... hmmmm...

A thought: Why don't they make big gallon pails of yogurt? I eat yogurt every day. This would be extremely helpful so I don't have to run out to the Loblaws every four or five days (I have to take two trains to get to the Loblaws - there is an IGA down the street... like four blocks, but I really hate paying a $1.50 more for the convenience). But yeah - they make gallons of that horrible no name brand ice cream, why not do the same for yogurt? And instead of making it gross like the ice cream, make it fantastic.

 And now, back to life lessons:

5. In my quest to learn French, I've been completely avoiding it (Yeaaaah... I know. Shame on me).  However, it becomes apparent when people refuse to speak English to me (so far this has happened two or three times).  I'm not very good at actually speaking French, but I'm comprehending it better and better the more I hear it. So today (while buying yogurt, see above), the cashier wouldn't speak English to me even though I opened with "HELLO" (In Quebec that generally means that you would like to converse en anglais and most employees are required to be somewhat bilingual... so yeah.) But where it gets funny - She would speak to me in french and I would respond in English.  There was a queue starting to form and I couldn't think of the proper French so I just defaulted to what was comfortable for me. So it went a little like this: "voulez-vous un sac aujourd'hui?" "Yeah, that would be great." "sept-quarante-trois SVP" "seven-forty-three?" "oui" and so on.

6.  In other adventures of being an anglophone seulement, I had another hilarious language experience. My mom bought me a 40-inch TV as a grad present... and I was under the impression that my Wii was a DVD player (it can play DVDs without menus. WHAT DVD DOESN'T HAVE A MENU?)... So me being my completely rational self (*cough*) decided I should go to future shop and see what my options are for a DVD player, another game console or finding a way to hook up my computer to the TV. I go into future shop and couldn't find any DVD players or HDMI cables, so I ask the nearest employee who keeps looking confused and keeps asking me "parlez-vous francais?" and me going "NOOOO. JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS. MON FRANCAIS N'EST PAS BON." He then asks his colleague if he spoke enough English to help me out. He shook his head. Normally at this point, I would give my shitty french a shot, but then I realized I had no idea what an HDMI cable is in french. I have no friggin' idea how to express "I WOULD LIKE TO HOOK UP MY COMPUTER TO MY TV WITH AN HDMI CABLE" (je voudrais TO HOOK UP/ATTACH mon ordinateur TO mon tele avec un HDMI CABLE). In the end he called over the speaker for someone to come speak English to me. Luckily there was a manager who was completely fluent en anglais. Surely enough an HDMI cable solved all of my technological problems (I didn't realize they ran audio too - neato!). Life lesson: I need to speak more French, learn more French, better my French etc. But in my defense, HDMI cable is not in my French-English dictionary.

I haven't even started my program and there are life lessons to be learned.

1. Just because you're in a big city doesn't mean the buses come frequently. The bus I take to school is one such bus. I found this out the hard way (Daaaaamn you Verdun bus!!).

2. Grocery lists are your best friend, especially when you don't have a car. You essentially have two hands and a personal old-lady cart (if you even remember to bring it). Note that I always pick up things I don't have on my lists. This has caused many elbow bruises from balancing plastic shopping bags filled with heavy things.

3. In the same vein, buying a 12 pack of beer from the grocery store across town without your cart is not a good idea. Ever. This is compounded when the only other things you need from the store are Orange Juice (also really heavy), butter and eggs (omgwhyyyyy!?). Carrying eggs and beer together isn't ever going to end well.

4. I sit on my balcony, drink and listen to Sam Roberts despite the weather conditions. BECAUSE. I. CAN.