The Holidays

When I first came to Canada, I had been warned: there are much less hol­i­days on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, and no pub­lic strike will change labor laws. Look­ing back, I can say the sys­tem is dif­fer­ent but not in a bad way.

Guide To Clothes Shopping In Canada

Granted, I’m no the most styl­ish woman on earth — I know, shock­ing for a French, but should I remind you I don’t drink wine either?
Clothes shop­ping in Canada isn’t that dif­fer­ent from shop­ping in Europe at first glance. Yet, there are some tricks and local trends. So I wrote a lit­tle “guide to clothes shop­ping in Canada”.

And... Winter Is Here

It was cold but nice yes­ter­day night and for a sec­ond, I humored myself with the thought that Weather Canada could be wrong. Of course, it wasn’t. It never is. Weather is what Cana­di­ans pre­dict best.

The wind was extremely strong this morn­ing and I could barely keep my head up while wait­ing for the bus. Mind you, I had time to prac­tice — it was 30 min­utes late.

On Campus (Part II)

I have always been fas­ci­nated by North Amer­i­can high schools and uni­ver­si­ties. They seemed to have so many rit­u­als, so many tra­di­tions that I felt we were really miss­ing out in France. Take grad­u­a­tion, for instance. One of the rite of pas­sage in France is the “bac­calau­réat”, the national high school grad­u­a­tion exam. But it quite dif­fer­ent from the North Amer­ica grad­u­a­tion exam.

Challenge Your Beliefs

Some of my core val­ues were chal­lenged at one point or another after I moved to Canada. I had to recon­sider what I had been taught as a French. What I had blindly believed in for all the years I spent in France. What had been passed on to me by my par­ents and by the edu­ca­tion system.

Even the slight­est things.

On Campus (Part I)

My oral exam lasted exactly three min­utes. It may have some­thing to do with the fact I wrote in big bold let­ter “I am French !” in answer to the ques­tion “where did you learn French?” in the pre­lim­i­nary ques­tion­naire. The exam­iner was a nice guy and admit­ted there was no point in test­ing me any fur­ther. Phew, thanks.

The Alien Student

At uni­ver­sity, I feel like an alien among students.

when the class started in Sep­tem­ber, and when it was still hot, I felt like a nerd in the mid­dle of a bunch of wanna-be strip­pers. Since when did mini-shorts and back­less shirts become the stu­dents’ uni­form? Gosh, I was once kicked out of class — admit­tedly in high school — because I wore jeans with holes in the knees!

Four Years, Already...

Exactly four years ago, I got up very early. Feng and I got in the car still half asleep. It was a big day for me: I was cross­ing the bor­der to the U.S.A only to come back to Canada a few min­utes later, to val­i­date my per­ma­nent res­i­dent visa and to become a landed immigrant.