Happy Happy Joy Joy

YES!!! My best childhood friend, C, is coming in late March for a visit!!! YEEEEEEPPIIIIIEEEE!!! I'm sooooo happy, cause not only will I have someone visiting me, first one so far, bu it will be a good friend I always has known, lost for many years in the labyrinths of life, and now found back to and we now kick off just as we used to! Tjohooooo!

Funny that thing of meeting someone again - and you feel like you already know this person inside out, without actually knowing anything about her life as it is now a days. Looking at her is for me to look at a 10 year old sparkling girl, but with a 27 year old mind, knowledge and outlook. Strange and great at the same time.

C, I'm waiting like crazy! Happy happy joy joy!

Love you all
/pluplu

Quebec men goes fishing

Hmm... It seems like Quebec men like to fish in the international sea of women. In my class, where there is 8 women, 5 of us is brought to Quebec out of love, "forced" to marry to be able to stay and all of us are "forced" by the immigration system to become a housewife unwillingly while doing it. Grrrrreat!

back in school

So, I'm back behind the school bench, slowly wriggeling my tounge around wird sounds to try to make sense, ANY sense at all. But no, I seem to have lost most of my (sense?) abilities of speaking French over Christmas holidays. Plu plu plu pluääääää! I don't get it, ok?! What a super duper weird language it is, really!
But the class is nice and the teacher too, so I'm having fun, and that's really what I need just now anyway, so I can live with the language problem.
By the way, yesterday a women phoned and told me something in difficult and rapid French. "Sorry, I said, do you speak English?" "Njae, only little very... Your French course beginner tomorrow start, ok."
Great neh, smart thinking.

djunglelaw

It's forbidden by law in Montreal to be in the city's parks between 12 at night to 6 in the morning.
Why? A hint is the huge amount of homeless people here and commercial areas who doesn't like them around...
Hmm...

stores and beers

In the food stores in Montreal they have bagboys - those boys or girls who pack your food while you're paying the cashier. I always feel a bit stupid standing there waiting, but sometimes I try to help, but usually that just complicate things for them. But the real pain is when the bagboy is missing, and the cashier has to do the job - after she/he dealt with the money. Then she/he slowly starts packing for you and the line of people just keeps growing behind you. Efficient? I wouldn't say. Service minded - definitely!

Then you have the amazing coldrooms ( I said room!) with beer - ALL kinds of beer - in every store, even the tiny corner stores that you find everywhere there might live people! I mean, hey baberiba! How service minded can it be?! Being used to maybe a small fridge in the back of the store with some commercial 2,5% beer, if I'm lucky, I found this completely cool! You have everything from commercial stuff to locally brewed beer, amber, brown, dark, blonde, you name it. And of course - it's ALL strong beer! Tjohooo!

naked illegal alien

Something is strange about Canadian girls - they are shy of showing nakedness in front of each other. I'm still the only one who showers naked after swimming at the swimming pool. And they stare at me like I'm an alien, a NAKED illegal alien! It's a bit amusing. But I always thought the American continent was all about sex and showing booty, but apparently that ends with the Canadian border.

housewife dovetail-style

Hahahahahahaha!!! Guess what I found. M has this old cooking book "The settlement cook book" (with the subtitle: The way to a man's heart), first printed in 1901, but this one has been re-edited 1960, so it's been modernized, it says on the cover. And in the book you can find not only recipes, but also amazing tips of how to be a good housewife, made for newly wedded wife or up to expert level housekeeper. So, since my new life is a bit on the upside down-side for the moment and I'm a bit of an unwillingly housewife, I thought it could be some good ideas in the book for me. And listen to this:

Housekeeping guide
Make a schedule of essential housekeeping tasks, and use this as a guide to jobs to do every day, once a week, at the major change-over time in the spring and fall. Clean regularly; dirt and stains are easier to remove when fresh. First, list your daily chores, general tidying, bed-making, top-dusting, sweeping and vacuuming, care of the bathroom and kitchen, meal preparation and dishwashing.
Make a second list of chores done on special days of the week: ideally, each room should be done thoroughly once a week, with work divided equally among the working days you allot to housekeeping. (...) Learn to dovetail jobs (kedjearbeta), so that two can be going at once. Let the washer run by itself while you do surface cleaning. Dovetail your own time and motions, too.

