made on the subjects of this entry.

Bob is starting to go on my nerves. He makes ignorant, xenophobic, sexist and racist comments that I have a hard time believing someone in Canada could utter.

The National, CBC's current affairs show with Peter Mansbridge, was having a national debate on the recent arrests of the terrorist suspects in Toronto. The show comprised of a Q & A session, where questions would be posed by non-Muslim Canadians to Muslims in the audience, but also to five panelists that CBC had invited to speak.

At one point, a man from Ontario asks Muslims who took their passion and anger to the streets of Toronto when the cartoons mocking Islam were published in European papers
why they don't do the same thing for the alleged terrorists among their midst. The man asked for the Canadian Muslim community to stand up and pioneer the ant-terrorism movement within Islam, starting in Canada.

A man in the audience responded to the question by saying that when ethnic shootings take place in various Canadian communities, whole communities don't stand up to apologize for the actions of one person. "Similarly," he pointed out, "as a Muslim Canadian, I don't feel I should apologize for the actions of one person. That person does not represent my religion and has no relevance to Islam."

I agree with what he said. Bob jumps and says that this is bull because every single person is representative of the community to which they belong. Aladin and I aren't sure what he means by this, so he clarifies that if he, as a black man, were to go to Newfoundland, a province that doesn't have a high numbers of black Canadians, local residents would see him as representative of all the black men. So, according to him, if he were to commit a crime, all locals would see every future black person as a criminal.

I could understand his point but I don't think I could ever agree. He was talking of generalizations that are made based on ignorance. Though he didn't say this, he sounded like he was talking of himself.

The conversation turns to him talking about the fact that in the media, everyone is paying attention to what Muslims are doing, how big a risk they're in, how discriminated in North America they are. For Bob, this is all bias, as, according to him, no one is paying attention to what is happening to the Christian Sudanese who have been "slaughtered" in thousands. I agree with him that in parts of the world, Christians ARE being persecuted. However, anyone who takes an absolutist point of view where it's one extreme or the other, risks being close-minded and one-sided.

He says, "look at what's happening at the Middle East. Your people are killing off Jews in dozens." I notice now that this is a revolving cycle, so I tell him that the extreme, violent and terrorist actions taking place in the Occupied Territories are impardonable and that yes, they may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but it is equal to the 39-year occupation where education, mobility, prospects of employment and living standards in general are minimal. I would never justify the actions of the men and women who blow themselves on the street because their young brother/sister was shot at a close range by an Israeli Defense Force member. They commit murder of equally innocent civilians. I do understand the actions of suicide bombers...they are desperate, hopeless and in need of supporting their families. When they have no jobs, ways to support their families, they opt to give their lives up to support their families. It's not justifiable, nor is it Islamic in any way, but it is understandeable...it's not rocket science...

Bob utters something to which neither Aladdin nor I have anything to add. He says we should accept the fact that "most of the world does not like Jews." I am dumbfounded and don't know what to say. I say that he should rethink what he just said. He says that no, that they are unwanted in Europe, not wanted in the Muslim world and it seems, he said, they are not that popular in North America or in their land. Aladdin and I realize we are talking to the wall and end the conversation here.

Bob says this is because, for Muslims primarily, the Qur'an says that Muslims should avoid Christians and Jews wherever they go. He tells us he knows this because he's read the Qur'an [very hard to believe he did!] and that he was surprised it pointed out that Muslims should not associate themselves with Christians and Jews. Aladdin adds that he's not familiar with this specific part of Qur'an, but the part he's familiar with says that whenever in need, a Muslim should turn to his closest neighbours, Christians.

By the time this conversation ends, it is 12:30 am and I decide I will not talk anymore about any aspects of my religion. This man is someone who does not want to hear other people's points of view. Rather, he wants to spread his ignorant propaganda around...Since I am only here for a few more weeks, sharing a room with him, I will try not to have anything to do with him or discuss any religious points with him.

It's ironic how a different point of view makes life seem totally different from the way it may have appeared a week ago. I have been wandering the streets of downtown Montreal , thinking what a newcomers' honeymoon the last week has been. Everything appeared lively and nice, pretty and historic, modern and stylish. In some ways, Montreal is still that same way, but something I wrote in an e-mail today made me think deeply about my presence here.

I was writing to a couple of volunteers from a social justice group about Montreal. I wrote, not even thinking about it, about missing home. Montreal is a beautiful city. It's got an amazing history, an even more amazing present time as a metropole and a cosmopolitan city, and on top of it all, it's got an unpredictable future. The city is filled with life and energy. But sometimes, you feel the need for that which you didn't ever think of yearning for before. So here I am, walking back from class, the warm Montreal wind carrying the aromas of the city's many restaurants, and I am missing the cold, rough winds of St.John's, but most of all, family and my closest friends.

It's only been a week and I am missing home. The big city where all is found can't provide me with the warmth of home. Home is definitely where family and friends are.

As I continue wandering the streets of the city, I listen to Leonora Poloska's song "Fati Im Nuk Ishe Ti"...It's a song that has nothing to do with my circumstances. Leonora Poloska is one of those artists you feel affinity with because of the way she sounds, no matter what song she sings and when she sings sad songs, she sounds like she speaks to your sadness. As I go through my sadness and think of home, I listen to Leonora and feel a bit closer to it.

Leonora Poloska - Fati Im Nuk Ishe Ti

Thërras, ne zemër po bërtas,
Por askush nuk ndëgjon
Në vete kam nje mall
Që askush se kupton.

Ti qe ishe në shpirtin tim,
Këtë këngë do ta dhuroj,
Edhe pse pra nuk te kam,
Fytyren tënde e kërkoj.

Fati im nuk ishe ti,
E keqja të morri në rini,
Thonë e shkruar paska qenë
E shkruar.

Plagë që nuk shërohen lehtë
Në mua ti ke lënë,
Ma bëre pa të drejtë,
Ike pa të thënë.

Ti qe ishe në shpirtin tim,
Këtë këngë do ta dhuroj,
Edhe pse pra nuk te kam,
Fytyren tënde e kërkoj.

Fati im nuk ishe ti,
E keqja të morri në rini,
Thonë e shkruar paska qenë
E shkruar.

