La musique, un film, et la baleines

Ok. It's been a while. But there have been many adventures. SO, get ready.

First off, Styx and KISS. Wow. Two nights, two very different concerts. Styx was fantastic. Very musical, harmonizing, incredible. A lot of people. THEN, the following night, KISS. Hard rock and roll. Explosions. Fog. Fireworks shooting out of the ends of guitars. It was fantastic. And more people than I've ever seen in one place in my life. 90 000 people at the concert. Talk about claustrophobic. I managed to sneak my large camera into KISS. Check it out for some photos.

Thursday I played a rousing game of Ultimate Frisbee in French. People here are INTENSE. It was fun, despite the fact that the grass was wet, and we kept flying all over the place.

Friday night we headed out to Harry Potter in english! We managed to find a theatre with a showing en anglais, and went along with a gang of folks. The theatre had 3 showings in english and 15 in french that day. lol. Good thing we were looking for the minority. We got to skip most of the lines.

On the weekend we headed out to Tadoussac to go whale watching. NOW, we have not had a warm day in long time, and Saturday was no different. It was raining and cold, and we were freezing before we even got onto the boat. They gave us huge suits to wear, where the jacket included a life preserver. We looked like Thomas from a Robert Munsch book. The baleines seemed to know that it was cold outside, as they were not around to hang out with us. I have some photos here.

This afternoon some of us are going Kayaking on la rivière St. Charles. Apparently it's not quite as exciting as the Kan. (Read: We're taking Sea Kayaks for a relaxing paddle). BUT, I'm excited to finally get back into a boat.

Aside from that life is good. It's midterm week. We have an oral test tomorrow, written tests on Wednesday and Friday. I *might* kill some of the guys living in residence, as they are prone to play soccer in the hallway, blast music, and try to woo the women very loudly. All between the hours of 11:30 p.m. and 2 a.m.. If it doesn't stop soon I might be tempted to deal with it American History X style...or maybe I'll just call security.

Alas, that's it for now.

Salut!

Derek

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Cadavers and Cadences

C'est lundi àprés-midi, and j'ai pas des devoirs. SO, I'm blogging about the rest of the weekend here en Québec. Dimanche, j'ai aller à vieux Québec for some adventures.

After walking around for a while taking in some more sights, we found un petit restaurant that sold soup and sandwiches. It was fantastique! We also found a farmer's market with unbelievably good gelato style ice cream. Wow.

THEN, (after eating, lol) we went to an exhibition called "Bodies: L'Exhibition". It was pretty amazing. It is designed to be educational and to teach people about the human body. They use bodies that have been donated to science, preserve them, and essentially skin them to different degrees. You can see all of the muscles, bones, arteries and veins, joints, nervous system, brains, etc. in various models throughout the exhibit. It was slightly eerie, but mostly really cool. It would be a great field trip for a biology class...or really, any class. Trés cool. They would not allow photos or electronics of any kind in the gallery, so I've pulled a few photos from the Expositions website for your viewing pleasure:



For more info, you can check out the website at http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/, and some videos about it here and another one here.

Àpres ça, I carried on alone à La Festival d'Été du Québec. I had mes devoirs (homework) with me, so I settled down on a hill, while enjoying the music of a Québec rock band, and The Proclaimers. Half way through the Proclaimers set, it became too dark for homework, so I packed up and headed down into the crowd. They finished up with a crowd pleasing "500 Miles", and I waited in eager anticipation for the main reason for coming to the festival that night.



The wait was well worth it. The Brian Setzer Orchestra.


They were awesome. They played through about an hour long set, complete with three encores. I was alone and felt like Peter in Swing Kids when he goes alone to the swing club and does that solo dance on the dance floor. Everyone was vibrating and dancing, clapping and singing along. It was awesome. I got home and to bed about 1 AM, which was slightly difficult to wake up this morning and finish my homework before my 8:30 class...but what can you do.

That's it for today. Back to homework. The advanced classes have group projects to do. I can be thankful that I'm not part of that.

I think I'll take a nap and maybe fit in a geocache.

Bonne Journée!

d

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La Première Semaine

The first week is finished. Yikes. What a whirl-wind adventure. Vieux Québec, classes, la cabane a sucre, hiking in national parks, yes. It is an adventure here en Québec.

