The QC!

Salut tout le monde!

Looking through my posts I have realised, much to my amazement,  that I haven’t blogged at all since arriving in St-Georges! I’m sure you’re all hanging on tenterhooks to hear about What Katy Did Next!

I thought I’d do a run down on all the people that will undoubtedly be featuring in future posts so that you can put names to faces.

Warning: This is a long one!


Jen

Jen and I have yet to be separated since arriving in Quebec! We were put in the same hotel room in Montréal, we are living in the house together and even stayed in the same hostel room together!

Jen is from Aberdeen and everyone thought she was really into sewing, until it turned out someone had heard ‘sewing’ instead of ‘swimming’. We found out when Anna helpfully pointed out a load of sewing items in Dollarama, to which Jen looked somewhat confused! It has been somewhat of an ‘in’ joke since. She is really sporty and beats us all every time we walk up a hill and Jen always cycles up the hills….yes, one of those…! Her favourite phrases are “We are going to have amazing legs by the end of the year” and the very Scottish “oocha Boys”! She is very determined and a good cake maker! Jen is working in the town we live in and her mentor is Nicole (see below). Jen is a bit of a legend in the house at the moment as she cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom for us all last night! We both spent a good 15 minutes the other night trying to fix her blinds with duct tape.

Anna

Anna is from London and is an amazing cook! For her initiation to her school she cooked a fine selection of Greek dishes that she had tasted whilst visiting her cousin in Crete. Anna loves vintage shopping and has a very unique style. She is a really sweet girl and very caring too. Anna has been stuck with the smallest room in the whole house (including the bathroom) but it is definitely the homeliest room as it is decorated with lots of photos and bits and bobs that she brought with her. She was awarded the House Legend Prize for buying the Backstreet Boys Tape to sing along to on car journeys. Anna asked me if she could put leather boots in the washing machine last night and this evening asked when Annie’s Halloween party would be… Such moments are definitely contributing to fun and laughs in the house!

Eilidh

Eilidh is from Scotland and no one can pronounce her name. Her Glaswegian sense of humour is hilarious. To name but a few instances, “You don’t want to mess with Big Jackie” (her mum) “I should have put you on Skype to Big Al” (her Dad) and “mess with me and I’ll take your Gallbladder”. You must imagine all of these being said in a Glaswegian accent. Eilidh made us all fajitas on the second night in the house, which were very much appreciated! Eilidh is a Pop Princess and enjoys singing along to the Celine Dion tape that we found in the house (but I can’t lie…we are all guilty of doing that!) Eilidh and I climbed up the 400 odd steps to the top of a waterfall in Quebec City last weekend. Definite bonding time there!


Beth

Beth began living with us at The Brits House because her mentor hadn’t been in touch to help her get a house and so we kept Beth in the underground bedroom for a week. She now has her own place near to the big college here, called the CÉGEP. Beth is really sweet and has lots of stories to tell about her travels. Beth’s favourite phrase probably has to be “you’re having a laugh” or “Why is that car driving right up my…” (in reference to the way that drivers here have no concept of breaking distance or speed signs). Beth has several tattoos that all have interesting stories. There is a movie real that she adds to every time there is a new chapter to her life and she has “Veritas” written on her chest to remind herself to always be true to herself.



Annie

Annie is an assistant in a school in Beaupré, which is just outside Quebec City and we shared a bed for 2 nights when we arrived in Montréal. We were also on the same flight and have been as thick as thieves ever since. Annie is from Devon and worked as a potter in Cornwall before coming to Canada. She is very sporty and enjoys something foreign to me called Bouldering. Annie joined Jen and me in the hostel in Quebec City last weekend. Annie is very stylish, classy and polite, which is rather lovely and has a great sense of humour. It’s a shame we don’t live closer! Annie’s goal this year is”to learn French, to become flexible and to get a boyfriend.” She aims to do this through the means of our darling Phillippe (Phillippe Philopp – flip flop in a French accent) whilst parading around in lycra gym wear. Awkward moment when students came into the gym to find a scantily clad Annie last week!

