A Milestone Of Mild Meaning: One Month Down

I've now been in the country for one month, a fact that outrages Canadians, but no doubt pleases Australians. My French is progressing poorly, my health is deteriorating, and I haven't managed to stay awake for the entire length of any of my classes, but I have had some fun.

Concordia had a music concert on the night of Thursday the 15th, so I met up with Tom and his friend Lunji, and we headed over together. Thankfully it was the coldest night I had experienced so far in Canada, and the pain of my freezing body took my mind off the awful music. They had beer there, and the speakers made noise, so it was a good night out for most of the people there.

On Friday there was a sports day at the Loyola campus, where we played soccer and dodge-ball. Nothing much happened, but I see it as an opportunity to upload a picture of me in my peak physical condition.

I had a day trip to the Laurentian Mountains with CISA, the Concordia International Student Union. We caught a rickety old school bus for an hour and a half, then arrived at a camp in the mountains. The day began with kayaking on the lake, and ended with kingball, with archery, rock-climbing and the obstacle course in the middle.

There were two guys from Iran, who didn't know how to swim and capsized their two person kayak. We had a nice bunch of people there, so a girl went rushing to their aid. She didn't know how to swim either, so I just quickly got some shots for the local paper before they all fell in. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. I could have sold those pictures for a lot of money if they didn't make it), they were all okay, and they got the boat back in too.

It was really nice out there, and I was really glad we got to see an authentic aboriginal camp site. I only had a second to take the photo, but I think I managed to get a picture of one of them leaving the teepee.

The next day I was back to school. After dropping one of my classes (and a huge weight off my shoulders... I had to carry 2 text books for that subject), I'm down to a three day week. I had a recording session in the studio of Thursday, and went shopping for supplies for my stop-motion/ puppet animation class on Friday.

Like any good puppet animation student, I spent Saturday morning working on the design on my character. I sculpted and I shaped, and I stayed in my pajamas until 3 in the afternoon. If they told people that they could wear pajamas until 3PM while on exchange, I'm sure a lot more students would do it. But anyway, it was going pretty well until baked the FIMO (modeling clay) at the wrong temperature and ended up with a house full of toxic smoke (which turns out is actually what people went to the Louis' party for... just read on!)

Today, when I realised I've been here for a whole month already, I began to reflect on not only my time in Canada and L.A, but further back as well. Maybe I felt nostalgic playing with the modeling clay or something, but I started to think about being a kid and growing up. I wondered if I could pinpoint the point in my life where I lost my innocence, and became just another empty soul looking for a good time. I worked out that it was last night, at Louis' party. This thing made the Tam Tams seem like morning mass. I guess the city can save money on lawnmowers though, because these kids seemed to have taken care of all the grass in Montreal. I just did my best to fit in, drinking lemonade out of beer bottles, and injecting myself with syringes filled with orange juice, but just when it looked like we might a bit of good, clean fun, some guy sniffed up the chalk lines from our hopscotch game. I left that all behind after a while and caught the metro home.

Next week, I have dinner at a friend's house, ride a rollercoaster, and worry that there might be no reason for me to be here. Read all about it next week in: “Vanishing Point – A Tourist's Perspective”.

D'entrée Trois: A Brave New World

After waking up for an early breakfast and a hot shower, I had to catch the 165 on a 20 minute bus ride back to reality. School started on the 6th at 6PM and for some reason all of my classes are 4 hours long (the water here tastes like it has tonnes of chlorine in it, I don't know if that has anything to do with it). I manged to get through my first class just fine, but by the time university was up to it's second day, I was falling asleep in lectures and dozing off in the classrooms. Thankfully all my teachers are good though. My puppet animation teacher, Eric, is a live wire and has more enthusiasm than a Frenchman in a farmhouse. The times when I wasn't napping in class, I was late for class. I forgot where one of the buildings was, then when I found it I got lost again looking for a classroom that didn't exist. I've come to terms with the fact that my GPA is going to take a beating, so now I'm just trying to limit the damage.

The president's welcome for international students was on Thursday night, which was okay. It was like a speed networking event, with bad food and even worse speeches, where they just threw us in a room and told us to talk to each other. At that stage of the day I was carrying a bible that someone gave me in the morning, so I find it hard to know whether people weren't talking to me because they thought I looked like a bible salesman or if it was just because of the toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe and the mustard stain on my crotch.