Classes are trés bon. Mon classe est pretty great. Our two profs are hilarious, and really awesome for us who are pretty new to the language. It's sort of like observing a grade one class. We sing songs, we practice making sounds with our mouths, count, say the alphabet, introduce ourselves and spell our names. We even got some verbal mental math the other day. Pretty sweet. We have people from all across Canada, as well as the US and Holland. Every class is an adventure. AND we have homework! So, you know, that's cool too.

Thursday we went to la cabane a sucre. They make maple syrup. C'est trés bon. Je mange un bon répas. Syrup in everything. In the soup. On the bread. On the main course of meat pies, saussages, eggs, etc. On the crepes for dessert. They had a drink that is "the drink of the cabane a sucre", and they call it caribou. Don't worry. It's vegetarian. Also, I have the recipe. Get ready. We learned some traditional Québecois dancing (ala square dance in SK), and after we worked ourselves up on the dance floor, we got "tire sur la neige". Now, maintennant il y a pas de neige, SO, they fill troughs with shaved ice, pour the cooked syrup on it, then you roll the syrup with a stick to make a sort of sucker of ice and syrup, then eat it quick, because as it warms up it becomes less like a sucker and more like a mess of syrup on your face, or in my case, in a beard. It was a LOT of fun, and some fantastic meals. Check out the photos here:

http://gallery.me.com/disneyd/100128

The rest of the afternoons have been filled with busywork, homework, finishing setting up my space here, dealing with paperwork things, and adventures into Vieux Québec. Check out some of THOSE photos here:

http://gallery.me.com/disneyd/100132

Today we went on a hike (randonée) a la parc du Jaques Cartier. It is part of the National Parks system, and a pretty cool place. We didn't get to explore too much, BUT, our hike was trés cool. The animateurs said that it was among the most difficile hikes in the area, so we were excited. After a lot of rocks, mud, nearly falling, losing the main group, and un peux de geocaching, we made it to the top for our lunch break. It was pretty awesome. La montagne est not like the west. They are covered in trees bottom to top, despite the fact that they are growing in rock. It's pretty cool. All in all about 10 km. The way up was MUCH faster than the way down. Check out the photos here:

http://gallery.me.com/disneyd/100111

Tomorrow J'espere a allez a the festival d'été du Québec. The Proclaimers and The Brian Setzer Orchestra is playing. So that would be pretty cool.

Alas. It is time again to clock out. I'll update some more in the near future. Depending on how many adventures come my way, and how much time I have to blog about it. Until then.

Bonne Journée!

d

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Bon soirée!

La vie en Québec! C'est magnifique!

Actually, after day one I am slightly overwhelmed. After a weekend to orient myself, classes will begin tomorrow. I FINALLY got the internet set up, SO here is my first post en Québec!

I arrived Saturday evening, and spent Sunday getting acquainted with Université Laval, and walked down to Vieux Québec (old Québec. It was very beautiful and I managed to find a few great spots to relax and manger une repas.

Aprés un bon day exploring the Haute-Ville and the Basse-Ville (upper and lower town), I stopped for dinner at a small pub and chatted with a french teacher who was in the city for 3 weeks for a conference (Sweet!). Aprés ca, I walked back to Uni and promptly collapsed. I have included a few photos of my adventures.



Today we had our oral test, which confirmed that I am in elementaire B....the most basic course is elementaire A....so you get the picture. I have met some friends (phew) whose language spans from elementaire B to Intermediate Advanced. So there's a good mix. Most are staying in residence, though one is with a host family.

They gave us lists of events that we can take in on weekends, and they range from whitewater rafting, whale watching and hiking to going to a large waterslide park (think kenosee on steroids), going to beaches, and more. They all sound pretty exciting. We're attempting to get on the list early to ensure we get in some good stuff.

That is all for this evening. My brain is sore from concentrating so hard during the hour and a half assembly to understand what the animateurs were saying in French. lol. It needs a rest before our social event this evening.

Stay tuned for more adventures from la belle province.

Bon nuit,

Derek

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Quebec!

Life is exciting in a week and a half I am packing up and moving to Quebec for the summer. Crazy? Perhaps. I guess we'll see. Stay tuned for updates and photos from the trip.

d

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