Outings with our afternoon language monitor are great fun. Liliana is originally from Slovakia but came here at a young age, so she is pretty much a Quebecker. If you heard her talk French, you could never tell she was not born in Quebec, so ingrained is her French dialect.

The first day our class met her, she shared the story of growing up under communism in Czechoslovakia of the late 80s and early 90s. It was an emotional account and though she removed hints of emotion from her story, I could sense some nostalgia in the way she would talk about childhood in eastern Europe. She told us the story of the day communism in Czechoslovakia ended for her.

The story Liliana told us was about the day she finished elementary school [Grade 1 to 4]. In communist countries, ceremonies after grade 4 were quite popular and if one were to compare them to anything in Canada/western world, it would be a mini-version of the graduation ceremony.

Liliana had long looked forward to the day when she would "grow up", graduate from grade 4. Planning for the day, she had persuaded her mother to buy her the pioneer suit she had long wanted to wear for her graduation ceremony. During communism, students wore blue uniforms and tied red headkerchiefs around their necks along with , on their heads, sharp, blue hats with a red star in front.

Liliana had asked her mother to iron the suit, which waited in the closet for the day when she would proudly wear it. She lived for the day, that is, until the day itself. Not long before Liliana's graduation, communism ended in Czechoslovakia. Now, wearing a star would be seen as a sign of treachery, as a sign of support for the system that governed the country for almost 50 years with an iron fist.

Liliana wore a skirt and a shirt on the day of her ceremony. She did not get to wear the uniform that meant a world to her. It was not the same anymore. She would never wear the uniform.

The thought of it saddened me. It made me think of the many illusions we're made to admire throughout our lives that are often simple deceptions.

Liliana's crumbled dreams are the thoughts of someone who still lives with the feelings of that disillusion, even thought more than a dozen years have passed since it happened. She is a child of the revolution and at the same, collateral damage of that same revolution, a side victim of the political shuffle.

We went to the Jean Talon Market today. It reminded me of the open markets home. Everything is laid out outside, in small tents.

As we enter the market, we are given instructions by Liliana to meet in an hour at a creperie for some free crepes. We are to form teams of two, to get answers to some questionnaires. Meghna and I are given a sheet with various questions to ask the sellers about the origins of the goods they sell. Walking around, we notice sample trays with exotic fruits like mango, peach, orange, strawberry, etc. As we go to different sellers, we try different kinds of fruits...It's obviously a form of advertising the fruits these women and men sell. They definitely seem to get our attention, but very little of our wallet [I buy a 1.5 lb-basket of Californian strawberries for $1].

Throughout the market, there are villagers and town folk trying to sell their fruits, vegetables and plants using handmade signs to best attract the general public to their tent or their table.

Some of them are kind and helpful to us as we interrupt their work. Others, understandably, are quiet and busy, pretending they don't hear our questions. They sometimes give us patronizing answers, like when we ask them what they usually sell. "Look and see," they tell us... These people have no time to waste on answering silly questions. They have business to attend to. Others are friendly and kind to even tell us that impatience ["impatiens" in French], the plant, is pronounced "im pa sja" in the language when they notice we struggle with the pronunciation.

A man with a green t-shirt approaches us and asks us if we would like to learn more about one of the most well-known environmental lobbyists in the world. He asks us if we know what Greenpeace does. We decide to hear his spiel on global environment and the risks the world is facing if it continues to ignore the problems imposed by global corporations. It all sounds good, but when I ask him for more information, he says he could fill in my registration form and it would take less than 15 minutes. I tell him all I want is more information on the organization and knowing they have a website, I tell him I will check the organization's website online. He tells me if I do that, I will be supporting greenpeace.ca [Greenpeace Canada] and not Greenpeace Quebec, which doesn't have a website yet. We tell him we'll think about it, so he gives us a pamphlet on the safe producers of recyclable toilet paper.

We walk to the creperies and our group gets free crepes. If we want anything on them, like Nutella, it would cost us $3.00 plus tax. With that money, I could buy a jar of the stuff.

Meghna and I go to Sami Fruit, a closed grocery store that looks more like a mountain of fruits and vegetables than a regular grocery store. Three brothers are at the counter, for the busy times, when customers come to them with carts filled with spinach, pepper or tomato. Over the heads of the Middle Eastern men hangs a sign in Arabic that neither Meghna nor I can decipher.

Everything is inexpensive in this store. A kilo of tomatos costs less than two dollars, a kilo of spinach even less than that.

As we walk further, we go into a cheese store where the smell of the many varieties of cheese overwhelm us and the way we look at each other resembles an expression that, if put into words, would go along something like: "This is a very smelly store." There are many varieties of le fromage from la France but also cheese from different regions of Quebec.

Coming out of the store, I notice a sign for a store that sells hallal food further down the street. I run into it and get some beef bologna and chicken salami. It all looks tempting and I am especially tempted by the fact that it's hallal, but I note that I have little change in my pocket, so I get a few things.

Coming back, I notice, on the streets, that men and women throughout are selling magazines titled "Itinéraire". I ask our monitor to tell me what they are. "Itineraire" is apparently a local magazine published by former homeless people. "It is a way for them to reintegrate into the society," she says. She adds that this is a government project to pull people off the street and to give them something to do, providing them with the first chance to earn their income without having to beg on the street.

As we enter the subway once again, we are greeted by homeless musicians. They probably can't be part of the Itineraire project for one reason or the other. What to do about them?

I have had a few chats with my Jamaican roommate who seems to have a set idea of Islam, namely the "I don't understand Islam and I don't honestly want to know much more about it because the media are feeding me enough information" sort of an idea. He refuses to listen to anything that differs from his point of view and when he finally does listen, he seems to think he's a great debater when he uses the "I agree with you, but...." or "Oh, man, I totally agree, but.." conciliation method. It's noticeable he doesn't much listen to what I say, but just say "I totally agree"...In those cases, when people agree with me before they hear me well, I conclude they don't really listen.