Daisy

Daisy is another assistant that is working in a private school in Quebec City, so we met up with her last weekend. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the city centre and acted as out tour guide throughout the weekend. Daisy has many a funny story to recount, including an amazing story which involved her aunt walking backwards to take a photo, tourist style, and falling into the oldest choir in Madrid! (For all those like my Mother, no, she was not injured from it!).


Pascal is our landlord. Where should I start?
Before we had even moved into the house, one of the previous assistants told us that Pascal had split up with his girlfriend and would be living with us for the whole year. We found this somewhat creepy and I thus named him “Heff” after Hugh Heffner. When we arrived in Saint Georges and met out mentors at a bar in Lévis (not pronounced like the jeans, as I soon found out!), we got onto the topic of Pascal living with us and that he had split from Chantelle. The other mentors were shocked to discover that they didn’t know this gossip as it is such a small town that everyone knows everyone else’s business. When we met Pascal in the rock Café, Nicole had already asked Pascal about him and Chantelle by the time my mentor and I arrived. So when my mentor began to clarify the gossip with Pascal, Nicole was quick to silence him in a rather unsubtle way. It turned out that we were misinformed and that we had managed to spread a rumour having only been in town for 5 minutes! To add to the gossip, I work at the same school as Chantelle’s ex-husband and father of her children, Martin. More on Martin later...
 Pascal is a neat freak…Ok…I said it! He provides us with everything in the house and is rather protective of it. We aren’t allowed to hang our washing out on the line as he fears it will bring bugs into the house. All the windows are fitted with mosquito nets (which are actually a really good idea!) and Pascal replaces our loo roll at least three times a week. He takes the bins out for us and puts them back and even leaves five notes in various places around the house telling us to call him when we get back from various places and again, not to leave our washing on the line.
He is a very kind man despite being OCD and he drove me to the Protestant churches in the area so I could decide which one to go to. All of them are quite far from the house and there is definitely a geographical Protestant/Catholic divide, with all the Catholic churches being in the centre of town and the protestant ones being on the outskirts. I met the priest at one of the churches, who was very friendly but said there weren’t many young people at all at the church. Pascal is the Spiritual Coordinator for all of the schools in the area so we all see him at various times in school during the week. We also hear him when he decides to come and sleep in his room at our house at about midnight. People here really don’t have the same security concerns as in England as whenever I hear someone downstairs I freak out, but Pascal feels no need to give us a heads up as to when he’s going to be roaming the halls of our house at midnight.


Nicole, as I mentioned before, is Jen’s mentor/ our Quebecoise Mother. Nicole knows everything about everything and can sort out anything under the sun, whilst cooking us lunch. She very kindly ran all of us to and from town to get our bank accounts sorted out, our Social Security Numbers and to register us for our pay checks. Jen presented Nicole with some shortbread from Scotland (as we were instructed to bring presents for our mentors) and Nicole really just didn’t get it! She asked what you put with it and then left it behind as she whizzed out the door. Thankfully for Jen’s sake and our waist lines, she picked it up later that evening! 
Nicole has the idea in her head, thanks to the last assistants, that Brits are all heavy drinkers so she turned up on the second night and asked if she could have a beer with us, not that we had any! So she brought us round some lime beer(?!) the next evening. She also went for a rummage in her basement and produced 2 bottles of wine, one bottle of opened Baileys and some other things that may have been binned. When I saw the wine was a 2002 white, I was rather excited. However, this wine turned out to be more like that bag of grapes you brought in 2002 and forgot about... Its taste was not dissimilar to whiskey/cognac (or what I imagine them to taste like!). After that went down the sink, I approached the baileys with precaution. The curdled effect produced in my glass signalled to me that drinking this would probably lead to a somewhat uncomfortable evening.
We went to the after school drinks at Nicole and Jen’s school and Nicole after a few beers did a type of gyrating dance move in front of one of the male teachers, completely grossing all of us out! Really didn’t need to see that!

Stephane is my mentor. He really liked the fudge that I gave him as a present from Christchurch and he loved the picture of the water and sail boats on the front. He lives at st Aurelie, where there is a beautiful lake and he keeps his boat there. Stephane loves old cars and has some kind of Dodge at the moment which is brand new and is illegal in the UK for the amount of pollution it produces. Trying to lift my suitcase into the boot of this prized car without scratching it was a feat and a half!

