So it has been pointed out to me that I left my blog unfinished - incidentally, by the same person who called me out on never posting pictures of myself. The rest of you have been slacking! And while it seems unnecessary to have a post simply to say that I'm back, I do like to reflect after travelling and collect my thoughts. My blogs are usually built around being away from home; taking some time to think afterwards helps me figure out what the value of leaving in the first place was, and what I want to do now that I'm back. Heads up - the next few paragraphs are wordy and a little theoretical given that it's related to to my final year inquiry project. You can skip ahead if you like, and jump back in after the photo of the flag.

The biggest surprise to me was Québécois culture. Part of what defines culture is what you hold important and try to guard for future generations, and it is amazing to see the pride held for such a collective set of distinctive foods, dances, musical styles, language/accents, and recounted history.

I believe in a united Canada, but this is also biased by my understanding of Canadian culture as diverse, by definition. I have been asked in the past whether I believe that identity is lost through multiculturalism - and my answer is 'yes', but with the very important qualifier that a new identity or culture can be created out of the blend. For me, this third, forged culture is what Canada gains in return for what it lacks in a recognized collective culture (which is getting more and more difficult to find throughout the world anyway): this synthesized Canadian culture is formed of a generally-held respect for diversity, value for accommodation, and the resultant mix of lifestyles. This isn't to say that limits aren't needed, or that we don't have our problems, or even that this holds consistently across east/west, north/south, or rural/urban divides. However - in my own experience, I believe that Canadians have a greater appreciation for multiculturalism and live with it successfully than other countries.
 
So this leads to a problem on my part when the culture that I want to embrace as part of the Canadian mosaic doesn't want to be a part of it; part of the Québécois definition of culture is that it is not Canadian, much as a key element of being Canadian is that you are not American. It certainly wasn't a topic that I could get a good handle on in the five weeks that I was there, and I would be very interested to discuss it with young Québécois, rather than just host families or instructors. Something to keep learning about in the future, I guess, and if I stay in Canada - as I hope to - probably a topic that will return to anglophone Canada again at some point in the future.

And in terms of my excuse for travel - the Explore program was good. I'm glad I did it. The most rewarding part was seeing the effort I've put into maintaining my skills on my own (I haven't been able to take classes since Grade 12 - that's 5 years!) pay off; my host family said that my speaking was already quite good when I arrived, so they noticed the biggest improvement in vocabulary. That said, I definitely needed the refresher on certain grammatical points (hello, subjonctif), and picked up some Québécois-isms along the way. And there's nothing like immersion to improve the ease of speaking and listening in french; I'm going to miss the pleasure of seeing such a direct translation from effort to real life usefulness.


But on the other hand, I am very much enjoying my anglophone home life. School and summers have kept me so busy for years now; I've worked hard on maintaining my relationships but some are bound to slip a little to the side. July has been a wonderful month and I've been so, so fortunate to spend it seeing many of the people I care about: my mother, father, and brother; my cousins visiting from Malaysia; my university friends as we try to navigate new dynamics after graduation; even my Scarborough friends, the ones I grew up with in elementary and middle school, and the first ones outside of my family who were majorly responsible for forming a good deal of who I am (so: if I have any traits that annoy you, blame them! :P). It's been marvellous, and I'm very thankful.

As for August, I still want to take advantage of this break by spending time with friends and family - but in between that I will be preparing for my next big adventure of graduate studies! So far that's taken the form of lots of paper-pushing and internetting (i.e. fun times with different registration processes on McMaster's terribly outdated online services), and apartment-hunting for a new place to call home. I've found and applied for one place already; one of the things I like most about it is a little deck/balcony that I have dreams of stringing Christmas lights on (for the whole year, obviously!). If you are ever in the neighbourhood, it would be the perfect place for some tea and a chat. I hope that I'll see you there. :)


All the best,
-Robin

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Lots of photos today, and although I'm tempted it's for that reason (i.e. formatting) that I'm writing in English (also a 7h30 train tomorrow morning).

