BBQ, hockey, hiking and much more

Hey! Hope you’re fine...

I’m having a great time here, always something to do! If there are no parties, weekend trips, cooking with my flat-mates, sports,… there’s still some work left for university. But don’t worry, I’m not working too hard so far ;-) Today I made my first histogram using R, yeah!! But I don’t want to bore you with stuff like that.

Hmm, where should I start, there are so many things to tell you…

Almost two weeks ago, I met Ardit again. He’s the first person from Montreal I got to know when I was still in Munich (He was doing an internship in Germany…) and he took me a party of a friend. This party was really crazy as you can imagine from the picture. The guy on the picture was the one giving the party and he did an internship in Germany as well and some years ago a German course in Munich. He was really happy to meet a girl from Germany and showed me all his German dictionaries, grammar books, souvenirs and so on. But that’s not the reason why I say this party was crazy (I think I behaved in a similar way when I met Ardit in Germany). Most of the people at this party had just started their studies at the (English speaking) McGill University and many of them were 19 years old Americans having just arrived in a country where they are allowed to drink as much as they want. You can imagine what happened…

I’m also presenting you a first picture of at least one of my flat-mates, Annabelle. They guy on the picture is Philippe, a friend of Annabelle who likes to hug people ;-) And there is our new barbecue… Since Gabriel bought it one week ago, we’re having a BBQ nearly every day. At the same time, the ice hockey season started and I had to watch my first match on TV. There was even a German player who was born in Dingolfing (Christoph Schubert). Well, it was strange to me to sit in front of the TV watching this hockey match and eating grilled chicken wings and potatoes at the same time.

I had another interesting conversation about Germany. Contrary to Russian people, people here are really interested in German history, politics and daily life. Interestingly, one of Annabelle’s friends didn’t associate Germany with Hitler and the Nazis but with well insulated houses, waste separation and things like that. Okay, for us it is normal to build houses made of brick, well insulated and so on, but here most houses on the countryside are made of wood, some of them are not habitable in winter! He also asked me how I imagined Quebec before I came here. Actually, what surprised me is the really mild climate so far but the culture here is not that different from Europe. He told me then that he had a lesson at school about the picture that French people are supposed to have of Quebec. They are taught here that French people think Quebecois live in igloos!!! That’s why he asked me ;-) When I told him that I’m from Munich he said “Ah, there has been an assassination in Munich!” He was talking about the assassination during the Olympic Games in 1972, he had seen the film about it. In general, I’ve got the impression that all knowledge about Germany people have here is based on movies.

Last weekend, I went to Val-David with some German friends. It is a small town (is it a town?) located next to a regional park two hours away from Montreal. We spent the whole weekend outside and enjoyed the beautiful landscape and nice weather. On Saturday, I did some hiking on the Mont Condor.

Well, the height difference was about 100 meters (not really the thing we call a mountain) and the park was much smaller than we thought. In the end we did all the hiking paths except one what took us about three hours. But nevertheless, it was a really nice path with roots, stones etc and sometimes not that obvious ;-)


The first trees are already turning red and yellow, Indian Summer has started…


On Sunday, we rented a canoe and a kayak and paddled down a small and quiet river till we reached a beautiful lake. After a picnic and a little rest, we did a bicycle tour on the “chemin du petit train”, a former railroad line. All in all, I had an awesome weekend!!!

Oktoberfest started in Munich, elections will be on Sunday, so I think there’ll be a lot tell me. I’m always curious to hear what’s going on at home. So don’t hesitate to call me in skype or send me a message. Miss you!!!

geli