Earlier tonight, we began discussing the West and its efforts to penetrate into the East. B's passion for his homeland and the past that Jamaica shares in the history of imperialism was obvious from the beginning. I fully agreed with his thoughts on how the West manipulated [note*: Bob uses "manipulate" every few words] the East and how, for centuries, it exploited the richness of the lands, be it in human or natural resources. It is thanks to this exploitation that Great Britain is one of the wealthiest nations of the world. So far, it seemed like we were on the same page.

The word switched from Jamaica's past with colonialism to its culture. I asked Bob what the religious makeup of the country was. He told me right away that 90% or more of the country were Christians, namely Roman Catholics. "The rest," he said, "are atheists, agnostics, voodoo followers, and of course, about 1% of the population are Rastafarians, which is how I prefer to identify myself. Bob Marley's da man, bombo klaat!" I asked him what the native religion was. he mentioned something I couldn't understand, but he did say it was a very insignificant percentage of the country's religious makeup. Noting that by virtue of my questions, I presumed that Portugal brought Christianity to Jamaica, Bob quickly hurried to say that Christianity existed in Africa and even the Caribbean before colonizers or missionaries came to the land. I was a bit reluctant to accept the fact that Christianity existed in the lands cut-off from the West or even the Middle East that I asked him to confirm this. This seems to have irritated him because he immediately began to talk about the Ottoman Empire and how colonizing it was. He said how it forced the native Lebanese to convert to Islam. According to him, this is why there are so many Jamaicans with Lebanese origins in his homeland.

Naturally, I disagreed with this because the information I have read, saw and heard about the historic empire is conflicting with what B said. Yes, there may have been infamous years in the Turkish rule, but the Empire is known as one of the most tolerant governing bodies of their time. It is only in the Ottoman Empire Spain that Jews, persecuted throughout, were allowed to practise their religion without fear or discrimination. Catalan princes would never [and never did] allow a society of three monotheistic religions to co-exist together.

Christians, though forced to pay tax for as long as they did not convert to Islam were free to pray in what were initially only Eastern Orthodox churches whenever they wished. Later, Roman Catholics enjoyed the same freedoms. The measure of religious tolerance was unseen and unheard of until the Ottoman Empire. True, upon conquering Constantinopoulos, Turks did convert the Haghia Sophia church, the center of Eastern Orthodoxy, into a mosque. However, more than anything, the measure was political and not aimed at suppressing Christianity but rather, making a symbolic mark on the victory the Ottomans had just achieved.

So, comparing it to today, paying tax to the Ottoman Empire to remain Christian may appear discriminatory, but when one compares this to executions that took place in Christian lands because someone belonged to a different religion, it is minute, even insignificant. This is what I mentioned to B. Obviously, this seems to have come in in one ear and come out on the other because the young Rastafarian immediately refuted the idea, saying this was not good enough for him. For him, any sort of discrimination is discrimination, no matter when or where it takes place.

He said Ottomans were to blame for half the world's Muslims. If it weren't for them, according to him, I wouldn't have been a Muslim, but a Catholic. This was enough for me, so I told him he couldn't know what I would have been when he's never lived in my land. There are close to 50000 Turks in Kosovo who have converted at the time of Islam's birth. I couldn't believe someone who has never even known the name of my country or my culture could make judgements like that.

I told him about Kosovo's 40 Orthodox churches considered UNESCO heritage buildings for their extremely well-preserved early Orthodox architecture. The buildings were never touched by the Ottomans.

He switched his concerns from the Ottoman Empire to Islam. This would not be an easy discussion. For him, it was incredibly unfair [he said "I think it's extremely, extremely, extremely unfair"] that he could be shot if he went to Somalia, a Muslim state, yet "Muslim girls cover themselves and walk free in the country I will soon call home." I stopped for a second and I finally understood where his discussion on the Ottoman Empire was aimed to lead. I couldn't believe what this man was saying: He was blaming all Muslims for ludicrous and culturally conservative countries that exist in the world.

So I said he couldn't compare Canada with Somalia because the two have nothing in common. Canada was not a state whose laws were guided by its citizens' religion. He disagreed, saying Canada had been formed on Christian principles. I was now floored. This man, who a half an hour ago spoke against the principles of colonialism, now defended the idea of religious imperialism. Somalia, I mentioned to him, may call itself a Muslim state, and this is how the West may accept it to be but no, it has no traces of religious tolerance, cultural respect and Islamic spirituality engrained into its governance, so no, I can't say it's a real Muslim state and besides, a Muslim in Somalia is a Muslim in Somalia. I am in Canada and I want Bob to see ME, not a suicide bomber who blows himself up, claiming he defends Islam by doing it.

I said I was glad Canada is on its way to becoming a secular state and that I can't wait for the day when everyone will be equal and no one will know what religion I, he or anyone is. He said I wasn't like the Muslims he met in Ontario because those in Ontario were close-minded and would have punched him in the face if he said to them what he told me. I laughed, but I really didn't feel like it.

He mentioned how a few weeks ago, he was hanging out with a Sudanese Muslim who is extremely religious. The Sudanese man made fun of Bob's Rastafarianism, saying he was sorry Bob was a Rastafarian. Bob, instead of pointing it out that he didn't appreciate jokes about his spiritual life returned the teasing joke by asking the guy what a Muslim man does if, while praying, someone farts in his/her face. He laughed and added how this Sudanese guy wanted to punch him in the face, that's how insensitive Muslims can be.

I was shocked. I couldn't believe he had just told me the most insensitive joke I have EVER heard...I decided to end it there, saying it was almost my bedtime, but that I had not had this intense a dialogue with anyone and indeed, I hadn't. I couldn't believe someone so culturally diverse can be so culturally insensitive...

Bob has, as Jay notes, a "typical freshman attitude"...he has no evidence or logic for his hypotheses, only senseless ideas in his mind.

My roommates and I had a great chat on dating girls and boys. The topic came up when we all started talking about the fact that if you're really looking to get a sex partner for a night, Montreal is the place.

For those in need, it seems like there's an abundance of ways to get satisfied. Prostitutes, go-go dancers [the key word on any sign advertising sex bars is "contact"] and of course, self-help, dildos of any size, dvds and mags.