At least three quarters of the students there were French, but I managed to find a few Australians. Oh boy, it was nice to hear the accent again and have the chance to talk to someone about kangaroos and shearing sheds. Later on I was also talking to a guy from Iran, who was still convinced I would see him in the business building even after I told him around 5 times that I did Fine Arts, not Finance.

CISA, the Concordia International Student Association, had an orientation event on Saturday. We sat in a lecture hall for a while, then got to play such fun games as 'Hold a Tennis Ball With Your Chin, Then Pass it to a Complete Stranger so You're Almost Kissing', 'Three Legged Race Using a Thin Piece of String Tied Against Your Bare Skin While You Wear Shorts, and Get a Rope Burn on Your Ankle', and 'Stand Around for 15 Minutes While we Tell You the Rules to Scissors, Paper, Rock, but we Change it to Wizards, Giants and Mice, Then You Get to Play One Game as a Team and Everyone Chooses Wizard Because it's the Least Embarrassing One to Act Out'. 

Then by Sunday, it was time to visit the city's big drawcard, The Tam Tams. Every Sunday in Summer there is a big picnic in the park, and the great thing about it is you don't need a map to get there, you just follow the smell of drugs. These guys were doing their best to make L.A. seem like a smog free paradise, and I actually read the next day in a Montreal City Council environmental report that 90% of the city's emissions come from this event alone.

There also happened to be a bike race that day, which passed by the park. The UCI drug testing commission found all 357 riders tested positive for illicit substances.

So after finishing the first week well rested and with a phone bursting with new contacts, I was on my way. But as assignments start to come in thick and fast and we encounter our first problem with the apartment, the next installment promises to be an exciting one. Check back soon for: “Act 3 - A Squirrel in the Drainpipe”.

Issue II: “That City is Going to Eat You Alive”

I arrived in the Francophone city of Montreal on the morning of the 24th after an overnight flight from Los Angeles. I got through customs easily, but had a lot of trouble buying a bus ticket into the city. I had an anxiety attack when I couldn't even read the sign on the machine and wondered what I might have got myself into, but soon realised that it wasn't in French, I was simply trying to read braille. I did eventually get into the city though, and found my hostel easily enough. I was too early to check in, so I left my bags in a locker and went to look around.

The second day in Montreal was my birthday. I didn't get up until after 10.00 because it was so dark in the dorm and I thought it must have still been before 6AM. I went into town again, and bought the banana and chocolate crépes, not because I like that combination, but the French words for chocolate and banana are very similar to English. Later on I got a lift to Old Montreal with a guy from Ford who was giving people demos of the new self-parking car. He was a Concordia student too, so he took a while to drive around and show me some stuff, then showed me how the car could park by itself without him touching the steering wheel. Later that day I met up with my housemate-to-be, Leighenne, whom I had met on the university's off-campus housing website and we just 'limed' for a while (Trinidad slang for hanging out). The next few days I walked around a lot and became friends with a guy called Tom, who I went exploring the city with.

 

Early the next week I met Niamh and went out with her and her friend Kiara, who drives a Lexus. I wished it was the new Ford model though when she tried to reverse park and knocked over a Vespa in front of a restaurant full of people. Then as always, I went back to the dorm and slept. Daniel and Michael, 2 of my dorm mates moved out on the same day later that week, and a French guy called Phillip and another guy whose name I never caught, moved in. Phillip was a nice enough guy, but had some trouble getting into the bunk without scaring the other people at the hostel into thinking we were feeling the aftershocks from the East Coast earthquake. And he must have watched a freaky movie before going to bed both nights, because he started almost-yelling French at around 2AM, sounding very distressed.

I moved into the apartment on Thursday afternoon and didn't do much all weekend except for going to a college football game with Tom on Saturday. In the end I was really glad that I waited for 30 minutes for a bus that never arrived, then caught a bus 20 minutes in the wrong direction before realising, and finally arriving an hour and a half after kick off, because it meant I only had to sit through 55 minutes of game time (for those of you who don't know, that's a joke. The game has 60 minutes of play, but when they take a time-out every time someone blinks the game can end up running for three straight weeks).

Leighenne moved in on Monday, so we spent the afternoon liming and went for a walk around the neighbourhood. University began on the 6th, so tune in for the next chapter titled “Scholastic Endeavours: Kyan Goes to his First Class of University in Montreal, and Other Fun Stories” to read all about it.