Friday, May 24, 2013

Explore Day 14

Sub-campus tunnels

Day 14. Three weeks remaining.

I’m basically 2/5th of my way through the Explore program now, with two weeks down and three more to go. This means that I’m pretty settled in, with a great group of friends (who apparently read my blog… so I won’t be saying anything nasty about them) and a reasonable routine. However, it also means that the workload is dramatically increasing. Not that it was much before, with maybe an hour of devoir (homework) a day, but next week I have at least three major tests. So, right now my life is split between impromptu socials (like spending two hours having supper because we chat so much) and headache-causing school (trying to sort out the difference between the imperfect and the passé compose).
Laval's concert hall

I’ve been to a couple cultural activities in the past week. On Monday, my Quebecois friend had a clarinet recital for her CEGEP (the Quebec version of a sort of highschool/college transition) exam. It was lovely to hear my friend, and also to support the other young musicians. I miss the music scene on PEI.

Parliament (with a lovely stained glass
window depicting Samuel de Champlain)
On Wednesday, Explore ran a tour of the Quebec parliament buildings. It was fascinating because the clash of English/French cultures is so evident in parliament, from the architecture of the building to the way they run their government. Since the tour was conducted entirely in French I missed a lot of the details, but the building itself was beautiful and we got to see part of a session.

Salad. :)
This week I had my first “petit test de conjugation” on irregular subjunctive verbs. Since I had over-studied on Monday, I was pleased to find that I got 100% on my test. The mark barely matters, since the test was worth only 2% of my course grade, but it does mean that I understand subjunctives. Unfortunately, we’ve moved on to other tenses, like the imparfait or passé composé, and I find those much more difficult. We did some exercises today in lab, and I failed a bunch of them. Oh, well. I’ve been doing more research today after class, and it’s starting to make sense to me. Hopefully I have a good grasp of these concepts before next Friday…
New outfit, and a smiley on my conjugation test!

At this point, with the weekend finally here, I’m trying to get all my devoir done so I can enjoy some activities. Tonight some friends and I might go to the campus pub, and tomorrow I’ve signed up for hiking at Cap Tourmente. Judging from the information pamphlet, we’ll also be visiting a basilique, which likely means Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, one of the biggest cathedrals in Quebec. I hope I’m not misreading the pamphlet, because that church is on my Quebec bucket list.

And now I should probably get cracking on that homework…



3 comments:

  1. Sounds like an interesting time, the study notwithstanding ;) Ah, well. You will be glad for that part too! It sounds like you will have a delightful time tomorrow. We have visited that area as well and the nature is quite beautiful. Enjoy!!

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  2. You are eating your greens! I am proud. Also, I love the shoes. They remind me of Tennant as Ten. You will not be disappointed with St. Anne's- it's the biggest and most elaborate church I've ever been in.

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  3. Ste Anne de Beaupres is absolutely stunning, you will definitely not be disappointed! glad your french is coming along...i remember those days...ah french class...can't wait till you come and join me here though! :D

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