The conversation deviated from that to Aladin asking me how I found out I was gay. He said he always wondered how a Muslim would deal with being gay. For him, it's a difficult mix that is hard to have in a religious milieu. I agree with him and tell him I would have much preferred to be a straight Muslim. It would have been much easier. I would feel much more liberated, as a Muslim, if I didn't have "Allah's throne shakes when two men touch one another" on my mind. It is great pressure at times, to think of settling down someday, as a gay Muslim, and living a normal life with someone without feeling guilty or afraid I am doing something wrong. I console myself by saying if Allah didn't want me born this way, he would have created me straight. The conflict is always within me and I don't know if it will ever fade away.

Aladin curiously asks me questions about my sexuality, wondering how my family dealt with it, how I deal with it now, if I have a boyfriend. He says in Iran, his neighbour's wife was lesbian. She had three children with him before she came out to him and left the family. She said she couldn't deal with the pressure and the lying. She couldn't lie to herself and say she was someone else when she knew who she really was. Aladin asks me whether I will ever have a partner and I tell him that someday, I just may have one...for good. We both laugh.

The conversation turns to Aladin now. He was raised to marry a Muslim girl, be it Persian, Egyptian, Russian or Turkish Muslim girl. He would prefer to marry a Muslim girl, too, so he doesn't have to deal with all the drama of marrying someone of different religion who would then have to convert, embrace Islam and not know much about the religion. Having said that, Aladin doesn't sound like someone who would NOT marry a non-Muslim girl, if he liked her. He tells me if the right girl came along, he would, of course marry, no matter what her background, but his preference is laid out.

Next is Jay, who I thought was gay up until tonight. He is an unfortunate straight man, 5'8, whom everyone mistakes as gay. He dyes his hair and has slight flamboyant tendencies, which seems to be grounds for such prejudice. He gives us a warning that if we ever date native girls, we should keep in mind that they get angry very easily and that they like to fight, verbally and physically. He said the need for this kind of a girl is in his blood because he has masochistic tendencies. He prefers to be in relationships where girls cause him pain, be it emotional or physical. After the rather negative description of native girls, Jay gives us the descriptionhis preferred girl, as well. So, here is the list of preferences my two straight roommates have:

Aladin	Jay
Same age [22] or younger	Same age [22] or older
Height: Aladin's height [5'10''] or shorter	Height: Doesn't matter
Interests: Must love soccer	Interests: Can't be a commerce student, must be into the arts
++++ if she wears a hijab	+++++she must like fights

There you have it. Any interested applicants, let me know.

I got up late today, 10 am. I also went out, as the day was shaping up to be a great opportunity for some photo-taking. So, here's where my curiosity for photos took me:

I walked up _________ rd [I don't know what street it was...all i know is it was a bridge over the highway and it went past the Palais des congrès [to my right, as I advanced toward the hill showing the Basilica of Notre Dame].

After getting to the hill by the Basilica, I realized that getting into the Roman Catholic gem would have to cost me at least $5,so I decided to just take some photos of the curious tourists, some photos of the outside of the building and a photo of an older man who seemed so French, he reminded me of a square in Paris.




I walked forward to the west of Basilica and took some photos of the busy streets filled with tourists. I would have liked to go to a cafe and look out as people came in and went out, but alas, on a low budget, all I can afford for now is a view from the outside.

I was fascinated by the suddenly busy streets and others that were all but empty, if it werent for the Peugeots that came and went every few seconds. It's funny that in Montreal, Canada, one would find Peugeots. Moreover, it is also funny that in the city, women's sun hats, you know, the pretty, straw or velour / other expensive material-made hats.

The pretty Quebecoises wear the sun hats that go along well with their thin scarves that dance to the music of the wind. Some of them are busy sharing the stories of the week with their friends in coffee shops that reek either theri longing for Frenchness. It's either that or the smell of their expensive perfumes, filling the small streets of old Montreal that I am visiting.



As I walk down the hilly street of _________ [all I know is that it's across the street from the City Hall and next to Chateau Ramezay], I notice how touristic this district of the city is. Throughout the wide street, cafes and restaurants filled with people create a delightful decoration, perfect setup for a postcard photographer. An ice cream stand is busy with customers, while the Ben & Jerry's just down the road has a waiter waiting outside to turn down possible customers because they don't have any space available for the hordes of people walking down the street, in need of some refreshment.

Further down the busiest street in Vieux Montreal is a man who makes people laugh using his unicycle. Slapstick comedy was never so suitable. The weather is perfect, sunny with hints of refreshing wind, the day is looking beautiful and the people around you laughing and happy. Of course everyone will fill this man's hat with change and money. They'd probably do it even if I performed on a unicycle.

I leave him to go to the ________ Marché, the old market that first opened as the Montreal City Hall in the mid-1800s, now home to the local artist stores. Among them is the boutique of the Montreal Institute of Design, which sells products made by its students. Though the products are supposed to be innovative, shape and form-wise, as well as in relation to their use, the pieces here must have been done by students who failed because none of them shows any novelty or innovation in form. They are simple card decks, simple wall clocks, for which the only special thing is the fact that they are made of 100% recycled materials. Maybe that's worthy of some mention, but everything else is...well, regular.

From the marché I go to the Marguerite Bourgeoys chapel, named after a French nun who apparently combined religion with social justice and assisted the poor and the destitute. The chapel is nothing special, although it is difficult to call this a chapel when its size is reminiscent of a church. The building is huge!

I walk down rue Notre Dame, where part of the street is paved with rocks. It's a nice sight, again, quite reminiscent of France. I go into a small book shop, "Tarquin" , owned by a couple, both anglophones, who have made the entrance to their house a bookstore. I buy "How to be a Brit" for $5. It looks like a funny book and besides, I've always wondered what makes a Brit a Brit. This may answer something... It'll also be the only paper book I took with me, aside from e-books I have on my laptop [Helen Fielding's whole collection, Dan Brown's recently made-into-a-movie "Da Vinci Code", Sophie Kinsella's trashy "Shopaholic" collection].

I keep walking until I reach the Mary Queen of the World Cathedral, the Roman Catholic cathedral of Montreal. This, again, is a magnificent building, though the traditional architecture is pretty regular and if it weren't for a gold-plated pope lying inside the cathedral, I would have said it's another church. Outside the building is the definition of "tabernacle", which most Quebeckers call "tabarnak" and not for a good reason. "Tabarnak" is equivalent to "F$^&" in English. I don't know why, Quebeckers don't know either. All they know is that it's a bad word.

