Well, there's always next weekend.

Stuff I Did This Weekend: 

vendredi
• Went to a "meet & greet" with staff of Concordia's independent student newspaper, "The Link" (and signed up to be a contributor to several categories.)
• Hit up a local microbrew with The Link staff, sampled both raspberry and honeybrown beers.  (Notes: both, good.) Also, listened to Bekah debate the merits of different Bowie albums with an Irishman. Met a journalist grad who majored in Russian studies, spoke fluent Russian and gave us three reasons why his apartment was haunted.
• Walked home in the rain, threw on the new Darkness CD and fell asleep even though I was SO SURE I WASN'T TIRED.

samedi
• Slept in. (durr.)
• Trekked out to Value Village to find some back to school garb, and ended up with three pieces and 5 books-- more than I meant to buy. (Oops.)
• Went for a solid 5K run. Upon which I threw down Hans Zimmer's The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack and ran like I WAS the Batman. (Cape not included.)
• Read T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg aloud, lying on my yoga mat, in the kitchen, to Rebekah.
• Split for the evening to the Village, danced like a FREAK, and then split early. Last trains are the despair of my dancing shoes.
• We made the mutual decision that 1AM was a premature turn in on a Saturday night and thus, headed out to the legendary La Banquise, a 24-hour poutine joint. ATE EVERYTHING. Seriously. (Bek: La Elvis. Me: La Matty.)

La Elvis

 

I realize this looks like the most disgusting thing ever (all poutine does), but there is steak and green peppers and gravy and that's all you need to know.

 

• Walked home. C'est froid.

dimanche
• grocery shopped
• tidied my room
• made epically good vegetarian chili
• put up the rest of my picture frames
• #occupied Second Cup to steal their internet. (The money I'm going to save when I don't have to buy tea to use their internet connection is going to be awesome. Like. Seriously, 4 bucks a week.)

Stuff I Didn't Do this Weekend:
• laundry
• cocaine

The French Revolution: Welcoming Party

I keep having these moments where everything seems to fall into perfect, clean lines. Seconds of belonging, kind of what I've been looking for as I get my footing in this brave new place. Some solace or reassurance, that I wasn't alone, that I have a chance to make it out of here alive. (Maybe even better off?)

#1. Bek and I went out to look for a bar. It was our first Saturday in the city (well, the first where we weren't covered in moving dirt, sweat and exhausted) and it was not to be wasted. After spending the afternoon making our little flat into a little home (pictures hung, vinyls spinning, stocking the fridge with fresh veggies from our nearby fruiterie) we were too tired to go dancing, but not too tired to go out and sit on our butts with a cold drink. So we got dressed and wandered out into the night to find a scene.

The nightlife in Montreal is the stuff of legends (says the tour book that Jill got me for my birthday). The night was cold with the first mumble of autumn making us wish we had brought scarves. Each bar or pub or bistro we passed promised something different. One, a young scene, loud and boisterous. The next, sophisticated, wine swilling patrons with square plates and assembled, precarious appetizers. People wandered this way and that through the streets. No one clear direction was marked as the path to the par-tay.

We decided on Chez Baptiste, not sure why, but with our eyes on it, we both decided it would be a good place to check out. Mutual, mind connection decision made. Inside, the bar was dark and the Black Keys blared over the speakers. People wore berets and thick rimmed glasses without a sense of any irony whatsoever. Our waitress asked us where we were from and we explained we have moved, and it was our first week dans la ville. A few minutes later she came back with a tray, and on it, three shots. "Welcome to Montreal!" And I can't be sure whether the warmth from this welcome was me being genuinely moved, or from hard alcohol. Either way, we left a few hours later in high spirits and thanked the waitress again on our way out the door.

#2. Today at school, I discovered they serve a free vegan lunch from Monday to Friday. I gawked at the wealth of the young and the hip and the smart and the beautiful. I felt, like this was a place where my passions, my interests and my morals were aligning. I learned about poets and my prof talked about epiphanies and Oscar Wilde and poetry. Hipster Mecca. Who knows, sooner or later I might even get to call it my home, instead of that place where I just happen to have landed at the moment.