Tanya is the most amazing person at my school. She is another English teacher that was taught English by Nicole. She picked me up and dropped me home my first week of school. She would usually bring coffee from Tim Hortons too! We get along very well and she tells me often about her IVF treatment and the various stages she is at with it. She is a real Beauce girl and has the Beauceron accent to go with it! The best phrase she taught me is “Pull your skirt down otherwise your legs will freeze”. In European French: Baisses ta Jupe de Jambes ou tu geles. In Beauceron : Basse di hoop di hum di hell. In this accent the pronounce ‘j/g’ as ‘h’. It is really weird to think that Louis IV’s France spoke this kind of French as Quebecoise French is that which the settlers brought over at this time.


Martin…finally we return to Martin. Martin cheated on Pascal’s girlfriend with lots of different women, before she caught him. He teaches biology at my school and looks like GI Joe. He also enjoys speaking and laughing louder than everyone else in the staffroom. All in all, a pretty shady guy. When I told Pascal about my estimation of dear Martin, I was presented later with a gorgeous black leather desk chair for my bedroom. It is literally the comfiest, cushiest chair I have ever sat on! I obviously said the right things!

So that concludes the people I have encountered so far!

A tout!

xx

"Me ma's bra" - Northern Irish for My Mother's Brother.

6/09/2012

The day began at 6am when all the Assistants piled into two yellow school buses that took us in to town to get our health insurance cards. The offices had opened early especially so that they could deal with all 60 of us at one time.

After this we had lot of meetings about what we were going to be doing in Quebec and our role as an Assistant. We went through dos and don’ts and played a few games that we could use in the classroom.
We finished at 4.30 and I called up Daphne immediately, grabbed Jen and Anika and we headed off to Mont Royal. The shuttle bus from the hotel to the metro station wasn’t working, but luckily Daphne had shown me how to get the bus from the hotel and we were with Daphne within 15 minutes. Daphne bumped into another son of one of her friends on the bus who was studying Political Sciences. This was quite a coincidence since at the meetings we had been strictly forbidden from talking about the political situation in Quebec. I’m still not entirely sure what the entire extent of it is, but something to do with some people in Quebec not wanting to be a part of Canada anymore. From what I gather from Stephane (my mentor), Quebec is quite Conservative.

We took the bus up the mountain after the boys’ recommendation not to try and walk up it. After a short walk through the wilderness we reached the view point, which allowed us to see over the whole of Montreal. We also found some racoons while we were walking! Stephane told me I should have shot them and made a hat out of them!

(I don't know how to make the photo portrait on here!)

We walked further along the mountain and by the time we had reached the next view point, it was sunset and we were lucky enough to have a front row seat to it. Daphne got chatting to some men that passed by and they were all keen to talk to us in English and about what we were doing over here. 

After this we went to ‘Le Platau’ at Mont Royal, which was quite similar to Camden in the way that there were lots of boutiques and arty cafés. We tried Putine here for the first time as it is the national food of Quebec. It consists of chips, gravy and cheese. I can’t say I totally enjoyed it as it was really stodgy, but at least I tried it!

                                                    (Annie and Jen eating Putine)

Anika, Jen and I then went to the Irish bar where we met the other Assistants. It was called Hurley’s and was at Metro Guy Concordia on Rue Crescent. It was nothing like an Irish Pub at home. It was on 3 floors and was incredibly spacious with some kind of guitar band practice going on in one of the little alcoves, which was pretty cool.

We left the bar once the other Assistants had finished eating and headed back to the hotel. The ERASMUS students amongst us headed to the off-licence for some wine/vinegar. Ahhh…memories! We went back to the hotel and ended up in the boys’ room doing voice overs of slapstick Indian/American films that were on the hotel’s TV channel and learning the Northern Irish equivalent for standard conversation. Plus, one of the guys was from Belfast, which made it even more amusing. Perhaps this is one of those moments that you had to be there for. 

Here’s the link, just for giggles!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unGtpBP83as

After we had exhausted the Irish accent and were feeling the effects of the early start, mountain climbing and a few at the pub, we all kipped in.