Vieux Québec - the old neighbourhood - is utterly gorgeous, and it would be easy to spend all of a stay here. There are crooked rows all over the place, little turnarounds, cobblestone streets, and amazing lookouts. The site was chosen because it is so high up, meaning that the cliff faces on three of its four sides made it difficult to attack. I toured the Château Frontenac, and finally learned why there are random 'Château's scattered across the country - it was the idea of the CPR's William van Horne to build luxury hotels at major train destinations. To give an idea of scale, in the early 20th century a maid working there earned about $2-2.5 a month, and for one night at the hotel the price was around $1. I saw a free show by Cirque du Soleil! And I've been walking - for hours and hours and hours on end. It's really, really beautiful.

 

But today I decided I wanted to see the world outside the walls of the old city, where most people actually live and the neighbourhoods. Just after I ventured away from the main business district, I paused to consider taking a photo and ended up talking with Jean Dominique:

Jean Dominique has ancestry stretching back to when Champlain arrived at Québec, and was kind enough to give me a 5 hour walking tour and crash course in architectural styles. He also showed me the park along the stretch of the river, explained the effects it's having with regards to gentrification in the nearby neighbourhoods, and showed me the student district where we stopped for a bite to eat after all that walking and the food was amazing. Old Québec has been so expensive; I've heard so much about the food here but I've been surviving off croissant-based meals (plain in the morning, takeout sandwiches for lunch) because I can't afford $15 salads!

I ordered a tartare taster, which is pretty much the Québécois equivalent of sushi - it's raw meats with spices. The three types were beef, salmon, and tuna, and were so good. Because the place was actually a soup place, I also got a chocolate soup afterwards! It was ridiculously tasty, with raspberries, strawberries, peanuts, mint, and oddly enough tapioca bubbles.

 

I tried to remember as much as possible from the tour to share with you, and for myself as well since it was really educational! So, some of the major things:
-French style roofs are angular
-American style roofs are (approximately) arc-shaped, kind of like barns (sort of)
-Victorian style houses are detailed and often have towers
-Québécois style roofs are like American ones, but flatten out at the bottom so that the snow doesn't fall off. This also provides room for a galerie (porch) which the Québécois really like (This is true. In Alma almost every house had a porch, and even the apartments had little balconies).
-The general class segregation in Québec was such that rich people lived higher up
-In the lower city, there were 3 fires which eventually led to rules to prevent the spread between houses. An example of this is an extended sidewall between adjacent houses.
-The richer the house owner, the larger and more regular the foundation stones were
-A lot of higher levels fell during the 1988 earthquake, and the different brickwork can be seen where it was repaired
-The neighbourhoods are named for the old parishes of the region. These don't always match up with municipal districts, and in fact when the local communities were amalgamated, one was forgotten and is now a legally separate community within the city!

I could keep going for a while about this! But it's not really an architecture blog. :P Other random thing that I learned: I knew about Simons, but there is another department store in Québec called La Liberté, and these two are essentially the equivalent of Eaton's...except they're not bankrupt. La Liberté used to sponsor the Québec Christmas Parade, and Simons gave the fountain in front of the provincial government buildings as a gift to the province for being loyal customers (picture here)

Well, it's time to head off to bed so that I'm actually up in time for my train tomorrow morning. Thankfully, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier going down the hill then going up it (and with my luggage the travel time was twice what Google predicted, I have been getting my exercise here! It's good). Looking forward to seeing my cousins, and then I'll be back home in a few days...!

P.S. It has been pointed out to me that there are no actual pictures of me (mainly because I'm usually behind the camera). So to oblige, here is a photo of me and Stephanie after our flute duo at the final concert! We played Ave Maria. :)

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Just typing something up quickly before heading off to meet some students for breakfast. These last two weeks have been pretty whirlwind! There were a lot of obligatory evening events, not to mention practicing and rehearsals for the show at the end of the program (self-organized small ensembles and some groups with everybody since we're all musicians). My final presentation was on the Québécois school system (the main difference is the CEGEP level, which is an extra 2-3 years of education after their equivalence of Grade 11), its roots in the Quiet Revolution (a time of many social changes in Québec between 1960-1970), and the unique distribution of schools in Université du Québec network. There was also the final exam, the post-exam-exam, and a stack of program evaluations.

