Top 10 Things That I Learned in Quebec

10) The book stores only have one book in English: The latest Harry Potter release.
9) Pizza Hut calls their Canadian-style pizza Le Quebecoise.
8) Les Cinemas (movie theatres) are somewhat behind the times, apparently because they wait for French-dubbed films. Some theatres did have the latest releases, but I don't know if those had subtitles or dubs.
7) French computer keyboards are hard to use. Y'know how the numeric keys on an English keyboard have a second Shift-character listed above them? The French keyboards have allow for three characters from any one button. I never did find the @ symbol.
6) Small church cemetaries have limited occupancy. People in "Pauper's Graves" get to use a plot for one year before they are dug up and moved to a new location and the space is reused. Others have a much longer time span that is still limited at some point.
5) Gas in much more expensive in Quebec compared to Ontario. Tha elevated taxes have something to do with it, but it's around 10 cents more per litre.
4) Everybody is somehow related to everybody in the small farming towns that dot the province.
3) The Appalacian mountains are cool but they can be a little scary to drive sometimes, like going over the top of a coaster.
2) My great (great-great...) grandfather was a French soldier in the 1700's that was given an enormous plot of land, an axe and a saw in lieu of returning to France. And that's how the Boutin part of my family started life here. (Boutin is my grandmother's maiden name.)
1) French people in Ontario corect the French of non-French people. French people in Quebec correct the French of Ontario people. French people in France correct the French of Quebec people. And we wonder why people think that the French are snobs.

La Belle Province

Bonjour tout le monde!

I drove to an internet cafe an hour away from where I'm staying in Quebec. The family reunion was fun this past weekend. Apparently we have a goal of visiting as many people as we can before we head back for Ontario, so we have an average of three visits per day.

Here's a weird fact for you all. We went to Pizza Hut yesterday for dinner. I asked for my favourite, a Canadian stuffed-crust large pizza. That's pepperoni, mushrooms and bacon. The server (not "waitress," right Laura?) didn't know what I was talking about. I reviewed the menu and discovered that they call it "Une Pizza Quebecoise" ici. Weird, eh?

Au revoir. I'll be back in London late on Thursday.

Family Fun

I'm leaving right after work today (August 4) to drive my mom et ma grandmama down to Quebec. We're taking a week to go there for a family reunion. Apparently we're aiming for a small town called Saint-Magloire that's about an hour and a half southeast of Quebec City. And when I say small, I mean tiny. It has a population of around 700 people, as this article explains.

I haven't been in Quebec since I went there by train with my mom et ma grandmama when I was a young child. I only have two memories of that trip. My first memory is getting money for a bag of peanuts on the train, which I thought was very cool at the time. And at the family reunion, someone handed me a hat and told me to go around asking my relatives for money, thus encouraging me towards my future career goal of professional panhandling.

Seriously, though, I expect that I will have a lot of fun. Vive la francais! See you in a week.

Serengeti Trek III

I've got one more group picture from kids' camp last week. As usual with my pictures, you can click on it to view the original picture.

Serengeti Trek II

After a week's delay, I've finally uploaded a few digital photos from last week's Serengeti Trek, as I promised to my group on our last day. I have a new Kids' Camp folder on my photo website. This first picture is the group that I was leading, with the exception of one missing guy. (As I mentioned previously, I won't post their names on the internet for the sake of privacy.)

And now me, in the getup that I was wearing all week long: