Frugality, theft and more....

The world is officially ending. And I’m going to pull a man move. I have succumbed – without my consent – to the common cold. It totally sucks. And to top it all off, I don’t have my mommy to make me tea and chicken soup and relieve my guilt for sleeping in one morning and skipping class. Totally not happening. But I do have Melissa and she does all aforementioned, except the guilt part.

Aside from all of my many great sufferings, this week has been pretty good. Class went alright. My meeting with John Laxton was finalized on a positive note. The amazing classical music concert that we took in for less than half price was, well, amazing. Yeah, long story short, on Wednesday night Melissa and I went walking at 20h00 to see what there was to see (and to find out for sure what the price of the concert actually was). So we found this church on the main drag – it was absolutely beautiful – literally old stone walls (with no insulation and wooden benches), and big, no huge wooden doors. So we proceeded onward into the ‘lobby’ - a portioned area at the back to the cathedral – and stood in a line like formation with the other patrons who were definitely more aged than 3 Melissas and 3 Mes. Crazy, but totally expected. Then we agreed that 25euros a ticket was way more than either of us could afford to pay. So when the lady at the table told us the price of the tickets, Melissa just upped and asked if there was a student discount. The lady, not missing a beat, flipped to English and said there was a 5 euro rebate for students. In her geniousness, Melissa told the lady that together we only had 20 euros total. She was stunned. Then waking from her reverie, she told us to talk to the guy guarding the door. He took one look at the tall, dutch strength standing before him and said that that was ok. He handed us the tickets and we ran past him into the sanctuary. The music was incredibly. There was some Vivaldi, Schubert, Mendelssohn and they also played Pachelbel Canon. The group was composed of 8 string instruments – violins, cellos, etc. The main girl was a Russian asian who was 25. It was just mesmerizing. One sad note: there are no photos available because should we have taken any, the guy would definitely have kicked us out. But we do have posters!!! while walking back home, there were mutliple posters hung along the construction barriers and being stewardly, we assisted them by taking down and recycling two of them. They now hang in our bedrooms.

Translation class is great. This semester we are going from English to French. The prof is a retired-like British reporter. There are moments that even we can’t understand what he is saying and that causes us to wonder how the French students are doing. Anyways, the article for Thursday was on the American Election. So he started asking us about the Canadian government electoral system. Now, I may be a genius myself, but that doesn’t mean that I paid any attention during grade 10 Canadian history course. And with Melissa being a parliament tour guide last summer I graciously let her handle it. The prof even made her stand up and sit beside him at the front of the class!!! Well, after I calmed down all my haywire nerves, my friend flipped over into tour guide mode without even noticing. It truly was creepy. She got all professional like explained what she could remember and made some other stuff sound really good. Then out of the blue he asks her to SING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!!! Um… I don’t think so. Then she told me that I was going to sing. So we did. Sitting in the middle of our class we sang our national anthem. So props to us. We showed our patriotic pride.
On Saturday, we made plans with Nathanaël – there was a house warming party for one of his friends in their new apartment so we went. We met in front of the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) and believe it or not, we were early!! And he was late. But he’s a guy so that’s fairly typical. This party was actually a lot of fun. We met all kinds of people – French people. And the couple whose apartment it was both are Quebecois! Fellow Canadians!! Woot!

This morning, we threw ourselves out of bed early – 7h30 and ran down main street to make it to the bus stop on time so that we could actually catch the bus without having to wait for over half an hour. The problem being is that Melissa has a good 6 inches in leg length on me so she ended up being 100 yards ahead of me. Jessica also cam with us and she is lacking about 15 inches on Melissa’s leg length. So lead explained. At Ruthann and Ray’s church there was breakfast served. No question about our attendance occurring. So the three of us made it – and we were in a semi-alert state! RuthAnn invited us for lasagne before the service and Ray invited us for lasagne after the service. They are great. RuthAnn is providing lasagne for the church retreat weekend next weekend and wanted to test it out on us. We are all for being guinea pigs, our speciality. The new German girl, Linda, and Brooke, Texan, also stayed. She also brought us home. Much love towards her.

This afternoon, I’ve literally been in bed; trying not to cough up three lungs. Totally not cool. Then Melissa invited me over for tea. Bless her. She’s going to keep me safe and eventually healthy. Love her.