Can I still speak French?
Will my back stop being sore if I don’t shovel snow for a while?
Am I French in Canada or Cana­dian in France?

Plenty of time to think — I’ve been stuck in Mon­treal air­port for 24 hours in a row now. And I’ve just decided to stop being cheap and bought a Wifi access (can you believe we have to pay for Wifi in this bloody airport???).

It all started about a month ago as a joke. Although I usu­ally go visit my par­ents in France every year, Feng has never been with me: first we were too poor, then we had a busi­ness so some­one had to stay in Ottawa to work, then we had more work etc. Con­clu­sion: Feng has never met my par­ents (and it’s been many years).

So this win­ter we finally decided to go to France together. Trust me, my par­ents couldn’t believe it. On top of that, I was lazy myself and haven’t been there since Sept. 06. So we booked the tick­ets about a month ago and we were sup­posed to will be in France from Feb­ru­ary 25^th 26^th (hope­fully!) to March 27^th. That if the fuck­ing plane ever leaves.

Flash­back to yes­ter­day (Sun­day) after­noon. We packed every­thing (16 kilos for myself, 12 for my com­rade) and took the 3pm Grey­hound bus to Mon­treal. Got to the air­port at 17:00, checked the bags in right away, went through secu­rity, took off our shoes and turned on elec­tronic equip­ment while throw­ing away bot­tles of water as instructed and waited in the lounge. Many bags of Dori­tos and half a book read later, we learned that it was going to be that easy.

The plane was sup­posed to leave at 21:45. At 19:00, we were told the plane would leave at 23:30 instead. Then, we learned the plane was can­celed. Or rather, that it was “can­celé” (beau­ti­ful Que­bec French, that will always amaze me!).

We had to go down­stairs to “Arrivals” to get our lug­gages back as if we were indeed arriv­ing. Then go to the immi­gra­tion. Then to the cus­toms. Then to the air­line desk where a bunch of angry French women were already yelling at the employee.

The air­line send us to an hotel. Even though I’m not sure how big was the plane, there were at least 200–300 of us. Wait­ing out­side the air­port for the shut­tle. The shut­tle was as big as a big SUV. And it took many trips to the hotel to drive all of us. Of course, by the time we got there, the hotel was full. We were lucky though, we had the last room. Although they didn’t have a key for it, so every time we would need to get in we had to call the man­ager and his mas­ter key.

The next day, we woke up around 9:00 and all gath­ered in the lobby. We were sent to the air­port once again with the lit­tle can’t-have-more-than-six-passengers-at-the-time shuttle.

We had heard the plane would leave at 18:00. It’s now 18:00 and last time we checked, the plane was actu­ally delayed again: new time, 23:50. We were granted two $15 food vouch­ers (cheap bas­tards!) and didn’t get any other info.

I really hope we’re gonna leave tonight. I’m exhausted and so is Feng, we’re dirty, hun­gry and well, quite sick of all the BS.

Now, next time, if you’re nice, I’ll tell you more about French women (are they really that sexy?), French work­ers (are they really always on strike?), French pol­i­tics (is the Pres­i­dent really that stu­pid?) and the French soci­ety (have French really real­ized they’re not the cen­ter of the world anymore?).

Related arti­cles:

1. Buenos Dias Panamá!
2. Ten Things I Had For­got­ten About France
3. G’Day, Syd­ney
4. Home, Home Again
5. Hello Can­cún!