Jholapplä?

Swedish and French are not at all far away from eachother when it comes to words. They laugh a lot here when I say the very Swedish word "långkalsong", and it shows out to be old, old French. Weird. So is also Swedish "byrå, fåtölj, betong, trottoar", etc... I always claim it's Swedish words that the French has adopted, nobody seems to belive me. And my grandparents always said "jordäpplen" for potatoes, guess that this comes as an direct translation from French pommes de terre. Well, in Värmland they said "jholapplä", but thats a language of its own. :)

French Canadians complain about the frenchmen in France, there is apparently an old and still strong discussion about what is the real French language. In France they seem to have mixed up a lot of French with English words now, and in Quebec they laugh about this. In France they even subtitle the French Canadian movies with French. Now, that's something! But French in Canada is quite heavy on its dialect, suits me fine, coming from deep forests of Värmland!

French moving forward

My French course is funfunfun! We have now learned how to ask questions in many different ways, very confusing and fun, hopeless to remember when to use what, but who cares. I'm happy as long as I can ask for my coffee. Have become a helplessly coffee-holic lately. But it's sooooo gooood! :)

Tonight I'm having a second rendez-vous of my own with a friend since I got here. Yeeeaaaa! Happy inside! Maybe I'll even impress on him with my French.

Sweden are finally thinking!

Wow, this was interesting! Now Sweden knows what to use their military defense for, finally! Star ship troopers?

Read this article from today at SR's homepage. (sorry, only in Swedish)

Klimatet oroar mer än militära angrepp.

snowy day of fun

Hmm.. It's still snowing - and forecast tells us of 3 days of more heavily snowing... It's gonna be tough in the city. I just waked up and looked out of my window to see all the cars they so carefully and with so much pain digged out yesterday, is now all covered and jammed in with 1,5 meters of packed snow (along both sides and cars close parked in front and behind) again from the clearing of the road and heavy snowing. Poor car-owners I say. Well, maybe this is their punishment for polluting the air, neh?! "The one who digs a whole..."
Off to French course, then library down town for some hours of reading, a visit to the Centre d'histoire de Montréal and then to Museum of Fine Arts for an exhibition of Canadian electronic arts, later on Swedish course for M´s friend and home late tonight. Full day in Montreal! :)

Right now...

...I miss yoooooouuuuuuuu!!!!!

translation please!

You who know me knows how hard it is for me to be quiet, most of the time that is. But I'll tell you, here I have learned how to be quiet, not because I actually want to, but I just don't know what people around me are talking about, so I don't know what to say. "Pluuu, pluplu pluuuplupluuuu uuu pluuu plu!" Poor M almost has his musical ears falling off when he gets home and I might have been quiet for 10 hours in a row alone at home! "Blablablablaaaaa! :)
Sometimes when I sit there listening to other peoples happy talks with jokes and laughters and funny stories - so it seems, I don't understand a thing - I just want to do something surprising for them. Maybe I should just go for the very famous and effective Swedish-French expression;
"Eta gelé me treskée i vedbóa!" That should keep them occupied for a while.

our home & co.

We live in a old house that probably has seen it's days of glory go by many years ago. It's not so charming from the outside, but has a nice ambiance inside in our little one room and a kitchen hut. It's charming I think, and it has got a very nice little outdoors space, like a Swedish wood veranda with glass windows facing a small garden. I like it a lot, and it's close to the huge fruit and vegetable market and other stores and coffee shops and things. Nice! It's also very, very close to a small indoors swimming pool and library, and 4 evenings per week they have a free hour of swimming, so I go there as often as I can now. Very nice! I'm gonna be swimming myself to success! (and slim down from my three months of laziness and good food and M's homemade amazing wine and all nice locally brewed beer)
The only real downside with or apartment is our neighbor. Actually, it's not him who is the problem, he's really nice, it's just that in between our apartments the walls seems to be made out of rise paper or something, it used to be a big house and they seem to have just split the first floor into 2 apartments, without much thought behind it. And the neighbor love playing the radio with bad music, and watch football games loud on TV with hectic commentators screaming in French. I hear him cooking food, putting down the glass on the table, walking around, talking over the phone, snore during night, and sometimes I can even hear him fart...
Besides him we have a funny but friendly housewife next door, who seems to have her goal in life set on keeping track on what her neighbors does - or doesn't do. She invited me over to view her apartment, showing EVERY room, including the bathroom, asking me over and over if I didn't think it was Oh! so beautiful?! Well, I must say - it was different. Very kitschy Italian style with gold and pink and plastic and porcelain figurines everywhere, even in the bathroom. We also has got a very nice neighbor to the right who has a small white dog called Sushi - we were thinking of getting a cat named Soya.