I love it! I learned so much by reading this and are now doing everything according to the book. At this very moment I'm dovetailing hard by being lazy in my bed while writing this super important information to you all - AND drinking coffee at the same time! Like if this wouldn't be enough I have also the privilege of watching my dear husband dovetailing in the kitchen, cleaning the stove and the dishes (all according to the great book) while cooking a big ham old grandma-style! And around this we have wrapped amazing jazz music into our ears, so that we can let dreams wander freely at the same time as this heavy work is being done.
Thank you "The settlement Cookbook", for all the inspiration you have given us. Now I'm gonna move over to implement dovetailing on my very body movements.

long time

You know what? I´ve been in Canada for over 6 months!!!! Whooohooooo!!!!

blub-blub-bla-bla-plu-plu

French, French, FRENCH!!!! I´m loosing my hair over this soooo complicated language! Why is it so hard to learn? I just don't get it at all, practicing really hard, I would say, reading and translating and trying to talk and listening and listening and listening. But no! Nothing stays! I feel like a gold fish in a glass bubble, I can see the world out there, but instead of swimming in it, I'm going around and around in my glass bubble, forgetting where I was one round ago. Blääää! M claims that I'm doing fine, but I think he might say it a bit out of love. :) Well, it's good that he does, it gives me that little extra to keep going.

Otherwise, life is good here, I just learned that my immigration application might be finished processed by end of March, and if really, really lucky even as early as end February! Wow! Then I can work, tjoooohoooo!! I have so much need of working that whenever I start talking about it I get all rounded up and angry and crying out of frustration. I'm telling you friends, this has for sure been the HARDEST thing I have ever done on my life! To push yourself through this porridge of reglations, laws, wondering, worry, thoughts of this and that, context change and assimilation, puh - not easy. But hey, I'm still kicking, neh!
Miss you all! Tell me how you're doing!
Love/pluplu

Indier i min hemstad!

Sorry, only in Swedish:

Denna artikel står att läsa i Nya Wermlands Tidning:

"Nio indier smugglades till Arvika via en plomberad trailer från Luxemburg. De trodde att de kom till London."

Lite längre ned:
"– Är de här för att söka asyl kommer de att lämnas över till Migrationsverket. Men är de här illegalt blir det ett avvisningsbeslut och i väntan körs de till förvar i Flen, säger en polis. (...) Alla beslut fattas av beslutsfattare i utlänningsrätt, i det här fallet chefen för gränspolisen i Västerås. Chefen för gränspolisen i Värmland är på semester – i Indien."

Stackars indier, Arvika är liksom inte the place to be. Tror faktiskt att dessa 9 skulle vara de enda indierna där, någonsin... Men så som indierna i religionen har elefanter med många armar, så har Arvika sin fågelman, med fågelhuvud, köttig manskropp, två armar och tre (!) ben. Mitt på torget. Enastående vackert! Älskad av alla, saknad av ingen.

night blues

I can't sleep, instead I'm in my bed thinking about the woman I met today that had more beard than my own husband... Huga!!
And then I'm thinking about you my friends and wondering what you are doing today? Please tell me... I'm having night blues...

Little Sweden in Montreal

No, I can't live without you - you amazing Swedish people. Realized that it is a nice thing to keep the Swedish contacts in a new country, who knows, maybe they are sitting on an amazing job opportunity for me some day? So, I found the Swedish Club in Montreal on the net and hey!, they are having a pub evening in two days! Hellooo Sweeeeden! Here I come. Well, I must say that the homepage leaves me wondering about who they actually are, just enough to feel interested in finding out. And if not anything, a good beer is always a good beer, neh.

How ever I do, I will never get far away from Swedish connections as long as I'm learning French, that's for sure. Man, who would have known there was sooo much Swedish words stolen by the francophones? We should take it to court fellows! They took our dear word "trottoar", and what about our important word "dusch" and the deeply beloved "cement". The only comfort in this tragedy is that they can't spell. (trottoir, douche, ciment). Here is a word we should steal from them: limitation (hastighetsbegränsning) But wait, isn't that already stolen from English? Hmm.. gotta look into this.

blip-blip

Wohooo, my blog is filling up slowly of self reflexive, super-selfish (hmm.. how do you spell that word without making it look like a fish?), self concentrated, only-about-me-me-me-text!!! Yeaha! I told you I would take some time of concentrating on myself, and hey, that´s what I´m doing, neh. But today is the day of change! I came to the conclusion (with a little help of my friend :) that I have to start looking around myself, otherwise my inspiration will never come back fully. And how am I then gonna start writing those documentary film scripts I soooo much wanna do?