I walk to the Sunlife building, which is in the Commonwealth park. The building is where the Queen hid her jewelery and wealth during the WWII upon following Winston Churchill's advice. Fearing an invasion of England, Churchill advised the royal family to dispose of their valuables in a safe space, namely in the Sunlife building in Montreal. Today, the building serves as memory of that time. I don't know what it's used for.

I walked back from Ste.Catherine West to East. On my way back, I heard two sisters play the most popular classical music. I felt like I was in a "Classical music for dummies" concert, as I could actually know what all the tunes were and judging from my minimal knowledge of the classical music, I can imagine most people listening to the girls knew the tunes. Vivaldi's "Spring" was one of them.

This was my day. I walked back home, had some lunch and went to the village, where I found frozen dinner lasagna for 99 cents. I got a few and came back, went out for Lebanese dinner. It was tasty. My first time eating Lebanese.

So grand total of the day:

110 photos of the city
6 frozen dinners, all lasagnas
5 hours spent walking the old Montreal district
2 tired feet
1 good Lebanese dinner
1 good roomie chat [will tell more later]

The classroom in which I had my test was semi-empty [it holds 200], the students who filled it were predominantly of three origins: Chinese, Mexican and Russian. Out of the 40 that were there, 23 were international students from China, 8 from Mexico, 4 from Russia, 4 were Arabic/Algerian/Moroccan and there was me.

A woman who heard my name called asked me if I spoke Arabic. I told her I didn't. She said my name was popular in Arabic-speaking lands. I asked her where she was from. She said she came here as a refugee from Algeria, ran away from her husband. I was going to ask her how she had made it here, but the test started. I left early, so I didn't get to hear the rest of the story.

The test cost me $20. It was a bit more challenging than the test I did for the summer course. I will find out how it went on Tuesday.

I didn't do much the rest of the day. I bought two slices of pizza for lunch and came back home, watched some "Mad TV" and took a two-hour nap. When I woke up, my roommates were laughing to the jokes on Mad TV. I didn't put on a "hibernate after 10 mins." reminder so it kept on playing the silly jokes.

I went out for a walk in the rain and visited the Palais des Congres, took some photos of the building and returned. I had microwaveable spaghetti with yogurt and cheese for dinner.

I didn't go out after. The rain makes it impossible to go out :(

a pretty uneventful, rainy and slow Friday.

I signed up to go see "Et la lumiere fut" at the Basilique du Notre Dame next week. It'd better be good.

We went to the NFB Robotheque, which made the day a bit more interesting. We watched a number of docs, including the Academy Award-winning "Ryan" and another really good animation short called "The Stone of Folly". "The stone..." was inspired by brain lobotomy operations done in the middle ages to cure "folly".


Before that, we made our own animations. I made one of a soccer player, in honour of the upcoming World Soccer Cup. It didn't turn out super good, but it was good enough for my first time :P

I took a picture of it, as well as a picture of my "o", which was part of "Foot" that I spelled backwards on my scratch-animation [we scratch the film in the shape we want].

I am prepping for my French placement test tomorrow for my fall courses.

The weather in Montreal is warm, very much reminiscent of the weather in Kosova. Due to the fluctuation in temperature, it is also similar to the St.John's climate, though not in the degrees, just in the process.

It was an odd day today, semi-rainy, yet it didn't rain. It was humid, which made me want to take off the three layers of clothes I put on to defend myself from the cold air conditioning in the classroom.

We didn't go anywhere all day, stayed in the classroom from 9 to 4:30, except for the lunch and snack breaks. It was such a boring day! Z got us to play a game of finding all the various regions of Quebec by asking one another. Each one of us had a name of the region and we had to ask others what they had. We all had to guess where each region went. It was a bit silly, but distracting. By the end of it, though, I felt like sleeping.

I went to the library afterwards, with Tishawn, who is also obsessed with internet. He is my Jamaican roommate whose laptop seems to stop working every day, so he borrows my installation disks. It is getting a bit annoying and I'm afraid I will have to tell him that soon. The guy is also obsessed with Bob Marley. I can't believe someone could be such a fan of the singer. He has stickers, patches, cds, posters of Bob Marley and on top of that, he hums and sings all of the popular Marley songs...I learned a few words in Patwa from him, including "Bombo klaat" which is apparently equivalent to "sh$%."

I wrote to a few friends here in town to tell them I was here and that they could call me whenever or leave me a message to go out or meet for coffee.

By the time I got out from the library, at around 7:30, it was starting to rain...Misty rain, bleh.

Today was not cold. I was. I kept sniffling and cleaning my nose in class. I have officially become the person who causes everyone to look at him because he blows on his nose making noises that no one has ever heard before. I went through two packages of tissues [I'm marking my progress by seeing how many packages of tissues I go through in a day]. Yesterday, it was two, as well.

The instructor we have doesn't know how to spell. He is patient, helpful and most of all, French, which I love because I am learning the accent from him, but he simply does not know how to spell. It's his first time teaching higher level French. In the past, he's taught beginner's French, which obviously seems to not have challenged his writing skills. Otherwise, poor kids who learned from him.

I had to call my fall part-time job boss today. He said I will be working in a high school, leading cultural activities and most of all, activities that include oral practice, such as conversation, games, etc. I would have preferred to teach in an elementary, as I have a fear of high school students, but oh, well. He said the high school is closer to the downtown area.

So I decided to check the apartment prices in the residence, here at UQAM. It turns out, cable / fridge & microwave & stove / bed & table / heat included costs $492. It sounds affordable, but I get paid barely that all month to be able to afford it. So I contacted a few friends to see what they were doing and maybe they'll know of someone looking for a roommate for the fall. I have found rooms/ shared appartments in community newspapers for $325 - $375.

We went to the national library today, after lunch. The library, part of BANQ ["Les Bibliotheques et Archives Nationales du Quebec"], has five floors [I think] of books, computers, a whole floor dedicated to CDs and DVDs, one section of every floor dedicated to users with laptops, so they can connect to wireless internet. The building also has direct access to the metro, making it easy on rainy and snowy days to get to where one needs to get. Our "monitrice", the girl who helps us with our spoken French, asked us to go to our favourite sections and come back an hour later.

