Thanksgiving equals family time!

I was so excited by the imminent arrival of my sister, yet when she actually arrived, I was more confused by how I had failed to see the bus so all I could do was stand, stare and say "How did you get here?" Not exactly the greatest of greetings in the world now is it. Before long I was hugging her senseless and introducing her to anyone that might be even remotely interested. I did make her a cup of tea, a must at the end of a long journey of course. Plus, I'd borrowed a mattress so she didn't have to sleep on the floor, which I did when I visited Strasbourg. Clearly Sherbrooke is of a higher calibre to Uni. Robert Schuman, with it's mattress-loaning facility.
Anyway, since she had a long day, the plan was to have an early night but it didn't quite happen like that. Ah well.
Thursday rolled around and I trundled off to my lecture as usual. This was followed by a group trip to the supermarket in order to buy all the things we would need for Thanksgiving dinner. We found a turkey for $10 - bargain. It does however mean I have masses of leftover turkey in my fridge now.  I made green curry for dinner but hadn't counted on it being spicy out of the jar, so I added a chilli pepper and well, it was a little spicy I'll give you that. Being Thirsty Thursday, of course everyone was rather merry and provided us with much entertainment, since they were mostly pleasant. Gaston was thoroughly entertaining. He finished off the leftover green curry, and was saying how yummy it was until he realised it was spicy and then promptly shoved his head under the tap. Bless.
Katie and I did bicker about how Friday would be spent, she wouldn't decide is basically it. Being sisters though it didn't last long. Gaston did ask her if she was my brother. I love that boy!
We agreed to spend the day in Sherbrooke as it would be rather expensive to go elsewhere. We started off with lunch and I made Katie order poutine (what? It's a quebecois speciality!) even though she couldn't have the cheese/curd stuff.

From there we went to the history museum which was clearly aimed at school children. The first exhibit was about the history of Sherbrooke and included some recordings of a guy with a horrendous accent. It just sounded wrong that he was speaking French!! The second exhibit was much more interesting, it was about the nativity around the world. I made a Christmas card for Katie. Well I was hardly going to turn down the opportunity of cutting, sticking and colouring in now was I! It was rather interesting to see all the interpretations of the nativity and how differently cultures portray it. From there we had a wander over to Lac-des-Nations but since it was freezing (il faisait frette à tabernak!) we didn't stay long and spent longer getting hot chocolate in a nearby coffee shop. Since it was still early, we went to the shopping centre. We had a mosey round and bought some Christmas decorations for my room. Sadly after we did decide to return chez moi  I put us on a bus going in the wrong direction. We had to get off and walk back. Even worse, I'm fairly certain it was the same driver when the bus finally appeared. Oops.

Saturday morning was a waste of time. Katie may have found it useful since she got on with work while I was at my lecture, but I would have happily spent the time sleeping instead. We didn't even do the essay so we'll have to do 2 next week instead of one.  After I came back, Katie disappeared to the supermarket (clearly my tour guide skills are so top notch she felt comfortable going alone) and I studied. I'm  hyper-cool! As soon as she came back we started on Thanksgiving dinner. Katie was in charge of the turkey. She got a little stressed as it's the first turkey she's done, the same reason why I got out of doing it! However, we rounded up the troops, peeled, chopped, (in some cases hacked) diced away and got the accompaniements on the go. The we offered out some free food to a select few (the remaining few still around and on the corridor this weekend) and by 7.15, so only 45 mins after our intended aim, we were reheating veggies in the microwave and serving up the turkey. The role of carving was left to P.E and Andrejean. It was like father and son! incredibly cute.

It took a while to convince Andrejean not to eat the incredibly pink turkey leg that looked set to poison someone. I also spooned up some veg on his plate. Mommaduck obviously just likes to mother people. Clearly, I also like to talk about myself in the third person. Anyway the meal was rather lovely, though my original shuffling of plates proved a futile attempt partly because I got the plate's owners wrong and partly because people swapped. I had tried to spread out franco-/anglo-phones (this also worked to spread out boys and girls) but we ended up with the 4 other girls together and me, cornered by the boys. Fail. Anyway, I enjoyed the meal! I hope our guests did too.
We had to dash a little afterwards as we had plans to watch Harry Potter. The boys, being the sweetiepies that they are did ALL the washing up for us without being asked. Unlike Georgie I won't be giving a whole review of the film, but to my surprise, it was much better than any other HP films I have seen. I admit this is limited to the first 2, but they were pretty dire and it frustrated me that they changed much of the story. However, HP is not at all a bad watch, even if I did hiccup loudly at inconveniant moments, much to the amusement of well everyone in the entire theatre.
We returned, rounded up P.E since he was the only one with his door still open and ate pumpkin pie. The kitchen was being used to play drinking games so we did have to put up with some loud, drunkeness but it was mostly enjoyable.

