Quebec City
I’ve been here two days and already so much is journal material. (And I’m determined to leave out nothing!)
I liked the plane trip. It’s so cool to be above the clouds, although I don’t really like sitting for so long. The plane from Montreal was fine though—shorter than a period of Chemistry 20… and twice as interesting.
When we landed there was a smaller greeting party than I’d kind of expected—less than in grade eight (everyone was on holiday then). Linda and Richard’s neighborhood is very pretty. There are a lot more trees than in Calgary. Their dog Maya is so cute! She reminds me of Evie when she just flops down anywhere on the floor.
That evening, think My Big Fat French Reunion. I’m pretty sure everyone we’re related to down here was there. Mike, who seemed to have no concept of exactly who the hell all these people were, was pretty shocked.
At first it was awful. We were sitting around the table, they were talking and joking in French and Mike and I were just sitting. My mom totally had warned me about this.
At one point, Sarah-Maude asked “Do you want to go inside?” in about three hundred words and I nodded, so we did. With Véronique and Audrey and Valérie we went to Sarah-Maude’s room. Something very important here is the term Global Meaning—you hear it a lot in French 30. It means you in no way understand every word you hear. You understand two words per sentence and follow along like that. When I think back to that night, it’s almost like I did understand every word. I think that half hour was the best time I’ve spent here so far.
My cousins look nothing like me—and nothing like each other. Except Charles and Valérie who look like fraternal twins.
They’ve nicknamed Audrey, my youngest cousin, The Tornado. I so agree. She’s off the wall, hyper, but so cute. It was funny: during one of her outbursts of excitement, Maxime said, “Audrey, repété après moi: I didn’t take my Ridolin today!” Jean-Simon and Maxime are what I’d consider to be fluent in English. It’s pretty awesome but no wonder: so many the good websites and movies are in English. Audrey seemed obsessed with hugging people. Véronique said something to the effect of “Audrey, is Colette your favourite cousin?” to which she replied, “Elle est ma cousine?!”
Something I thought was so cool was the greeting procedure. My cousin Charles is thirteen. When he comes over, the first thing he does is kiss everyone in the room twice. (I mean, everyone does, I just think it’s funny that he does it too.) My cousin Daniel in Calgary is about his age. He’ll only kiss you if you have a terminal illness or sometimes on your birthday, but even then you’d have to beg.
I’m sleeping in the computer room. That makes me very happy! The mattress is noisy though, so much so that I’m afraid to move for fear of waking other people up.
Today we visited the Catholic shrine Ste. Anne du Beaupré. It is so cool! I went there in grade eight and loved it then also. We also saw the Cyclorama, a three hundred-sixty degree huge painting of Jerusalem at the time of Christ’s crucifixion. Afterwards we went to the mall which was a lot like Chinook. That evening we went to my aunt Joane’s house for dinner. The food was very good: chicken with sauce kind of like Swiss Chalet’s but ten times better. We watched the Hulk while we were there. Maxime has downloaded every movie you can think of. Gosh I’m glad I didn’t pay money to see the Hulk… so bad..!