I went to the wireless area, wrote a couple of e-mails, let Meighan use it for her own e-mails and hurried downstairs at the end of the hour. I didn't know we'd be asked where we had spent our hour, so in an effort to sound interested in the library, I told Z [our monitor] I had been browsing Turkish CDs on the fourth floor. Meighan said she had looked up some of her favourite books in French. I felt bad that I had to lie for something so silly, but the damage was already done.

I also went to the gay village, or simply "village", as Montrealers prefer to say, seemingly wanting to remove the "gay" context from it. It is impossible, though, to do that, in a neighbourhood where the rainbow flag is the favourite sticker/flag/poster/pamphlet. I expected to see a street full of gay men and women who would be dancing, going crazy and enjoying their freedom in bizarre ways. Instead, I stumbled upon a street that was no different from any other streets, except that this one had men holding hands, kissing in restaurants and bars , having romantic conversations over a meal, browsing gay sex stores, flirting without fearing that they bark up the wrong tree.

I went into a dollar store to buy some cutlery, plates and cups. A Latino in his mid-twenties [most likely Mexican...something about him screamed "sombrero man"] man kept saying "hola" as I walked past different isles. I kept avoiding him, not because he didn't look attractive [he did] but because I don't like people going after me. It almost looks like a chase, a hunt of sorts, for a catch, a prey that will succumb to its predator. Although, I know, I am starting to realize that I am talking about human instinct and what is human instinct if not identical to the animal instinct? Maybe I prefer to chase rather than be chased...Maybe I'm the predator.

I got back to the res. and found out some of my roommates wanted to go to a Francofolie concert, which I also wanted to go see. It was only five minutes away, so I walked with them. At the concert, a belly-dancing Middle Eastern singer whose voice I much enjoyed. She was, however, joined by a tight pants-wearing Quebecker who pretended to do belly dancing and in a similar way, also pretended to know how to sing. Bad idea. She was still the highlight of my night. I don't know what her name was, though. That's the thing about Montreal. Everything is in abundance that people don't pay much attention to who or what is singing. They enjoy the moment. And I followed that idea, as well..


We went for gelati/ice cream at rue Prince Arthur after the concert. It was so easy to notice we were getting closer to the Anglophone part of the city. Everyone around us started to talk in English. As i tried to order my gelati in French, the counter lady started answering in English. I refuse to give way to people who dismiss my French by talking back to me in English so I continued in French. I could tell the lady wasn't pleased, but whatever. We had a bilingual one-way dialogue. They should respect your choice when they notice you want to talk in that language.

Our daily class schedule goes as follows:

9 - 10:30 class
10:30 - 10:50 break
10:50 - 12:30 class
12:30 - 1:30 lunch
1:30 - 4:30 multimedia lab / conversation class

I think the last part is a bit dragged and too long. We will be in a classroom with no windows for three hours every afternoon, and it's the same classroom where our classes are held.

My instructor is a man who came here from France in 2000. He comes from southern France. He's in his thirties, French-looking [grey hair and serious face] and is about 5'11 tall. He takes aikido classes and likes biking.

He says it was an adjustment for him to get used to the -30 degree winters of Montreal. After he mentions the year he arrived in Canada, three students in class, aside from me, mention they made Canada home that year, as well. Martina is a Municher in her forties who wanted to change her life around so she moved as far from Germany as she could;Vita is in her early twenties who came here with her family from eastern Russia. She refuses to listen to Russian music, as I discovered when I asked her if she'd listened to any of the songs from Eurovision, namely Russian entries; Ronald, in his sixties, who hopped into his car in Colorado and decided Montreal and Quebec would become his home after he saw the ski resorts in the province [Ronald is a ski instructor].

We read an article in the morning, did some light grammar and had a relatively short morning. I think I may be catching a cold. I didn't have any tissues, so my nose kept running and I kept cleaning it using my sleeve... At one point, I almost left the room. I was getting really frustrated.




We went out on a tour of the city after lunch. We toured: Concordia, McGill, part of downtown, park Mont-Royal, old Montreal, old port, St.Joseph's oratory. The trip back from the oratory put us in some trouble, as we ended up in the middle of a busy traffic lane. The driver scratched an old lady's car, so she insisted he not go anywhere until the police arrived. We waited there for a half-an hour, overlooking nothing but a busy traffic lane and a bus stop. The police arrived, contacted the bus insurance company and all was done.


I continued to sniffle, but I had rushed to a store and bought a dozen packages of tissues, so I at least had something to clean my nose with. I can't stand stuffy nose conditions, though, so it was a difficult day to get through.



Right now, I am getting ready for bed. I came back after the tour, took a three-hour nap, had sardine/onion salad with some plain yogurt [yumm], had some cold medicine Tishawn, my Jamaican roommate offered and had a warm glass of milk. Ah, I feel much better under a warm blanket. All of my roommates were pretty concerned and offering to help me with anything, including getting me blankets if I needed any. I thought that was nice of them.




I called home a few minutes ago and talked to nena and my brother. They both sounded good, but I could sense nena missed me, though she tried to sound happy and tried to make the day sound uneventful and unimportant. I miss her a lot. It is difficult for both of us to be apart from one another, especially since we haven't ever lived apart. This is a challenge to overcome and hopefully soon, we'll be together again. It is, I guess, something that everyone needs to go through. When I am away like this, I can't help but think of young men and women from Kosova who leave home to find jobs thousands of miles away, just so they could earn enough to send money to their families, so they could support themselves. I am fully aware that I am not one of those people. My family will not die of hunger if I don't send them money...

Life is tough.

I met two of our neighbours, M [guy] and V [girl]. I was going for a walk when I saw M's room door open. I said "Hi" and both of them popped up their heads and their glove-covered hands, apron-camouflaged bodies appeared.


M is about 5'10 tall, a tiny bit chubby, but you couldn't tell if you didn't notice his chin. He has dark hair and equally black eyes. He has a childish face, reminiscent of an innocent teenager. If I saw him on the street, I'd say he was 15 years old. But that just shows how deceiving appearances can be.