#3. I even wandered into a pet store, and bought a scratching post for the cat using my lame French skills. Bravo, moi. Bravo! The house is more or less emptied of cardboard boxes, too. I made a vegetable stock out of the bits and pieces of cut up vegetables Bek and I haven't made use of. The weather is getting colder and stuff is starting to come together.

Keep calm, and carry on, y'all.

The French Revolution: Transition

I called home last night for the first time since the move on Saturday, to hear mama's voice. I rambled on to her about my profs, people who express with passion the romanticism of grammar, and swoon over the 100+ word sentences of Charles Dickens. (I'm not kidding.) Then she asked me about the commute, the cat, and how everything was going. How was I feeling?

It was then, I had a moment of pristine verbal clarity, something that does not happen to me very often. "Mom," I said, "No one daydreams about the transition period."
No thirteen year old on the cusp of puberty lays down in the evening, starry eyed about growing pains and acne. They wax hopeful about new heights, about breasts and curves, about muscles and low voices. The end result.


I never sat with my psychologist, pouring my heart out about the excitement of struggling with my social anxiety. I looked forward to a time when heading into work wouldn't be the cause of tears and panic, when I didn't care so much about what people had to think of me. When I could feel 'normal.'

So, I guess what it boils down to at this moment in time is: Am I 100% happy?

No. Of course not, I'm in transition. I've been in the city not but a week, without a full week of classes under my belt. I've not yet stretched my legs out and headed to the higher ground. I haven't had much opportunity to make new friends, or build a new life here, or get into a routine. Those things take patience and time. When people spew entire whip-lash paragraphs of Quebecois French at me, my brain still shuts off, like it's white noise. Je ne comprends pas. This English-outcast mentality has put my confidence offside. Where once I felt strong and confident, I now feel.... paled in comparison. Reverse ugly duckling syndrome.

I knew this wasn't going to be easy, and I'm not miserable, I'm just incomplete.  I have to make what I want for myself. "Putting yourself out there," is nowhere near as simple as it seems.

I had a similar discussion with my friend JG, who lives in Liverpool at the moment, but is planning on making the move to Edinburgh. I lectured him that moving to Scotland wouldn't be a cure all for any discontent he had with his life. I said he would have to take pains and put in effort to get what he wanted. Well, it seems as though I may as well have been talking about this to myself. Advice that I ought to take straight into my heart, until I find my niche, where I belong, and this new brave world of happiness. I guess we'll see. It's a little premature to be developing anything, and little early to be despairing too.

Awkwardness. And they say you only go through puberty once?

The French Revolution: Moving Day

[NOTE: I WILL UPDATE THIS POST WITH PHOTOS WHEN I CAN GET AT 'EM. UNTIL THEN, YOU JUST HAVE TO READ STUFF. READ IT WELL.]

I've done it. Move complete. I'm typing this away in a Second Cup in Montreal.

The night before the big move, I could only lay awake in bed and think one thing: "This is the craziest thing I've ever done." And it is. I've never lived so far from home, in a place where I don't fluently speak the preferred language. I'm pouring literally thousands of dollars into a degree and this living arrangement for the next three years. They say the big risks = the biggest payoffs.

Fingers crossed on that.

The move itself went something like this: we got up with the sunrise to jam poor Telly into his cat carrier, then schlepped him into the back of Bek's car. Bek and I took that car, and our parents each went in their own respective vehicles. We had a gaddamn convoy. Before we left, we geared up on coffee and breakfast sandwiches, then took off down the highway. And we drove over 500KM, over 6 hours, until we made it all the way to la belle province (Québec) and la ville (Montreal...duh). The drive itself didn' feel long at the finish, but by the end I was talking to the cat, he was talking back, and no one was in the mood for the next step of the journey.

I had been dreading this for weeks. Steady goodbyes, one by one to the people I love as well as the slow disappearance of my worldly belongings into bags and cardboard boxes were pretty much symptoms of the looming apocalypse. Friends and family with their eyes alight would ask me if I was excited and I would just shake my head.

"No. I'm too stressed out by the move."

