Loopy

I briefly looked for a more official resource but all I could find was Wikipedia's information on labor day: according to Wiki the states took the labor day idea from the Canadians.

Anywho, it's not like labor day in the states where everything is on sale; here, everything is closed. Still haven't done any clothes shopping for school so I've only got my week and a half supply - not to mention no fall coat. I was thinking I would do it today but I'll just wait until next weekend.

The last two days have been eventful. A group of hostel kids planned on renting a car and heading over to Quebec City for it's 400th anniversary summer. My friend Rodrigo headed up the trip as he had done the research and had a friend in the city we were supposed to crash with. As life would have it, we left much later than expected but eventually we were all in the car with Fabio (sweet and smarmy Belgium) driving. The ride was long and Fabio was going a little faster than he should have and consequently got pulled over by the Quebecois police. With a ticket for Fabio, we continued on and got to the city around 10 and went to grab some food. Rodrigo phoned his friend who said he couldn't house everyone - a little disconcerting. After eating we began looking for a hostel to crash at. We got the same story everywhere: no room. We weren't about to stay at a hotel as they were all very expensive in what had become a very touristic city. The two girls (Paola from Berlin, and Judith from Austria) and I agreed that if all else failed we'd just sleep in the car at a park - the boys were indifferent. It began getting pretty late and we were all getting pretty tired and goofy. In the car the three of us girls kept cracking up with little to set us off - often just the boys trying to navigate and take charge in a city they were unfamiliar with was entertainment enough. If it wasn't the boys making us laugh it was the communication barrier that would sometimes sneak up because of accents or an unknown word; Judith and Rodrigo especially have a very difficult time understanding the others English. I mentioned how loopy we were all getting and everyone really liked the word because they hadn't heard it before. It is wonderful that I am able to communicate so well with everyone here because everyone learned English. Even though they can speak French they are all willing to speak English around me (sometimes I feel like a dumb American with my two years of high school Spanish).

At 2:00am the boys had found a motel - I had already fallen asleep in the car. The three of us girls took a bed and the two boys took another. The next day we walked through the streets, enjoyed live music and street performers, explored the market, found a castle,

and hung out at the park.

We tried some very sweet maple taffy which is created by rolling maple syrup up from ice - was cool to see that done in front of me.

I fell in love with this grassy bridge street overpass thing (I'm sure it has a better name than that). I like taking pictures of things like this, and people more than buildings so that is the majority of the pictures I took.

grassy bridge

View from grassy bridge

Rodrigo, and Fabio in the right hand corner

Paola

Judith

In the evening, after eating at a mediocre Irish pub, we made our way to the Cirque du Soleil FREE street performance! Quebec city pays the performers to perform for some time in the evenings. The performance is divided into three sections and eventually the three divisions meet in the middle so the audience has to follow the performers. Really a spectacular event.

My favorite part of the performance was a female who did all sorts of amazing feats in a solo performance, such as doing the splits parallel to a vertical pole that was spinning. The only way I can describe her is a very delicate ballerina pole dancer - she had mad muscle strength. I couldn't get any quality photos but a Flickr member snagged this one - to find out info on him or see the pic up close just click on it.

We left a bit early from Cirque so we could catch what we'd missed the previous night. The Image Mill is a large projection on the old mill in Quebec - spectators watch the 40 minute projection from across the water. As taken from a Quebec tourism site: The Bunge grain silo “projection screen” is over 600 meters wide and 30 meters tall—the equivalent of 25 IMAX screens!

The production portrays the history of Quebec with images and sounds. I didn't get a lot of it, but it was a really cool experience just chilling on the grass across from this humongous projection.

To check it out on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVK5qXfYMwA

Got back safe and sound at 2am. Had a blast and really enjoyed the company I spent the weekend with.

Yesterday the cal state kids got together for some Thai food so we could get to know each other, finally! It was great hanging out with everyone. Afterward I hung out with some friends from the hostel for a farewell to Amy (a girl from California who had been staying in the hostel during her vacation).

School starts tomorrow! I've never been so excited for classes to start; time to learn some French and meet some new people.