M is a semi-flaming gay guy. The reason he is semi-flaming is that he seems to be proud to be gay and seems to love showcasing it around, asking people questions like "are you gay?" and "you got a boyfriend?". In this context, "people" is a synonym for "me." He is not fully flamboyant, but there is a part of him that, even if he didn't talk, would scream gay.

He is studying in Quebec's CEGEP, doing some style/design studies or something like that. He lives in the residence because it only costs his parents [not him] $450 a month. His parents do his laundry every five days, though he never sees them. His mother picks up the dirty laundry in the morning when he is in school, his father drops it off in the evenings when M is out partying or working at his favourite boutique.

M can be one of two types of guys: A guy who either ressembles Europeans who are brutally honest, or he can be a guy who is a simple Quebecker who is just snobby and mean.

V lives two doors down from M. She is about 5'8, dark brown hair, brown eyes and a long face, but just long enough for it to look pretty. She has a beautiful smile, though it's overshadowed by her low self-esteem, as I noticed in conversations with her and her "lovely" friend who takes advantage of her vulnerabilities.

V seems to like to be friends with M, who makes her clean his room for the purpose of M's boyfriend P's visit. Apparently, P hates to come to M's appartment and notice the dishes that haven't been washed for two weeks. When I ask V where she is from, she mentions a small town and blushes immediately. M is kind enough to say how the dialect they use in her town is impossible to understand by Quebeckers. The girl doesn't say anything, but I notice she is embarrassed. I feel bad for her.

When I met the two, V was cleaning M's room. As I take a breather after dinner at the 12th floor patio, I am greeted by V and M again, who invite me to see the newly cleaned room for P. I go to see and notice V put on her gloves again to scrub M's stovetops. I am amazed to see how naive this girl must be. She does it and smiles while M tells me about the Ontarian boyfriend whom he met a few months ago. I look at the view of Old Montreal that M's window shows.

The word comes to Churchill Falls and M says how in 1949, Quebec, along with Canada, helped Newfoundland out from starvation. I take it personally and tell him how every year, his kind and generous province is making billions of dollars from a stupid agreement that the province of Newfoundland signed with Quebec. He adds that I should shut up because Quebec "gave us" Labrador. I can't stand impoliteness and much less useless arguments with a snobby Quebecker, so I leave, telling him I am tired and that it's been a long day.I start to wonder whether all Quebeckers think what M just said to me. I will have to ask again.

I get up at 7 am the next day, thanks to my roommate Ali's cell phone ring. His mother, now visiting Iran, called him to see how everything was and how he had settled in the city. Nevertheless, it was a good time to get up because we were supposed to meet at 8:30 to see what level we all were in.

It turns out this year, they were able to have a level 6 for the first time, and I'm there. I'm in group 13 with 16 other course participants. Meghna, from St.John's, whom I took courses with while at MUN, is also in the class with me. Wee :).. I'm glad she's there.A familiar face, someone to share the home nostalgia with. :)

We had our placement tests today. Got into a room with at least 250 other students, two dozen of them international students who came from Mexico, Japan, US and China JUST for this course.

I sit next to Su, who got into Montreal two months ago from China. She already speaks English and now is learning French. In the two months she's been here, she seems to have picked up more French than I did in a year.

We are given a test to write, in order for the instructors to know our levels of French. As soon as the test writing starts [we have 1 hour 15 mins.], dozens leave. They know very few words in the language and this is their first time seeing many of the words they are asked to fill in the blanks of the sentences in the test. Su is busy writing and gets to the second page before she notices her test answer sheet only has three multiple choice letters for the multiple choice answers, as opposed to four [which the rest of us have]. She runs down, gets the new sheet and starts to write busily again.

While I look through the test, I notice there is a short composition piece we are asked to write on how we came to Canada. I look at it and for the first time, feel I have an advantage over Anglo-Saxon Canadians who have arrived here centuries ago and probably forgot the hardship their families went through to get here. I tell the girl next to me, who is chewing her pencil and wondering what she needs to write about next to me, that she could cross out "canada" and write "montreal", as I'm sure they are interested in the grammar side of it all and composition skills, not the content we write about.

I finish the test about 15 minutes early. 80% of it is multiple choice and the rest, the composition.

From there, I go to a lineup to get my food allowance cheque for the next two weeks. It's pretty crowded, and as I wait in line, I talk to a man from Texas who isn't actually waiting for the cheque, but his boyfriend, who is still in the room. David is about thirty years old, taller than me and has a subtle American accent, not quite a Southern accent, yet noticeable enough to know he's American. We try to speak in French for a bit and I ask him what he thought of the test. Quickly, the conversation turns into his many travels with his boyfriend and the fact that they travel different countries, trying to learn their languages. They speak English, some Spanish and now, some French. David says he's always liked French and came here earlier this year for another course. My turn for the allowance cheque has come and I leave him, in hopes that I will see him in class.

In the lineup, I meet Taryn, from Calgary, who is going to Germany a day after me. At 23, she just graduated from Engineering and plans to start working soon, but before that, wants to get some traveling done. She is meeting up friends in Frankfurt on July 9th, seeing some of Germany, going to London for a weekend and visiting parts of Scotland.

I go in for my interview and talk to a lady who asks me whether or not I think money is enough for a formula for happiness. I stop for a second, think about how at this point, some money would definitely make me happy, but finally end up saying [in French] that no, money is absolutely not the key to happiness. I am, of course convinced of this, but I do have my doubts sometimes, like when my line of credit shows quadruple figures...that's what a summer of trips is going to get you.

The interviewer quickly turns her question around and now asks me a less philosophical and a more subjective question. "What makes a good student, in your mind?" she asks in French, patiently awaiting my response as she scribbles down notes on how good [or bad] my French is. I tell her how as a disorganized student, I can say organization is a good skill to have for someone in school, but that I have no problems doing well, despite my scattered notes and mind. She laughs, tells me I did well and says she will place me in level 6, but if there are not enough students to fill the number, she may mix level 6 with level 5, so there isn't a group of level 6 with two students. I hope I can get into level 6, as this way, the course credits would count for my degree purposes...