The idea of moving is simple by definition, and most people only hate it because of the hard work it signifies. You take your stuff from the home at point A, move it to point B. Well, it so happens that Point B, my new home, is an apartment graced with ample stair-age. No elevator.
My parents are both over 50 years old, not spring chickens and the very IDEA of sending them (cruel taskmaster styles, yo) up not one, but two narrow, somewhat steep flights of stairs carrying heavy/fragile/featherlight/nothing was giving me massive anxiety. If someone broke something, I was going to have THAT on my conscience for the next...oh...forever.
Every family dinner or special occasion, someone would say, "Hey, do you remember the time you got the idiot idea to move to the only French speaking province in our country and mom was carrying that big box up the Aztec pyramid that you call your stairs using only her love for you and she slipped and got a hangnail?" Dare I say, the story of the agony would echo through the ages as first fact, and then legend.

Yes. This is the MO I was working with. Dreading. When we GOT there, the former tenants of our place were still moving out. They were pretty well all francophones, which one of the fellows seemed to find important as he made a big show out of asking us all if we were from Ontario and then bidding us goodbye as "anglophones." Merci, bro. Nothing makes me feel at home like having it pointed out explicitly why I don't fit in. Seriously!

As we hauled box after box up the stairs, my dad stood on the balcony and pulled things up by a rope. My parents in the end, actually did very little stair climbing, for which I am very grateful. We got all the stuff up, threw it into the rooms, shutting Telly in the bathroom, to adjust to part of his new home. He curled up in the window, petrified. I could sympathize.

My parents headed to Ikea to bed hunt (which is like head hunting but sleepier in the back to school season) and Bek's parents went to scope out their hotel. What did we do in that moment? Did we jump up and down with excitement? Did we high five? No. We threw my comforter on the floor and laid on it without moving. Then we made coffee and laid still some more. The start of our glamorous French-Canadian Metropolitan lives began with no sugar, no milk dark roast and paralysis courtesy of fatigue.





We went out for dinner with Bek's parents, tried to order in French, and came home to find the cat missing. POOF. Gone. We searched the apartment top to bottom. We checked every room, every pile of miscellaneous stuff, every box, twice. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I feared that in some WEIRD anglo-hate fueled terrorist act, someone had had broken in to let the cat out. We literally could not find him. ANYWHERE. So I did what my mama taught him to do best: come to the sound of a treat container being shaken. Following the sound of the bell on his collar, Bek found him in my closet. Which we thought was regular size, but ACTUALLY goes all the way back to Narnia, while still providing room for several fugitives and/or in denial people of the gay persuasion.

We have no beds, so we slept on the floor. C'est la vie.

None of this even feels real yet. Like by next week, I'll be back home, in my Waterloo life with my family and everything will be on hold again. Not this time, mes amis. This time, we're playing for keeps. 

À Suivre...

Funeral for a Friend

I had bought the bag when I was in highschool. It was messenger style, brown canvas, with two pockets on the flap, embellished with blue and brown plaid. However, sorting through my purses today, I realized that I not only wanted to leave this bag behind, but that I no longer wanted it at all. I looked up at my friend Steph, sitting on my bed.

"Hey, do you like this? You can have it if you want."
"Are you giving away all your things? It's like your funeral or something," she said.

And, kids, it very much is. Moving is exciting, but right now, I've found this bittersweet melancholic haze has taken over. I feel as though I'm soldiering toward the move instead of sprinting to it now. I'm giving away all my things, like a living will.

You know how there are distant relatives or friends you only see once someone drops dead? The deal is the same with moving. People you haven't seen for a year. People you've just met, they all come out of the woodwork. You have to say all of your goodbyes. Get some closure, or at least let them know they're welcome to visit your new life once you've settled in.

Thursday, I had coffee with a friend of mine from Starbucks. In the afternoon of the same day, I met up with a guy friend of from my days at Sheridan. I hadn't seen the Starbucks friend in about a week, and it had literally been about a year since I had seen my college pal. I had to say goodbye to both of them. She hugged me and then bequeathed me a set of knives for my new kitchen.. He hugged me so hard he picked me up off the ground. My favourite hugs are the kind that hurt.

Sometimes, moving is like a funeral because you struggle to find closure. Sometimes, you can't see all the people you want to. You can't give them reasons, or get rid of all of the things you wish you could say.  Sometimes, you don't get to spit out all the goodbyes you want to and I think that's going to be the hardest part right now.
ANGSTANGSTANGST vs. excitement, basically.  Je ne sais pas.