snowstorm

Snowstorm, it almost sounds romantic, doesn't it? Well, I spent the weekend with M on his tour while in Quebec City, we had funfun! But this morning we woke up to a snow storm, learned that they had closed all the schools in whole Quebec region (not the city, the hole HUGE region across Canada). It was cold and snowy and above all windy! Brrrrr... My car ride back to Montreal never came, so I took the bus and came back to a completely white, covered in snow Montreal. Amazing sight! It was like 30-40 cm fresh, powdery snow and all the cars parked along the streets were all covered in snow and jammed from when they had cleared the streets of the snow. People digging down everywhere trying to get their cars out. (Wished I had a digital camera so I could show you how it looked like, but I posted this free pictures from the web to give some snowy ambiance of Montreal to you, not as much snow as it is here to day, but anyway.) But no one here seems surprised at all by all this snow and storm, they are more or less used to it. This is gonna be a very hard winter for me I think.

a coffee avec moi?

Coffee shops - my new livingroom/workspace/dreamingspace! With a laptop and a cup of good (sometimes horrible) coffee, I can stay in these spaces for hours and hours. It might sound like heaven for many of you, but frankly, I use it not only for working (like studying French and trying and oh so hard trying to come up with something project-look-alike to do), but mostly to feel less isolated and pretend that I'm actually are DOING something! Yes, it's isolating to move to a new country, in many ways. but, I'm getting there, slowly, but for sure. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger; - I'll be back!
Yeeeeeeh!!! :)

Quebec City on my radar

M has left 3 days ago for a one and a half weeks tour with a contemporary dance group. Dancing beauties all around him, hmpfrr!! :) A bit lonely evenings over here...
But in two days I'll meeting him in Quebec City, about 4 hours drive from Montreal. We were there about a month ago, and it's a very nice and beautiful city with about 300 000 people, kinda touristic, but it has a very nice charm and beautiful view over river and mountains. And I LOVE the mountains!!!
To get there I'll use the super good system of the so called "Allo Stop", which is a community based transport system, where private drivers can announce their travels and the traveler pay a small amount of money to go along, like 1/3 of the costs of a bus ride.

"de som har nedsatt människosyn..."

I just found this amazing expression on SVT's homepage, regarding en evening show "Grotesco".
I like it! I'll add this to my vocabulary.

suburbia

I saw a documentary film about suburbs, a subject that I find amusing. It's so interesting to see how and what city planners think when they plan how we are going to live. And can there be any more depressing than these kind of living - suburbs in the American continent. You would recognize the style from the TV series Desperate Housewife, you know, the perfect houses all looking exactly the same with small gardens and a pool in the backyard. Highly depressing!

Unfortunately the film wasn't that good, in the very end the charachters we were following turned into the camera and told us they were actually actors. Then followed some bad excuses why it was like that, followed by the answer from the director on my direct question of why he made it like that: "- I wanted to tell documentary in a new storytelling mode, and I didn't want to spend months out there in the suburb to try to catch something good on tape."

Well, doesn't that just kill the whole feeling the film tried to tell us - the feeling of beeing stucked in these suburbs, alone and in a slow, boring pace.

confession

I have to confess... After all this almost 3 months of dark feeling about the city, it's funny, but suddenly it seems to slowly grow on me. Deep down inside, I´m starting to feel a homey-feeling, I kinda like the city now. And the colours of brown aren't that brown anymore, even though it still seems to be the favourite colour of the architects in Montreal. And this is funny too, that I feel this at the time of the year when all green (and WOW canadian maple tree-sparkling autumn red!) leaves and grass is gone, you know, this is the time when most things look more brown and boring. But I kinda like it, it looks strange and dark, but funny and warm inside.