“You’ve got to leave a tip” – Renaud Brissonneau

5/09/2012

I woke up feeling so much better so the girls in my room and I all decided to head off to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal.  Since one of the other assistants had already been to the Old Montreal, I was keen to see it for myself. 

The square outside the cathedral used to be the site of the original Notre Dame before it was knocked down and reconstructed in the nineteenth century. It now hosts a statue of the founder of Montreal, Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve.

The first thing that strikes you when you first walk through the door to Notre Dame is the astounding sanctuary. Words cannot describe the beauty of this place, so I will let this picture tell a thousand words.
One thing that surprised me in the Cathedral was that the statues all seemed to be begging. But one very cool fact is that Celine Dion was married there. En addition, you don’t have to be rich or famous to get married there. 


After Notre Dame we attempted to go to Mont Royal, which is a mountain with a terrific view over the city, however, we spent so long trying to find the bus from Ste Catherine Street that we ran out of time and ended up in a cute café. We happened to bump into some other assistants while we were there, which was surprising since Montreal is a huge city!

We had to move out of our room in the hotel that morning to move into different rooms that were being paid for by the Ministry of Education in Quebec.

Not sure how it happened but my current housemate Jen and I were put in a hotel room together. She asked to check in but they told her there was a 20 minute wait. I went to the desk and asked to check in and the receptionist did it immediately! I’ve obviously just got that Wareham charm ;)

Later that evening we met the Mexican and German assistants. It was a bit awkward as everyone knew that they weren’t probably going to be seeing each other for a long time and cliques had already formed between each nationality respectively. Furthermore, from that evening onwards, each nationality was segregated from the other so it probably would have been more productive to sit with other British Council Assistants and bonded with them since we had to work together for the rest of the week and time was limited. The best part of international bonding time had to be Anika asking a Hispanic looking German what the time difference between Canada and Mexico was!

After the awkward meet and greet, we got to let our hair down a bit at a hockey bar down the road from our hotel. We got to see out first hockey practice and had our first experience of leaving tips! After being given a huge lecture on tipping by Renaud (the guy who’s in charge of us), apparently there is a good reason for leaving tips but when you’re charged $8 for a drink and then they lump on tax and then you have to leave a tip, it all gets a bit much! However, it’s something that is a part of the culture over here and it’s all part of the experience.

"If you're lost, stand in a corner and then make the call" - Daphne Hinds

Hello all you avid blog readers!

Today was my first day in Montreal. I woke up at about 5am and the 3 other girls in my room woke up not much later. It looks like we’re all feeling the effects of jet-lag.

At breakfast I had my first taste of Canadian Crepes (aka American style pancakes….shhhhhh! Don’t tell the Quebecers that!) The maple syrup was in abundance and tasted incredible with the ‘crepes’. Our waiter, Yanni, was very obliging and we soon understood the essence of the Québécoise sense of humour; I’m not sure if there is a technical rhetorical term for it, but Yanni seemed to enjoy giving us false information in a much exaggerated way or implying we had committed a serious offense, for example when Annie set another place at our table: he reprimanded her, moved the fork an inch and then laughed heartily.

So, task no. 1 – Get au fait with the Quebecoise sense of humour. Watch out guys!

At about 11.30, I met Daphne Hinds who is a contact founded through Mum’s involvement in the Mothers Union. I struggle to explain what this organisation is exactly to people, so if you don’t already know, I’d suggest Googling it!

Meeting Daphne, a local, was very comforting on my first day in Montreal. We took the bus to the metro, Du College, and then headed Downtown. If the centre of Montreal is ‘Downtown’, the hotel was definitely ‘Out of Town’, but thanks to pretty good public transport and the metro network it only took about 45 minutes to get there. Knowing that my knowledge of the Canadian dollar was/ is weak, Daphne had very kindly brought me the exact change for my bus ticket. I suppose that saved her the embarrassment of being stuck with the tourist that has to squint at each coin to find its worth. Later in the day, she took me to a ticket kiosk where I was able to buy a 3 day bus/metro pass for only $16. It was well used by the time it expired.

Daphne and I got off at Metro station McGill, which is named after one of the main Universities in Montreal. The other main university is called Concordia. We had a look around the shops in the Eaton Shopping Centre and saw that there were lots of sales. There was also a very long queue of students that were waiting to get their bus passes for the year.

