Seb, a fel­low blog­ger, just sent me these ques­tion to answer… just keep in mind I just spent the night design­ing learn­ing plans for my stu­dents and that it’s fairly late ! I’ll do my best anyway.

1. You’ve lived in Canada for a while now (from what I under­stand), have you got­ten a chance to explore this vast coun­try? What kind of inter­est­ing crea­tures have you seen in Canada?

This is so embar­rass­ing. Thanks Seb for hit­ting a touchy spot right on the first ques­tion ! (cry­ing).

(Fin­ished cry­ing) I actu­ally don’t know Canada that well. I live in Ottawa and vis­ited sev­eral places in Québec and Ontario (Mon­tréal, Québec, Toronto…) but that’s about it. Pretty embar­rass­ing con­sid­er­ing I trav­eled quite a lot around the world.

I guess by the time I tem­po­rary set­tled in Canada, I didn’t have the trav­el­ing mind­set any­more. I had to adapt, cul­tur­ally speak­ing and get a job etc. How­ever, I do plan to travel West when I get a chance, hope­fully soon.

As for inter­est­ing creatures…

• Hockey play­ers: they are bar­baric, blood-thirsty and live in big cities where they belong to a sect called the NHL. Off-season, they help doc­tors, sur­geons and den­tist make big money (detached retina, dis­lo­cated elbow, teeth miss­ing prob­lem need to be addressed) Once a year, all the teams fight for a sil­ver tro­phy. Just weird.
• Tim Hor­tons cus­tomers : they are up very early in the morn­ing and their pri­mary instinct is to go to a holy place they call “Tim”. Here, they queue for hours for a burn­ing hot liq­uid poured into a XXL paper cup. They then pro­ceed to add 1 pound of sugar in it. I don’t get it. Are they drink­ing cough sirop ?
• Cana­di­ans in the spring: they wear san­dals, short and tee-shirt as if they were at the beach. Prob­lem is, it’s just above 0C. My tribe doesn’t do that unless it’s at least 20C.

… Oh, did you mean animals ?

2. What kind of crazy celebrity antics would you do if you were rich and famous? Please explain your debauch­ery in detail.

• I would beg Quentin Taran­tino to give me a part in one of his movie. I’ve never dreamt to be an actress, but I really would love to see me as one if his crazy character.
• I would indulge myself in end­less Spa treat­ment. Not the painful bikini wax­ing kind of treat­ment : I’m think­ing mas­sages, pedi­cure, mas­sage, massage…
• I would have a per­sonal cook at home. And some­body else to do the dishes.
• I’d travel around the world as the sea­sons change. “Win­ter” in the south­ern hemi­sphere, sum­mer in Europe, Spring in Canada, Fall in Asia etc.
• I’d have my favorite author to write my biography.

And so much more…

3. Rab­bits. What do you believe, are they furry cute cud­dly crea­tures, or schem­ing blood-thirsty maniacs?

We actu­ally have quite a lot of rab­bits here. They usu­ally scare me to death when I go for my last cig­a­rette before I sleep. I see some­thing mov­ing, com­ing towards me and OH MY GOD !… it’s a rabbit !!!

So they have to be mani­acs. I’m not going into their sex life man, this is sick.

4. Who is your favorite char­ac­ter in a tele­vi­sion series? Why?

I don’t watch much TV series, but one of my all time favorite movie char­ac­ter is Uma Thur­man (Black Mamba) in Kill Bill.

[Warn­ing, spoiler] Black Mamba loved Bill. She had her baby. She real­ized that she had to choose between her men­tor, who prob­a­bly would have con­vince her to keep on liv­ing the crazy life and raise the baby girl this way, or her baby. She chose her baby. He tried to kill her.

From the moment she wakes up in the hos­pi­tal, it’s just beau­ti­ful. She is a woman with a mis­sion : to take a revenge on her lover and to get her kid back. Even if she has to kill on her way, even if she has to ignore her own feel­ings for Bill. Strong woman !

5. You have moved away from your home coun­try, France. What do you miss about it? What do you not miss?

I guess I miss the way cities are designed in Europe. I used to live in the city cen­ter and walked every­where. If I really had to go far, I took the tramway or the sub­way. Here, in North Amer­ica, we need a car to get around. Cities are usu­ally very big and not designed around a city cen­ter, but around sub­urbs. It’s some­times still con­fus­ing to me, cause I tend to think the city cen­ter is the place to be and to shop, whereas most peo­ple go to sub­ur­ban shop­ping malls…

When I first came, I used to miss every­thing any­way. The lan­guage, the way of life, the peo­ple, the rebel­lious spirit, the pol­i­tics… It got bet­ter as I adapted. This feel­ing didn’t last long. In Rome, do like the Romans do, right ?

As for what I don’t miss… Liv­ing in Canada, I real­ized how much Europe in gen­eral and France in par­tic­u­lar were stuck, locked in its con­tra­dic­tions. Europe carry the weight of his­tory on its shoul­der. They can’t do any­thing before refer­ring to the past. They dis­trust any­thing new. They don’t dare to drive a new road. Pol­i­tics, for instance. Nobody in France would elect some­one who hasn’t been in politic for at least 25 years. Talk about new blood and new ideas ! In North Amer­ica, every­thing looks pos­si­ble. Feels good.

I went through sev­eral phases as in immi­grant. I guess we all do. First, you dis­like your new coun­try, every­thing looks bet­ter at home. Then you dis­like home, because you changed and you don’t under­stand it any­more. Then you set­tle, and admit that a dif­fer­ent coun­try, a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent means a dif­fer­ent way of life…

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