I didn't want to leave yesterday! I've grown to really like the city, the region, and my host parents. I think my favourite memory is the second-last night; after dinner Réjean was installing the patio stones, and Nicole and I were sitting out on the driveway in lawn chairs. I brought out a table with tea (for me) and an ice cream sandwich (for her) from the kitchen and we all talked until it was too dark for Réjean (and Nicole and I helped him, don't worry!). I like languages - and using them, - because it's something that's so directly applicable. I think about it less often in English, but for both languages there's a pleasure in succeeding in something so useful, and then beyond that using your knowledge to describe emotions, people, situations, and ideas more clearly. The same reason I like keeping a blog in the summer, I suppose.

But I did have to leave eventually, and yesterday morning I took the bus into Québec City with some of the other students, and arrived at noon. Towards the end of the program I was trying to juggle a lot of different travel plans which were kind of stressing me out, but this is so worth it. Québec is completely and utterly charming, and I can often tell how much a city inspires me by how many photos I need to take (I take a lot of photos anyway, but I can feel it's different when I'm really inspired). I may or may not have taken 175 photos yesterday...the 176th one on my camera is of me with my host parents at the bus station. I can't wait to put them up on my photo account, but it'll have to wait about a week.

Time to run now...until next time!

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It's a rainy Sunday, so I'm lounging around the house, reading and playing music and the like. This post is pretty short so I'm not going to translate. But I found some trailers for two films that I'm really excited to see this summer, and are actually kind of relevant so I wanted to share them here.

French Immersion
Do I really need to say more than the title? :P Filmed south of Montréal but set in a fictional town in northern Québec (quite probably in my region, which is 99% francophone), the cast includes Colm Feore and Gavin Crawford who are both hilarious and great actors. It's by the same directors as Bon Cop Bad Cop and it follows five anglophones through an intensive immersion program where the community members even act as spies to ensure CONSTANT ADHERENCE to speaking in french! English trailer here, French trailer here, and the official website with a different trailer here.

PhD Comics - The Movie
PHD (Piled Higher and Deeper - or, you know, a Doctor of Philosphy) is a popular webcomic about the ups and downs of research and academia. Now they're adapting some of the strips into a movie! Cecilia is my favourite character; she's an engineering grad student with comic strips about engineering, the Ratio, cookies, and unabashedly geeky things. Even though school sometimes drives her crazy, she loves learning so she keeps at it.

And that's it! I'll put up a proper post in a few days.
-Robin

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[Translation at the end!] 

 Je suis très heureuse aujourd'hui, à la fin d'une bonne weekend. J'ai commencé à ranger quelques choses pour quand je retourne - et il y a beaucoup de tâches à faire! À la fin de mai, j'ai accepté un offre pour faire un maîtrise à McMaster (!), alors je dois chercher un appartement pour septembre et faire un budget. Un peu ennuyeux, je sais, mais nécessaire et je peux aussi découvrir si je peux fait un petit prolongation de mes voyages pour visiter Québec sur mon trajet retour. Je trouverai une voie pour y aller, je pense.

Samedi soir, nous avons mangé un repas traditionnel: la fondue Québécoise, fait avec un brouillon où on cuisine des tranches de viande, des crevettes, du fromage (oui!), des légumes, avec pain et patates. Et pour la dessert: gâteau des anges! Merveilleux. Aussi, je suis heureuse de vous présenter Nicole et Réjean, mes parents d'accueil ici. C'est tellement amusant de se reconnaître en parlant français; nous nous parlons souvent et notre sujet favori et la gourmandise!



Finalement, aujourd'hui j'ai fait d'Arbre-en-arbre et je suis très fière! C'est un série des parcours dans la forêt, où on doit traverser des différents filets, ponts, et tyroliennes entre les arbres et dessous une rivière. Franchement, j'étais plutôt bonne! J'ai fini tout les parcours, facilement; un fois j'ai utilisé ma Connaissance de la Physique pour traverser un pont suspendu avec un minimum des balances (pendant que tous les autres criaient!)! Je partagerai quelques photos de moi quand je les ai des autres pour le vous prouver.