Pack a' lackin'

The good news: I'VE FOUND AN APARTMENT TO LIVE IN. The lease is signed and Chez Wiley is a go. It's a two bedroom in what I've started calling "The French Quarter" of Montreal because...well...everyone there only speaks French. Rebekah and I made the choice to live together for the comfort of A) not being swallowed by a big city whole B) cheaper rent, and we're VERY pumped to get our asses out of Waterloo and out into the waiting world.

The bad news is that: It's way past the time where I have the energy or the memory or capacity to blog about my trip to Montreal, house hunting with my mother. I will say that it involved half French babble, LOTS of arguments (least proud moment: I told her to stop being a dick...something you should never say to your mama...), friendly waitresses and waiters, walking EVERYWHERE and getting lost. GETTING VERY LOST. Between us, I was the stronger navigator. Let us all have a moment of silence for the precious seconds of my life that I will never get back as we literally went in circles, struggled with maps and yelled at each other.







Amen.

The other bad news is that I went camping this weekend and I had an awesome time, but I'm also too crazy up in my head to write about THAT because I've started packing. If you want a photo that sums up the experience, this shot is just for you...and everyone on my Facebook:

That's me, next to a fire. I'm roasting a donut, on a stick. You might also notice the bag of kettle chips and the bag of peanut butter M&Ms by left arm. AKA, WE ATE EVERYTHING. Drank some, too. We laughed even more, which was the most important part. Quality time with big sis and laughing my ass off after all the stress as of late. I also got a sunburn on my arse, slept on the ground, peed in the woods, and learned how to set up a tent. Education at it's very finest, my friends.

But now, we're onto packing. PACKING, which involves being calm and organized. I've already scrubbed more pots and pans before shoving them into boxes than I probably have in the past 6 months.

I think as a rebellion against just being so tense, I have constant music playing as I gallivant around the house, slinging kitchenware and fretting about where the hell the plates went. This comes along with stints of manic DIY fever. I've already:

• painted and stenciled my bulletin board
• refaced a retro style clock
• mod podged a collage box for all of my teas and such

These stints of creativity among wrasslin' with newsprint, coffee mugs and appliances are actually making me excited to have a kitschy, snuggly home of my own, with all the weird touches my parents wouldn't care for. I've been sitting here too long. I have to go find my toaster.

Prequels

August is the month of reckoning. The month in which EVERYTHING. GOES. DOWN. (Well, until  September, in which case everything really gets set in motion.) Basically, August is the prequel that will set up the rest of the series which is my life in Montreal. Apartments will be viewed, jobs will be quit, goodbyes will be said and tears will probably be shed. Panic attacks may or may not be impending, sponsored by hormones, pressure and oh yes, drama.

Wednesday, I made the first round of calls around to my list of potential apartments to ask after the availability of them. Some people spoke French over a crackly connections, some were very friendly. Some had a little more to say than I wanted to hear. The superintendent of a student residence building told me that she was booked solid until 2013 and I "should have started looking MONTHS AND MONTHS AGO."

Which I'm sure she didn't mean with any cruel intention. However, filtered through my panic of finding a roof over my head, coupled with my anxiety about moving,
"I started signing leases for September in January."

Sounded like:

"YOU'RE FUCKED."

Be still, my poor, aching heart. Thank you lady, for that little tidbit. Days like that, I try to remember that 'give them hope' is on my arm for me too. Mama and I are headed down on Tuesday the 7th to look at some places. Which should be interesting because my mom thinks most people are out to scam you and loathes big cities.

We live in one of the tamest lamest suburbs in our city, an Olympian shotput throw away from the Mennonites and she's paranoid that I'll be mugged walking anywhere after 10PM. I'm serious. Bringing her into a big, half French metropolis is going to border on social experimentation.


Housing has been the main focus of any and all topics I discuss with my parents lately. When I told mama I didn't want to live downtown, instead opting for The Plateau, NDG or Verdun, 3 nice neighborhoods just outside of the core, her eyes popped out of her head.

When I told her I wanted to be part of a neighborhood or a community my dad stuck his head into the discussion by asking me if that was really important, because I mostly "keep to myself." Which is father for 'anti-social.' My dad also thinks I despise drinking & socializing, and that I'm the smartest of his three children...........................PAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. 

I'll hopefully post more about my adventures in moving my life around soon!