So, after we got here yesterday, we decided to go for a walk around the town to see what the city was about. Stefan, Angelina, Meghna, moi and Nicolina went out to see what all the fuss about Montreal is about.

First of all, there were endless numbers of strip bars and sex shops and theatres. Apparently, this area is known as the red light district of the city. Makes sense.

Across the street from our residence is Old Montreal and Chinatown.A few streets down, dozens of chariots along the street, thirsty horses and their riders, tired of waiting for an excited tourist. On small stores, a poster sign with "liposuccion" on it and a needle stung pile of fat is the first greeting on the door. I look at it and think it' s a discouraging campaign by the anti-liposuction activists. I move on.

As we walk and notice it's a Sunday afternoon, time when Montrealers fill the streets and go out for walks [the opposite of what the rest of Canada seems to do], we get into a mall that looks more like an art gallery, with a beautiful, flat fountain, an impressive, Greek-mythology inspired sculpture of a woman and some edgy technology on top of it all.

We keep walking and the next thing we see strikes me as odd, at least for its location. In the middle of this mall is a piece of the Berlin Wall.
I am surprised that a piece of the Wall would be kept in a mall and even more surprised that it is being treated as a piece of art. A graffiti-painted piece of concrete doesn't particularly strike me as art, but Montrealers do like to have everything and anything and I am sure this is the reason they got a piece of the German East-West divider.


We come across another store carrying "liposuccion" signs and I think how big a crisis liposuction must have become in Montreal for there to be signs everywhere discouraging the average resident from having their fat taken out.

The next turn-around is to St.Catherine East, where we seem to come into the sex shop part of the neighbourhood. Sex theatres, porn stores and various ethnic restos [probably due to the low rent], used bookstores make up this part of the street. We walk near a café that has tables laid outside, people chatting and talking carelessly. Everyone says Montreal is just as Anglophone as it is a Francophone city. I disagree. Most of the things here are in French, including people chatting...I love it. I'm excited that in a short time, I will speak French.

We get to a small convenience store and I finally realize that "Liposuccion" is not an altruistic effort by the lobbyists to stop people from cutting pieces of their bodies, but rather publicity for slushies, or rather "sloche" in French. They have "human blood" and "human skin" flavours...hmmm, it's Quebec.

I can hear French in the background, as I try to put my thoughts of the last two days into words.

Montreal is a beautiful city, open-minded, cosmopolitan, stylish and historic. It captured my mind from the first moment I walked its streets...

Three other fellow "explore"rs happened to be on the same flight I was in. We decided to share a $35-cab, so we wouldn't have to pay $20/each for a cab, but the poshy Montrealer cab drivers thought we had too much luggage. We did have 6 large luggage pieces. Eventually, a Moroccan cab driver gave us a ride...

He drove us until about five blocks from the residences because the roads were blocked. As a result of a community bycicling, the city had blocked off some of the streets. One of those streets stopped access to Rene Levesque Boulevard, which is where we wanted to go...So, the driver, in an effort to get the full amount of the $45 we decided to give him, said the residence building was only 30 seconds away from where he left us.

It was more like 30 minutes, or at least that's what it took us to get there with our heavy luggage.

I could see a camera panning in front of us, that's how authentic to a movie scene the whole thing looked: Four twenty-somethings walking on a main road as they unskillfully pull their luggage. Meghna, carrying two pieces of pink luggage down what is usually a very busy street. She seems to be quite skilled at doing this, as opposed to the other two.

At one point, the wheel of Stefan's luggagepiece breaks, so he has to carry the heavy brick-piece on his hands. It is heavy, so he ends up stopping every few minutes. Angelina doesn't know the "push-and-pull" method, which includes pushing one of the luggage pieces in front of you while you pull the other one behind you. This, of course, requires luggage with wheels. Even so, Angelina does not want to learn the "push and pull" :(...

I got to my residence room, to my disappointment, only to find out I had three other roommates. I had hoped I would have a room to myself, then hoped it would be one other person, but it turned out now, there were four of us in a small room. Stefan was lucky enough to be the first one to arrive in his room [different from mine], where there were two single rooms and one living room joined together [and apparently, five people had to share the three rooms...how, i don't know].

Angelina has two other roommates and Meghna has only one other roommate. "Lucky," as Napoleon Dynamite would say.

The room I am staying in has a small kitchen which is now also being used as sleeping quarters for the latest addition to our roommate team, Ali from Calgary.

So, the furniture in our room: A closet in the center of the room - cannot be moved; A long writing desk, from one corner of the room to the other; A fluorescent lamp on the desk; Four beds, one of which is a permanent bed, three of which are mobile, movable beds [not so slick-looking], some small tables, a small kitchen table; one chair; one armchair, two desk chairs.

In the kitchen area: Kitchen cabinets, microwave, fridge, sink. Of course, there is a bathroom in the room.

The space isn't that good. I see it simply as a space to sleep in, not one to dwell in. It never could be. The roommates are nice, though...

I arrived here early on a Sunday afternoon, given that I left home at 5:30 am.

La letra H was amazing enough to help me get to the airport so early. I feel bad everytime I see her because she presumes I have assumptions about her and that I prejudge her [like assuming that because she was once late to meet , she always will be]. I joke around with her, saying I would rather call her half an hour before our set date, just to make sure she will be there. I have a feeling she may think I am serious when I mention things like that. I don't know how to go about telling her that whenever I see her, I feel like hugging her for being such a dear friend, even though I don't talk with her so often. So, if you're reading it, H, you will now know that if you were here now, I would have given you a big hug.

I will miss her while I'm away. It's not like I see her very often, because we are both so tired of our daily routines, at the end of the day, we can't think of anything but napping and resting. Now, I won't be able to see her, even if I had all the time in the world.

I told her if I weren't super sleepy, I would have broken down in tears and cried, something I would have enjoyed to do, rather than hold it in me. I later did break down, on the plane, next to an older lady, who thought I was crying because my pet died [i told her that]. She took it nicely and told me the story of the last day of her budgie, when she didn't hear the bird sing in the morning anymore.

I am putting under my pillow and into my clothes the cologne samples H and I tore off old GQ magazines. It was one of the last things we did before I left :(.