Yesterday was a little sad. I helped Katie pack and slipped in a few items that I no longer need i.e summer dresses, heels and birthday cards. We were able to hang out in the morning before I took her to get her bus to Montreal. I would have liked to go with her and if it hadn't been a Sunday I would have said let's make a day of it. Alas, a sparse bus timetable that offered only a 5 hour round trip with no time to do anything but wave my sister off in another town, convinced me otherwise. I would gladly have had her stay a little longer.
On the bright side, Victoria and I have booked to spend next weekend in Quebec City. This took a long time staring at maps of drop off points and bus routes. However it is feasible and our explorations have not yet ended. Hoorah!

Since when was Scotland famed for making beer?

I found out what all that noise was about the other night. Quite a collection of people had gathered on the corridor and we're planning to go for a late night picnic. It's the only way I can describe it really! I joined them with my cup of tea, which was allowed because it was in a Quebec mug. It was nice to sit in the cool night air, enjoying the banter flying around. Since most of the group came from France there was often explaining to each other what a phrase meant which was really helpful for me! Sometimes the conversation went right over my head but it was good to socialise.
Yesterday, oooh what did I do? Oh yes, I went shopping. I needed some international stamps and some aftersun. I also bought sun block which I've appreciated greatly today! I tried to get a sim card but that proved problematic and in the end I just gave up.
In the afternoon there was a welcome event for international students, which we got to quite early. However we did beat the rush since there are far more international students than we realised. The first part was a mixture of a slideshow and videos followed by a few speeches. The former was understandable - even we could spot the humour but the speakers spoke far too fast and they mostly aimed the speeches at african students. Not so useful for us! After this introduction which took well over 1.5 hours they provided us with a meal, comprising of pâte chinois (chinese pasta - nothing chinese about it. It's basically sheperd's/cottage pie with a layer of sweetcorn) and pouding chomeur (poor man's pudding). Whilst queuing up some of the French guys from the late night picnic spotted me and invited me to join them. So we did. We by this point was not just Victoria and myself but Nicole, the american from my corridor, and her friend, Hannah. We ended up right in the middle of their group so we were straight in with the French conversation. I particularly like that one of the guys regularly corrected us when we made mistakes and explained it- most useful indeed! Somehow the topic of beer came up and one guy wanted to know the names of some scottish beers. While I may be able to reel off a fair few beer brands, this doesn't extend to the location of the brewery. Newcastle ale is made in Newcastle is the best I can do in that respect so I text my dad, who came to the rescue.
Last night was so hot that it was difficult to sleep. I chatted to some people briefly on the corridor but tiredness and heat stripped me of any desire to attempt any French. This is coming more naturally now though at least.
Victoria and I made plans to go to Lac Magog this morning but we missed the bus which was entirely my fault. The next one was 3 hours later so there was some pratting around doing not an awful lot! 
                  It only saved up to here and deleted the rest :(  alors, on y va!
We got on a bus soon after midday ish, without a map or an idea of which bus stop we needed. Oh how well prepared we are! Although we recognised the name we definitely got off at the wrong place, because although we were by the lake, we were also in the middle of suburbia, with homes and private land right across the lake side. We started walking, which in the midday heat was incredibly hot. I was practically melting and my face gradually turned a plum shade of red. Nice. However, I was well equipped with my sun cream which I did offer to share but it was declined. With her bright pink shoulders I bet Vicky's wishing she put some on now! After walking quite far, we stopped, trespassed and rested under the shade of some trees. Eventually we asked a nice couple to point us in the right direction. They were very helpful and even offered to drive us to the beach if we would wait a while. We declined the offer on the grounds that we wouldn't know how to get back! They sent us on our way instead with a hand-drawn map indicating a park and a bus stop. We found the park, which included 2 jetties so we had a bit of a swing before paddling in the lake. It was so refreshing! Possibly because I soaked all but my torso, I was much cooler for it. I tried skimming stones, but clearly it is not one of my many talents.
The fish crowding round my toes and the spider spinning a web from Victoria's toe clearly entertained us far too much and we easily passed a large amount of time there. It made the whole adventure worth it. After we dried ourselves off a bit and replaced our shoes we headed for the bus stop. Bearing in mind that we had no idea of the timetable, we were in for a long wait. Just as we were giving up hope and pondering how to get a taxi, lo and behold, there appeared our rickety bus which took us back to the uni.
Following this, we visited the uni shop, first of all to get Victoria some food and then to find our course books. Well some of them, darn expensive they are too. With my new books safely packed in my bag I headed to the poste d'acceuil  where I procured a key to the piano room. Excitedly I then rushed back to my room, collected my music and dashed down to have a play. Sadly the soundproof room lacked any ventilation and was like a sauna, so much so that it was unbearable and I couldn't stay very long. However I have the key for future use, not when I want to sweat out any toxins though!
Just as I was wrapping up my blog I have been rudely interrupted. Well not so much. It's Tino's birthday (a guy from upstairs) so everyone is congregating in the kitchen to celebrate. Andrejean is tempting me out promising that I'll learn more French chatting to people than in a lesson. While he may be right I'm not sure whether swear words will arise in any of my exams! A social butterfly I shall remain so  à bientôt!