So, news is the best way to start, so today I´m listening to CBC - Canada Broadcasting Corp.! Tjo! It´s funfunfun! Wanna join me?

contrasts in city

I love the contrasts in this city, all the different people and views in the streets, the mix of very ugly and very nice and interesting. When you walk in down town you'll meet a lot of homeless people, much more than I´m used to, and it´s to me a wonder how they can survive a Montreal winter with freezing cold winds and snow, sometimes temperatures under -40. Brrrr...

I like all the amazing amount of projects and courses and other initiatives that I see everywhere around where I look, stuff for supporting this and that and to spreading the knowledge about this and that. It´s about homelessness, HIV, drugs, mixed cultures, immigrants, languages, youth in trouble, disabled, psychic related problems, environmental projects, political awareness... etc.. you name it... I must say, it feels much more alive than in Sweden, maybe I´m wrong, but it´s the feeling I get.

A supernice contrast you see especially down town is all the churches completely squeezed in between high office buildings and big shoppingmalls. This city is famous for all its churches, and I guess they came long before the sky scrapers... Unfortunatly I still mis a digital camera, so you will have to come here and see it for yourselves (peak, peak :)

Another really nice thing is the buildings that are left from the world Expo in 1967, I have only visited one of them, the Biosphere, an amazing structure on one of the islands in the Lawrence river. It´s now turned into a nature history museum with a focus on environmental issues and biology. Very, very cool to see the architecture. But I still haven´t visited the amazing apartment building Habitat 67, witch is an extra ordinary structure along the water close to the harbor. I saw a TV program about this building before I moved and I just have to see it soon! It´s built out of cubes, all the same but each and everyone a bit turned around in different angles so all of them have their own part of the view, some sunny sides and a own private garden inside in between the neighbors "cube" apartment. It was supposed to be built for an uncosty living with quite low rent, but of course it became an artistic hit and now all the cool people with tons of money and architectual interest lives here.
Wanna join me for an excursion?
PS: most photos can be viewed in full size by clicking on them.

Big Brother sees me

One strange but good thing happened when I entered the customs in Montreal this time flying home to Canada. The girl behind the counter scanned my passport as they always do, gave it back and told me to pay a visit to the immigration in the office behind her. I had not told her anything about anything, so I supposed my immigration application and status popped up on her computer screen when she scanned the passport. So me and M went in there, a guy asked us some easy questions and said ok, stamped the passport and off we went. Puh! Always scary while you´re in there, cause they could suddenly change their minds about something ans decide to send me back on the returning flight for almost nothing. So we were happy everything went so smoth. And this means I´m officially in their systems now - and big brother is keeping an eye on me. Gulp!

getting there slowly

I´m continuing my journey into the Quebec´n lifestyle. Today I signed up for a pottery class, finally, I´ve been wanting to do that since I finished high school. And I even managed to get my own library loan card - and I loaned some seriebooks that looked nice and a French study book. So, now I am equipped and I feel so happy to have done this two things. Never in my life I thought I would be soooo happy over getting myself a library card, but life can be surprising...

Multi culti

One thing I love about Montreal is all the multi cultural food and people. 5 minutes from our house we have an amazing market with all the vegetables, fruit, meat, bread, wine and cheese you could ever want from all around the world I would say. And around the market you can find super Chinese restaurants (I mean real ones as in the chef and the owners are usually a Chinese family working together all of them with the kids running around or grandma peeling the carrots in the corner) and halal kitchens and Italian, African, Spanish food places are close by too... And my new love is all those amazing Chinese noodle soups, especially the one with smoked veil (kalv), soooo delicious, you have to come over and try it! Multu culti is da shit!

Bonne année!!!

Happy new year everyone! Thanks for the all the hugs and talks and cheering we got from all of you we met in Sweden! You have no idea how much it meant for me and how much in need of that I was!!! Thank you, you all made my (our) Christmas and kicked me in a good mood for this brand new happy year!!!

Me and M throw a new years eve party here at home, some nice friends and a lot of food and Swedish snaps later I discovered a funny and nice thing around 12 at night. We had a snaps each in our hands, raising it for the big Salut, and they asked me what my new years resolution would be... Resolution??!! Man, how good isn´t that? In Sweden we always make promises - just to break them a few weeks later. But a resolution, thats something extra! I loved it. And here it is: My resolution for 2008 is to let go of the old so new can come in!

Happy resolution guys!

Love/pluplu