Explore Day 35

Day 35. Explore is over.

The past week has been ridiculously busy, which is why I haven’t managed to blog. There’s so much I wanted to talk about, but what with four final exams in the past three days, I had to do a ton of studying. Fortunately, though, it paid off, as I think most of my exams went well.

Once more, the end of exams is bitter sweet. It’s lovely to feel the stress evaporating, and to know that it really doesn’t matter anymore how to conjugate pouvoir in the imparfait, but it also means that Explore is done, and now comes the time for goodbyes. One of my best friends left this afternoon already, and I leave tomorrow at 6am, with almost 1000km of driving ahead of me. Luckily one of my friends is driving with me for most of the way, so I’ll have someone to talk to and keep me awake. :)

The past week—other than the stress of exams—has been fantastic. I’ll write another post sometime about everything I did last weekend, because I have some pretty gorgeous photos to share, but the week itself involved a lot of drinking tea with friends and rambling around Old Quebec. On Monday we went for crepes, which were delicious, then wandered around the city taking pictures. Tuesday I finally saw Star Trek (in IMAX. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Jealous yet?), Wednesday I studied, and yesterday was the big ending spectacle, a sort of wrap-up talent show and awards presentation.

In the end, Explore was a fantastic experience. I’ll admit that there were times near the beginning when I wanted to go home, when I hated Laval, and Quebec City, and learning French. But as I made new friends and explored the city and worked hard at my classes, everything began to fall into place. The past few weeks have been incredible.

At the same time, though, I think I’m ready to go home. As much as I’m sad that Explore’s over, I wouldn’t want to stay much longer. I want PEI, and my family and friends there, and my church, and my house, and Charlottetown, where everyone speaks English.

Still, I will miss it here. I won’t just miss my friends and the beautiful Old City; I’ll also miss my little res room, and the ugly Laval campus, and French grammar at 8:30 am. I’ll miss makeshift cooking in the decrepit old kitchens, or hanging my clean laundry all around my tiny room because I didn’t want to pay for the dryer. All the funny, annoying little things… those are the memories I’ll take with me.

Maybe when I get home I’ll write a wrap-up post about the benefits of Explore…etc… but right now my brain is just worn out. Too much French, too much fun… and too much left to do.

[Note: I’m posting this immediately after writing it, which means it hasn’t been edited. Errors are therefore to be expected.]

Explore Day 16

Day 16. Three weekends gone. It’s a little weird to think that I’ve actually spent more weekends here than I have left. On Tuesday, I’ll be officially half-way through.

I had a great weekend doing some fun things, and I'll blog about that tomorrow (well, hopefully...) Right now, though, I need to rant about French. 

On a positive note, I spent today virtually immersed in French, and it went relatively well. I go to a French-speaking church here, and, while I don’t understand as much of the sermon as I would like, I can read along with the Bible fairly well and sing the songs. After church, I talked to several people and actually had a couple lengthy conversations all in French. The people in the church are lovely, and so eager to help me learn French. One family even invited me over for lunch and then took me on a whirlwind tour of Old Quebec. My ‘tour guide’ didn’t speak much English, but whenever I was unsure of a French word she used, she was great at explaining the meaning.

In short, my spoken French skills are definitely improving, which is what I care about most. There’s still a lot that I don’t know how to say (and it’s so frustrating when I forget basic words like ‘older’ or ‘maybe’) but I can carry on a basic conversation. Whenever I get back to ‘normal life’ on PEI and meet French tourists, I’ll hopefully be able to make them feel welcome.

Negatively, though, I’ll be insanely busy this week, with a little test Tuesday, two oral exams on Thursday, and a grammar exam on Friday. Since my last post I’ve been working away, and the various tenses are starting to make sense, but still… there’s a lot left to learn. When I studied French during homeschooling, we really concentrated on oral skills rather than grammar; French class was watching The Lord of the Rings in French. So, I can talk to a francophone, but I have no idea how to conjugate etre in the infinitif.

I haven’t met anyone else with this problem. In most of my classes people have no difficulty in thinking of an IR verb which ends in U in the passé compose. However, when the prof describes pronominal verbs, they get all confused. I understand pronominals, but I don’t know how to use avoir or etre properly when forming the sentence.

It’s frustrating. I know I’m learning, but there’s so much I don’t know, and likely will never know. The Explore program will not make me bilingual.

At the end of the day, though, it’s okay. It’s okay that I don’t know how to correctly use the infinitive. It’s okay that the course is difficult. It’s okay that I probably won’t get an A on the course. Because I am learning. I’m speaking French, and understanding French, and even learning French grammar, no matter how slowly.  And, frankly, a 60% on a grammar test won’t matter if I’ve learned how to speak the language.

Explore Day 14

Sub-campus tunnels

Day 14. Three weeks remaining.

I’m basically 2/5^th 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…

Quebec City: Day 6

Quebec City. 6 days down, 30 to go.

I’ll admit, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. My safe arrival was a miracle in itself, since I managed to navigate Montreal and the closure of my Quebec City exit without any problems. It took a little while, but I eventually found my residence, dragged most of my stuff out of my car, and got settled in.

The most important part of Explore is the French Immersion. The ‘animators’ who run the activities, the professors, and the university admins speak only French—at least to us. Classes are conducted exclusively in French, and all important information is also delivered in French. That means that students who know only a little French (like me) have a pretty steep learning curve for the first few days!

Fortunately, adjusting to speaking French was actually easier than I expected. On Day One of the program I was already having basic conversations with my classmates, and by today (class 4) I was able to have a basically normal conversation. My grammar is horrible, of course, and I’m often scrambling for vocabulary, but I can get my point across.

Being able to speak and understand French is pretty exciting, but the difficulty is that my writing and grammar aren’t as advanced as my oral and comprehension skills. This means that I’m at a distinct disadvantage in my grammar class, especially since the professor thinks that my oral/comprehension skills are as poor as my writing. It’s difficult to succeed in a class where the professor thinks you’re stupid, especially since every time she calls on me for an answer I manage to mess up somehow. At this point, I’m just hoping that the first test (next week already!) goes well, so that I can prove that I actually belong in this level.

The other low point in my week has been adjusting to residence. I’ve never lived in residence before, and I must admit that I’m not really a fan. I dislike going down the hall to the bathroom or showers (although my room does have a sink), and the impersonal feel of the endless hallways is anything but homey. The main problem, though, is my inability to cook. There is a huge kitchen in the basement, but I have no cooking implements, and, most importantly, no fridge. This means that I can’t buy meat, milk, yogurt, vegetables, frozen deserts… anything that needs to be kept cold. My meals, then, are limited to cafeteria/restaurant food, or little fresh-made microwave meals from the grocery store. For someone used to following the sales and cooking healthy meals on just $2 a day, going to the cafeteria every day is painful.

As a pleasant note to end today’s blog: I have bought a kettle. This may seem like such a little thing, but once you’ve had to go down three flights of stairs to microwave water to make tea, having a kettle in your room is a big deal. I also met a bunch of lovely tea-lovers in the kitchen last night, and we’ve decided to enjoy evening tea parties more often. There’s no better way to end the day. :)

That’s all for now! I’ll try to post a little more often and get into the specifics of what’s going on here, rather than just general summary. But now… over to you! Have any of you done an immersion program, and, if so, what was your experience like?