Am I coming home finally?

¿Hable Francés?

So, I've started my French course for immigrants! Twice a week in the mornings we meet in this small classroom with a teacher trying to get us to understand this oh so complicated language! He's doing a great job I think, can't be easy with all this different nationalities and languages thrown cross over the big table between confused students. I must say it's very amusing to listen to our brave attempts to enter the French world, and I will probably learn just as much Spanish as French...

First snow! Tjoohoooo!

Winter's coming!!! Yeeeee! M woke me up with a big smile, a nice cup of coffee and said; look out of the window! And hey! Winter white in our little back garden! Yes, I know, it wont be there for long, but it's just such a nice feeling.

We also has got a very, VERY chubby squirrel in our garden, that we try to feed even more chubby. As I have heard, Montreal has got COOOOOLD winters, like minus 30 with strong wind and humidity, BRRRRRrrrrr... So, I feel that it's my duty to feed my totem animal (and probably even my relative in former life) the squirrel. We gave him pure peanut butter mixed with sunflower seeds. He seemed to enjoy it - a lot. :)

How's weather like for you guys?

Come on and rob me!

TJOHOOOO!!! We recieved those very, very important papers from the immigration!! But what's this?? Oh, it's not the approval of M to become my sponsor, like we thought, it's new papers to fill in - this time for Quebec and not for the Canadian government like last time. Now, this is the charm of living in a province that wants to break free from the country. Everything has to be decided upon twice.

And isn't it charming that it also means you have to pay that amazingly expensive administrative costs - TWICE!

Come on Quebec - Je me souviens - trust me.

Quebec, me and French

Quebec the second largest province of Canada with a population of 7, 700 807, where French is the official language. In Quebec the French is very important to the French speaking people, manly due to cultural and historical reasons. So far, I have only gotten a small part of what Quebec's history really is about, but is seems quite violent and filled with political disputes. I'm really going to try to learn more, but I don't want to get the information only by reading about it, I want to learn it slowly by people living it. Hopefully this will give me the right idea and the feeling of the hole thing. For curious people out there, check out Quebec on Wikipedia.

One thing though, that strikes me, is the amazingly strange way to work around the French courses and us immigrants. As I've told you already, me and M has been looking around a lot for a French course for immigrants for me, but with no success until this week. Finally someone wants me! But anyway, how come it's so difficult for us immigrants to get the best way possible into the society - learning the main language - while we are applying for permanent residency - which is the time when we aren't aloud to work anyway and we have to much time to spend for our own good. I tried to explain this for myself with the normal Swedish jantelag-excuses; well, since I haven't received permanent residence status, the government can't be sure I will stay in the country and therefor they don't want to spend all this money on me. But hey, then I realized that they are really stupid to not do this, since I'm already here, married and most probably won't leave, and I have all this time learning French while waiting, so they should be fucking HAPPY that I really want to get integrated into their society and when I finally (most probably) will get approved, I will be already speaking their language and can get a job and pay taxes! Hey! What's their problem?! The very, very few that might get a negative response on their immigration application, in worst cases the government has been loosing some money on them. But isn't that ok if they have been able to give a good representation of the country and spread their oh, so precious and important language, that they have fought, and still are fighting so hard for to keep.
It makes me confused...

Guess what I´m reading right now?

"Connaissez-vous la bonne nouvelle? Dans la forêt , un petit prince ets né! C'est Bambi, le faon si joli..."


Nope, still no understanding of French....

Me Inga with the ryggsäck!

Plup pluuuu pluplu pluuu plupluplu plu pluuuuuuu! Struggling with my French and feeling low. Is it just me? Am I stupid or what? I just can't seem to remember all these strange sounds and words, can't get them to stay inside of my brain long enough to have them there when I need them. Well, I mean, I can say things like; Would you like some coffee? Hello, how are you? I'm fine! My name is Madame PluPlu. Thank's for the food (which I sometimes happen to turn into "Thank's for the bull", but that's ok). So, I CAN say some few things, but this just won't do it if I want to live here, and it's been 2 months already. I kinda thought I would be a bit more talkative by now, but no.

