Montreat Recap

I should write an update about my trip to Montreal ... before I leave for Quebec tomorrow morning! Yes, I'm leaving Wolfville again. Talks broke down, and the AUFA refuses to negotiate until a provincial mediator is brought in - which means that the absolute earliest we can go back to class is at least next week - so my roommate and her sister are going home to Hudson, Quebec and I'm going along.

So before I go to Montreal for the second time this week, I should recap my first trip:

Thursday: We woke up at 6:20 to get ready and hike the four kilometers to catch our 7:45AM bus. After a transfer in Amherst I made it to the Halifax airport by 12:30PM. I tried to switch my ticket to an earlier flight, but it was going to cost me $150, so I napped and read in the airport until my 9:00PM flight. After arriving in Montreal, I taxied downtown to meet Mike. We stayed up until 4:30AM sitting outside on his apartment's ledge, splitting a bottle of wine, going through our page yearbook, and just generally discussing what has been going on in the lives of everyone in our page class.


Friday: After sleeping in extremely late we went out to explore the city. Mike being a religious studies major, and me being an art history geek, we toured through a lot of the cathedrals and basilicas in Montreal. Mike explained how the Catholic Church controlled nearly all aspects of life in Montreal until the 1960s and 1970s until The Quiet Revolution, which led to the secular Montreal of today. It was strange to see these huge cathedrals that just are barely getting enough people to keep them functioning. For dinner, we went to this fabulous sushi place and then went out with a lot of Mike's friends to see Rocky Horror.







Saturday: We started off the day with an amazing brunch - I had banana and chocolate-chip crepes. We set off to see the rest of the downtown Cathedrals - mainly those in old town. We also walked down to the river to see where the world exhibition was held. As we walked around the city, Mike attempted to give me French lessons. In addition to the seven words I knew before going to Montreal (yes, no, please, thank you, hello, good-bye, and library), I now know two ways to say excuse me, how to tell someone to shut up, how to tell someone that I don't speak French, and how to count to ten. Mike decided that we were going to go to a Roman Catholic mass - entirely in French. I was completely lost the entire service (between the Catholic service and the French), but it was still pretty cool. It was actually held in Cathedral where Celine Dion got married. Now I don't like Celine Dion, but it seems like a lot of American tourists do - the collection plate was filled with American dollars.

After the service we got dinner in China Town - and the climbed the Mountain! The view of Montreal and its suburbs from atop the mountain was beautiful. Finally Mike insisted that if I was in Montreal, he needed to take me out clubbing. After being in Wolfville, which only has bars, it was great to go dancing at a club. We ended the night with the essential Quebec eating experience: poutine at 4:00AM. For those that don't know what poutine is (like me, before moving to Canada) it is French Fries with beef gravy and cheese curds. Now I hate gravy and cheese curds, but somehow poutine was absolutely amazing. We finally made it back to Mike's a little after 5:00AM and crashed.




I flew out early Sunday afternoon and finally made it back to Wolfville in the early evening - after getting a flat tire (which we managed to change ourselves!). Yesterday I unpacked, cleaned my room, and got some school work done. Now I need to pack and get some studying done before we head off for Quebec at 4:30 tomorrow morning.

Striketoberfest, Continued.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - if only my 5,000 word Politics in Maritime Canada paper would be this fun:

The Acadia Photo

Striketoberfest.

The Acadia University faculty are officially on strike. I have really mixed feelings about this, seeing as there are so many pros and cons. The biggest con is that if the strike lasts long enough we'll lose the semester and I won't get any academic credit for being here. But, there is nothing I can do about it, so I'm going to focus on the pros: catching up on work, being able to enjoy the fall weather, taking time to do things around Wolfville that we can't when classes are being held, sleeping in, etc. So here are my past several days in brief:


Friday: Friday was the last day of classes before the strike could begin, so professors were focused on telling us what we should be doing during the strike so we can keep up with the course readings and assignments. I spent the afternoon working on my Green Civ essay and studying for Aesthetics and Pre-Confederation Canada. After dinner my roommate Hannah, two girls from the rugby team and I went to the Acadia Men's Hockey home opener. They lost 3-1 against St. Mary's University. I was really surprised to see that the stands were filled with locals: small groups of people over 65, pre-teens, and families with small kids. Then I remembered that hockey in Canada is like football in the states and the community comes to support the team.

Saturday: Mainly, I did some more work on my Greek Civ essay and studied for my midterms. I was getting restless studying for so long, though, so I took a walk around the botanical gardens and through the woods near campus. Here are a few pictures I took:


Sunday: I slept in, studied, caught up with friends and family on skype, and checked about every ten minutes for information about the strike negotiations. At about 9:30PM when I hit the refresh button on the ASU website it said "The strike is official." Hannah and I started jumping and down with excitement because we were both studying for midterms, that at least I didn't feel ready to take. Within minutes people were running our residence and the campus chanting "Strike! Strike! Strike!" Sunday was also the last rugby game of the season so I went with Hannah and most of the rest of the rugby team to go dance/celebrate the strike at one of the bars in town.