We exited the shopping centre onto Ste-Catherine Street and went into a church that Daphne went to for Mothers Union events. After seeing the inside of the church, we went to visit one of Daphne’s friends that used to be the President of the Montreal branch of the Mothers Union. Daphne didn’t have a mobile so we spent about 15 minutes trying various places in search of a ‘Bell’ (a telephone box). Ultimately, we went to Angela’s travel agency but found that she was out at lunch. As luck would have it, as we were walking back towards Ste-Catherine Street we bumped into Angela, her son and her Granddaughter. These friends were hilarious and we had lots of international banter. The son watches Gordon Ramsay TV programmes so wanted me to say ‘Bloody Hell’ in my English accent. Angela wanted to know whether I was teaching American English or British English and then didn’t believe that Sainte Georges actually existed, to which I replied “I’m British, not stupid” and she roared with laughter and told me I’d passed the test. She welcomed me to ‘the family’ and said she was going to come and visit.

                                                              (Angela, me, Daphne)

Daphne and I left Angela to her work and headed to the Botanic Gardens which took a little while to get to on the metro. Whilst on the Metro, Daphne bumped into a young man, whose mother she knew. The guy gave her his umbrella as he had heard that it was going to rain in the afternoon. I found it really encouraging to see how much consideration people have for one another here.

When we arrived at Metro Pie- IX, we found the Olympic Stadium, the Tower of Montreal and a random football stadium that was under renovation (as much of Montreal seems to be at the moment).

There is a famous Biodome on the site, but we decided that paying $20 was a bit steep. I also realised that there is a local rate and a tourist rate when it comes to paying for entry tickets. We thus decided to head for the Botanic Gardens as they were rumoured to be a sight not to be missed. In our pursuit of these sought after gardens, we got incredibly lost. A man kindly pointed us in the right direction, which meant ambling up a long hill amongst forest. Of course I was dressed appropriately for such a trek in my dress and flats recently brought from Selfridges...

When we eventually arrived I was sure to reveal my newly acquired work permit that makes me some sort of resident of Quebec (may have made that up), but I flaunted it in front of the ticket vendor anyhow, so I got in at the local price thank goodness. $10 saved!

Just after the entrance to the gardens, there was an Insectarium, which Daphne was keen for me to visit. Not being a particular bug lover, I politely admired the dead insects that were pinned to various boards to indicate various sizes of termites, spiders and ants. I also learned which I could find at various times of the day. A particularly eye catching feature was a handmade ant run. There were glass containers on either side of a huge rectangle box and branching out of each box were touchable twigs that all entwined and were decorated with flowers (not that I’d touch a red ant! I repeat…”I’m British, not stupid!”). The ants would go along the twigs carrying petals back to their colonies. It was also remarkable to see in detail the vibrant colours of certain insects, such as beatles.

We left the insects and moved into the beautiful gardens. There was a pretty rose garden with lots of different types of roses. My favourite was the delicate and pink Fairy Rose.  We passed through these gardens into the Chinese Gardens. There were bright lanterns hung everywhere and then a somewhat tacky display of plastic Chinese men and women on the river. Apparently it looks more effective in the dark when they are lit up. The path led us to an Alpine garden which portrayed the vegetation found in the mountains here. After this Daphne and I discovered a vegetable garden which exhibited herbal remedies from South America (Daphne is originally from the British Guyana, so she found it particularly interesting). There were also pumpkins being grown in preparation for a Halloween exhibition where children go to the gardens and paint and carve the pumpkins.

A plan emerged for the Language Assistants to all meet Downtown to go for dinner, so Daphne came with me to find the others before she left me so that she could go home to have dinner with her granddaughter. This is where the advice, “If you’re lost, stand in the corner and then make the call” emerged from as trying to find the other Assistants was a bit manic!

The other assistants and I found a food court to eat at, which ultimately gave me food poisoning. The long journey back to the hotel was rather uncomfortable to say the least and I ended up sprinting off the metro in desperate search of a local loo.

On the way back to the hotel it rained warm rain, which was strangely comforting and not a bother at all, unlike English rain!

A good night’s sleep is definitely in order and I hope to feel better in the morning, ready for another productive day of site seeing!