 
Et après un fin de la semaine si occupé, je ne peux pas continuer à éviter le présentation que je dois préparer pour mercredi.

À plus!

TRANSLATION
I'm really happy today, at the end of a great weekend. I started to organize some things for when I return - and there are lots of tasks to do! At the end of May, I accepted an offer for a masters at McMaster (!), so I need to find an apartment for September and make a budget. A bit boring, I know, but necessary and I can also find out if I can extend my travels a bit to see Quebec City on my return trip...I'll find a way to do it, I think.

Saturday evening, we ate a traditional meal: Québécois fondue, made with a broth where you cook slices of of meat, shrimp, cheese (yes!), vegetables, with bread and potatoes. And for dessert: angel food cake! Marvellous. Also, I'm pleased to introduce you to Nicole and Réjean, my host parents here. It's really fun getting to know each other in french; we speak with each other a lot and our favourite subject is good food!



Finally, today I did "d'Arbre-en-arbre" (From tree to tree) and I'm very proud! It's a series of courses in the forest, where you have to cross different nets, bridges, and ziplines between trees and above a river. Actually, I was pretty good! I finished all of the courses, easily; one time I used my Physics Knowledge to cross a suspension bridge with a minimum of swinging (while everybody else was shrieking with each step!)! I'll share some photos of myself when I have them from the others to prove it to you. :)



And after such a busy weekend, I can't continue avoiding the presentation I have to prepare for Wednesday.

Cheers!

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[There's a translation at the end!! Don't worry :) ]

Alors, c'est la fin de la semaine, et beaucoup des choses ont passé. C'est tellement un camp d'été ici; nous avons des cours au matin (et à l'après-midi une fois par semaine), et puis aux après-midis nous avons des ateliers et lectures, ou des activités de recréation. Par exemple, lundi nous avons fait une visite de l'Alma avec un guide, jeudi nous avons discuté la musique québécois traditionnelle, et aujourd'hui nous sommes allés à un parc national pour faire un pique-nique et une chasse au trésor mais avec les questions québécois au lieu des objets. Heureusement il fait beau aujourd'hui, et en fait je suis un peu rouge à la visage - mais c'est un plaisante façon de passer un vendredi!

Aussi, mardi j'ai signé un contrat qui disait que pour la durée de la programme ma langue principale de communication sera le français. C'est un grand défi parce que l'autre fille de la programme qui habite avec moi parle seulement un peu de français, et quand même elle fait un grand effort, c'est nécessaire d'utiliser l'anglais. J'essaie tout ce que je peux - utiliser les mots plus simple, parler avec mes mains - mais quelques temps seulement l'anglais suffis. Alors j'étais forcé a évaluer comment je vais garder ce contrat. En plus, je veux écrire a vous, et écrire des courriels chez moi, et il prends beaucoup de temps pour faire un bon traduction. Alors, j'ai décidé que je limiterai le temps que je communique en anglais chaque jour, mais il n'est pas complètement interdit. Ce poste est écrit en français pour moi-même, pour que je peux mesurer mon progrès a la fin de la programme (oui, je suis une ingénieure!).

Et ce fin de la semaine, j'espère de faire une randonnée pédestre, mais si non j'ai visité le bibliothèque aujourd'hui et j'ai plusieurs livres sur les sujets de la photographie et l'historique de la région. Aussi j'ai changé les cordes de ma guitare et les a accordées, alors je peux commencer à améliorer en la guitare et la piano (au collège).

Choses
- Les ingénieurs me manquent. Je suis la seule ici! Et en plus, la seule étudiante en quelque chose technique.
- Les repas de la cafétéria ne sont pas bons de tout. Heureusement, ma mère d'accueil est une bonne cuisinière.
- Les gens de Saguenay-Lac-St.-Jean s'appellent les bluets, après les fruits de la région et le drapeau québécois
- La podorhythmie (en fait, faisant de la rythme avec le tapage des pieds) est un élément traditionnel de la musique québécois. Exemples sont ici sous 'Videos', et ici à 2:00.
- Le Centrale Hydroélectrique ici était la plus puissante dans le monde quand il était construit en 1925
- La Centrale était construit pour l'usine d'aluminium (Rio Tinto Alcan)

Bon weekend, tout le monde!