Monday: I spent the class-free morning finishing my Greek Civ essay and catching up on episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. After lunch Rachel, Hannah, and I went to get tea at the fair-trade coffeehouse in town and then decided to go check out Frenchy's, the second-hand clothing store in New Minas (the next town over from Wolfville. Rachel got a plaid flannel shirt and I picked up a plaid blazer for under $2. Next we went to Bulk Barn (where I got 42 cents, 55 with tax, worth of candy corn), and then had a brilliant idea: we should get pet fish! We went to the pet store next to bulk barn to pick out our fish. Rachel decided on a goldfish named Napoleon, while Hannah and I got a Betta (named Scranton), two minnows (Jim and Pam) and a free snail (Dwight). For those who don't know, the names come from our obsession with The Office. We picked up a Betta fish kit complete with a fishbowl, gravel, water conditioner, a fake plant, and food. Rachel went ran into Wal-Mart to get a bowl and goldfish bowl. Here are some pictures from buying our fish and setting up their bowls:

This is Rachel's fish, Napoleon:

And here is Scranton (with Pam behind the plant at the top):

And here they are settled into their new home on our dressers:

Today: A relatively productive day. I did all of my laundry, cleaned my room, and organized all of my papers/drawers. I also studied for my Pre-Confederation Canada midterm. Then - because it is the perfect, crisp fall day - I went for a walk. After the Medicinal garden I came upon this huge tree that I felt I absolutely needed to climb. It's been years since I've climbed a tree, but it was rather easy to climb. I only got a about five feet off the ground and settled onto a branch. I took the picture at right of the tree on Saturday when it was overcast, but today the sky was bright blue just a few scattered cloud. I stayed up in the tree for about an hour, listening to Simon & Garfunkel and enjoying the fall breeze.




There is no word on how long the strike will last, but they're back in negotiations today which could mean it won't be too long. It would be good for the strike to last a week or two so I can get ahead on all my work and we can take a trip out to Cape Split or Peggy's Cove. If it goes more than two weeks though, you can be guaranteed that I'll be writing a post angry about how I came to Canada, in large part, for the academics and how losing the semester would be absolutely horrible.

Happy [Canadian] Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow is Canadian Thanksgiving, so the campus feels quite deserted. It has been a great weekend so far, though, and we still have tomorrow off. Here are my past couple of days:

Friday - Classes were still held, but a lot of students had already left for the long weekend so professors had relatively laid back lectures. In aesthetics we discussed the relationship between morality and aesthetic value; we had a book test in Environmental History on Collapse by Jared Diamond (it's an excellent, but relatively dense read); and in Greek Civilization we compared Mycenaean and Hellenic art. It was also a beautiful day out, so after lunch six of us went down to the harbour, played hangman, and just laid out in the sun. Then we went out for Indian food, which was delicious but the restaurant was almost unbearably hot.

Saturday - We went down to the farmers market where I got apple cider (of course), a slice of pumpkin loaf, and a loaf of pumpkin bread for Thanksgiving dinner (more on that to follow). Then, because my roommate is on the rugby team, three of us went to watch the girls rugby game. I had never seen a rugby game before and I must say I have a newfound respect for anyone that plays the game. I'm so used to field hockey and lacrosse where any forceful physical contact will instantly get you carded, and football where the players wear padding and you can't grab on jerseys to pull someone down. In rugby, it seems, anything goes with just a mouth guard for protection. The only card of the game was called when two girls broke out into a full-out fist fight. Acadia won, 31-0 against the University of PEI. After leaving the game Teal, Rachel, and I took some pictures in front of Uhall. Here are two of my favourites:


Then last night, there was Thanksgiving dinner! My roommate's older sister also plays rugby for Acadia, so their parents were in for the weekend. Their parents cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 10 of us in all. We had: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, squash, cranberry sauce, zucchini, carrots, peas, pumpkin bread, rolls, wine, cider, and pumpkin pie. Amazing.

A note on Canadian Thanksgiving. I was curious about the holiday American Thanksgiving a) is centered around the Pilgrims (and Indians, of course) which didn't settle in Canada and b) falls so much later. According to my google research French settlers had "feasts of thanks" after their harvests each year, but when the Loyalists moved to Canada during the American Revolution they brought their Thanksgiving traditions with them and in 1872 it was made an official holiday. Canadian Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October, roughly six weeks before American Thanksgiving, because the harvest comes much earlier here because of the higher latitude.

Today I need to write a paper for my Pre-Confederation Canada class and study for my Greek Civ midterm. Tomorrow, though, we're going to try and a corn maze around here that is open on Thanksgiving day.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!