The Other Side Of The Story

The vol­un­teer took a step back as he spoke, as if my Euro­peanism could jump on him. I decide to not men­tion that I spent quite a lot of time in malaria infected areas in Latin Amer­ica, and got my yel­low fever shot last minute in Panama’s remote coun­try­side in a local health center.

Call Me (Not)

But she sur­prised me. Instead of men­tion­ing my lazi­ness (because she clearly remem­ber that when she vis­ited Paris, French were less effi­cient than Japan­ese, there­fore they were lazy — some kind of genetic prob­lem that I must have had inher­ited because I was very French indeed — are you fol­low­ing me ?) , she blamed my English.

Teaching 101

I wish John would shut up. But you see, John is so enthu­si­as­tic about his French train­ing that he has to mum­ble vocab­u­lary on his way to class. For now, I’m try­ing to open the bloody class­room door. Stuck, as usual. Or… do I have the right set of keys ?

The Word Is Collapsing

We took a sit on the bikes and watched. The sec­ond plane had crashed into the 2^nd tower by then and it looked like any­thing but an acci­dent. Our Eng­lish was some­what lim­ited but we grasped most of the news. Not that it was hard to under­stand : voices and faces said it all. Peo­ple just didn’t under­stand what was going on – nei­ther did we.

Summer In The City

Sum­mer usu­ally brings the worse stu­dents, along with those to busy to take classes the rest of the year and whose only chance is to come to school when the Par­lia­ment isn’t in ses­sion. I don’t mind those ones. They’re usu­ally focused on their stud­ies because they’re des­per­ate to pass their French test, which will enti­tle them to a pro­mo­tion or a pay rise. But the weirdos…

To Be Or Not To Be

Stand­ing in front of a busy LCBO meant attract­ing all kind of weirdos. I was known as the “flower girl” and peo­ple would stop by and talk to me about their life, their kids, their prob­lems. With­out buy­ing flow­ers, of course. Peo­ple would first speak to me in all kind of for­eign lan­guages : Russ­ian, Lebanese, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Greek… I guess I did look like an immigrant !

Morning Glory

Oh crap. It’s 8:50 and my brain is still sleep­ing. I ought to wake up.

I extri­cate myself from the car, a task harder than usual con­sid­er­ing I’m hold­ing a can of Diet Coke and my hand­bag, slung across my shoul­der, is burst­ing with col­ored fold­ers, papers, pho­to­copies and pens.

I step on the side­walk and slam the car’s pas­sen­ger door. I stand there and root around my hand­bag and pull out a lighter. Woohoo, first vic­tory of the day, not a small one con­sid­er­ing the mess in my bag.

The Interviews From Hell

How many inter­views have I been to ? I’d say about thirty in Canada so far, ¾ of them in my first year in Ottawa. I was des­per­ate for a job but the odds seemed to be against me. At 20 years old, my resume was pretty short. I had no pre­vi­ous work expe­ri­ence in Canada. I had no ref­er­ences but abroad. My Eng­lish wasn’t that great and I wasn’t a Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent yet.