TRANSLATION

So, it's the end of the week, and lots of stuff has happened. It's really like a summer camp here; we've got courses in the morning (and in the afternoon once a week), and in the afternoons we have workshops and lessons, or recreation. For example, on Monday we did a tour of Alma with a guide, Thursday we discussed traditional québécois music, and today we went to a national park for a picnic and a scavenger hunt but with québécois questions instead of objects. Happily it was beautiful weather today, and in fact I'm a bit red in the face - but it's a pretty great way to spend a Friday!

Also, I've signed a contract saying that for the duration of the program my main language of communication will be French. It's a great challenge because the other girl from the program who is staying at the house with me speaks very little French, and even though she's making a tremendous effort (and improving rapidly; I really admire her), it's necessary to use English. I try to do all that I can - use simpler words, speak with my hands and act - but sometimes only English will do. So I've been forced to evaluate how I'm going to keep this contract. On top of that, I honour it very well but I want to write to you, and to send emails home, and it takes a long time to do a good translation. As a result, I've decided that I will limit the time that I communicate in English each day, but it won't be completely forbidden. This post is written in French for myself, so that I can measure my progress at the end of the program (yes, I'm an engineer!).

And this weekend, I hope to do a bit of hiking, but if not (i.e. bad weather) I visited the library today and I have several books on photography and the history of the region. I've also restrung and tuned my guitar, so I can start to practice and improve my playing on it and piano (there are practice rooms at the college).

Random Things:
- I miss engineers. I'm the only one here! Even more so, I'm the only student in anything technical.
- The meals at the cafeteria really aren't that good. Luckily my host mother is a great cook.
- The people from Saguenay-Lac-St.-Jean call themselves 'bluets' (blueberries), after the regional fruits and the colour of the québécois flag
- La Podorhythmie (basically, rhythmic stomping) is a traditional element of québécois music. Examples are here under 'Videos', and here at 2:00.
- The hydroelectric station here was the most powerful in the world when it was constructed in 1925
- The station was constructed for the aluminium factory (Rio Tinto Alcan)

Happy weekend, everybody!

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..Because this post is in English. But I'm so excited to be here that I couldn't wait to translate (and also it's really late), and it's also kind of a shout-out to Adri that I arrived alive. :)
I left Ottawa this morning with Adri, and en route to Montreal we stopped for my first smoked meat sandwich (delicious, if a bit mustard-y) and poutine in Quebec (to be clear, I love poutine but I've never had it here). They were awesome! So my introduction to Quebecois food (started earlier this week with St Hubert's) continued!

Then I caught the bus to Quebec City, which wasn't that scenic but for those in engineering I did see the Quebec Bridge! It was funny - the bridge was graceful, and impressive, but it wasn't actually as large as I had imagined it to be, and it was sad to think that it was what led to so many deaths (for those not in engineering, it's a classic example of bad engineering that led to worker deaths during construction, twice, because of negligence).

Once I arrived at Quebec I checked my luggage and then walked around the city for an hour. I didn't really get to see the downtown but I did a walk around the ramparts.

 

 Then it was off to Alma! And the bus ride was awesome - if you have somehow missed this, I am ridiculously fond of trees (to me they mean Canada, and home) and I love hilly landscapes, so three hours of driving through forested mountains was just the most amazing thing ever. I was glued to the window the whole time, and once we were really high up the lakes were frozen and there was snow in the forests! I EVEN SAW TWO MOOSE. The pictures I caught don't do it justice but I tried.

Then after arriving I got picked up and spent the last bit of the evening with my host family, who are lovely and in fact the couple who hosted my friend from Scarborough, Emily, when she visited last year! :) I can communicate fairly well with them, and I hope to improve a lot talking with them as they are very friendly.

Anyhow, I have to get up early tomorrow but I was so excited I wanted to share! And also it sounds like I might be busier here than I had bargained on, so I wanted to get a post in now. Have a great week!

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