M phoned many different French-courses for immigrants, and we've been around talking to them, but they all turned me down due to one missing paper for the immigration, we are still waiting for some decisions to be made in the process. We might get some important papers next week! Yeeeiiiiippiiii! Stressful to wait all this time.
But so, when I had almost given up on hope, some friendly little place welcomed me, probably they went around some rules for that, and I'm finally gonna start my road to French interaction next week! Wow! Suddenly I have a new feeling about this place and I'm feeling much happier. It's been heavy to feel so outside of everything due to language problems and feeling new and lost and without work. But now at least I will be meeting some new people twice a week and learn French and have something to get me going. I've been going down this spiral of loneliness for some weeks. Even though M is helping me a lot and we have spent so much time together, it's difficult to be dependent on only one person. I actually have got one job already, once a week I give Swedish-lessons for a guy, and that's fun. I try my best to teach M Swedish too, and he's GOOD! It's gonna be fun to be able to speak 3 languages fluently together one day!

Immigration is a funny thing, all of the sudden I feel closer to all the other nationalities of immigrants around me than before - people from China, Brazil, Argentina, India, Pakistan, Zambia, Chile, Japan... - and me... Strange, I never thought of immigrants this way before, but suddenly I get a small insight in what kind of process we have to go through to move to another country, and man!, it's a lot to think about and crazy much papers to fill in and get and send here and there and copies to be made and photos to be taken and stuff and stuff. And before you leave home, everything goes into a crazy spinn of papers, doctors examinations with x-ray of your lungs, blood tests, control of my eyes and more and 50 questions to answer like; "Have you got HIV?" "How much alcohol do you drink per week?." And then selling my stuff at home, packing stuff to bring in 3 big bags, leaving my job and colleges whom I love, leaving my home, saying bye-bye to friends and family (oh, how much I miss you all!) and then PLOPP!!! - you land in a completely new context and are supposed to start everything over just like that. Sorry, but I can't help feeling a bit lost and confused - and lonely. You know, it sounds like this amazing adventure - and yes, in many ways it is - but at the same time, it's damn hard to do it all over, harder than I thought. Thank god I have all these Chinese and Indians and Brazilians to belong to - if only I could understand their language...

Madame PluPlu up to surface

So, hello friends and friends to come. This is my new life, virtually! Up until yesterday I was determined to never ever get one of those "blogs", pouring out my life's happy and not so happy moments into the public... This was before I actually read some good ones on the web! Thank you all! So, I wont promise you a good blog, but definitely an attempt to one. And why not writing it in English I thought, since this might attract some locals too... :) But please don't hesitate to write me in any language, Swedish, English or even French (I just might not be able to answer for some days on the French ones, gotta decode it first..)

So, here I am, in a new place, new space and wow!, a new world is opening in front of my (new) shoes too! Me being completely like my totem animal - the Squirrel - fast, jumping, energetic and going nuts, finds myself lost in a big, brown, BROWN city (they seem to have only one way of designing houses here, bricks in 4000 shades of brown, occasionally grey) with a very, very "precise" language, as M calls it - French! (I call it complicated.) Oh boy, I say, now what a tricky language it is... And this will also explain my blogs name, Madame PluPlu, since this is the closest to French I seem to come. All I hear when people talk is that sound, ..."plu plu pluuuu, plu plu pluu pluuuu..." Well, my hopes and intention is to finally decode this into real words, and maybe, just maybe be able to say something myself. One Day...

So, at this point, I'm living happily with M in a nice and calm part of town, not too far from fun stuff, but still far enough to avoid all the hip and cool down towners, which aim and goal seem to be to raise prices on living. But, they are fun to watch from time to time, I just jump on the subway train and surface 10 minutes later among concrete and sky scrapes, dirty backstreets and shopping people. It is a nice contrast and I think it's just that contrast that could best describe this town. Montreal - the city of thousand contrasts - and shades of brown!