• What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: I know, Niet­zsche said it first, but I feel I can get credit just for spelling his name right. This year wasn’t easy: we had ups and downs, expe­ri­enced unex­pected prob­lems and small annoy­ances. I some­times won­dered how we were going to make it. But even­tu­ally we sur­vived. Every­day life’s lit­tle strug­gles some­times adds up to a lot of pres­sure, and bal­anc­ing work, study etc, isn’t always easy. Yet, life is inter­est­ing and I learned a lot through these experiences.

• Tak­ing chances worth it: I first came in Canada in 2002, and I’ve been liv­ing there full-time since 2004. And I don’t regret it. There were some tough time, but things turned out fine. And you know what, I’m glad I learned the hard way: get­ting a job, learn­ing Eng­lish, get­ting used to the cul­ture was a chance. I now look back and I’m proud of me. I’m going to be 25 years old in 2008, and I see so many oppor­tu­ni­ties, so many choices, so many chances ahead of me.

• The immi­gra­tion process doesn’t end once the paper­work is done: I’m a “legal alien” yet no one said I was wel­come, or even needed. No one will give me the “Cana­dian label”, it’s some­thing I have to earn by myself. There’s no test to be Cana­dian, no points given for all the win­ters I sur­vived, for all the snow I shov­eled, for the Eng­lish I learned and for the love I have for this coun­try. It’s all in my head. And it’s my daily life.

• The more you write, the eas­ier it gets:When I started this blog, every post was a strug­gle. I cared more about my gram­mar than about my sub­ject and I cared a lot of what peo­ple would think of a French woman blog­ging in Eng­lish. But even­tu­ally, some­time this year, it got much eas­ier. I think my Eng­lish got bet­ter, and I’m much more com­fort­able talk­ing about any­thing now.

• Art is life and life is art: For a cou­ple of year after high school, I stopped draw­ing, tak­ing pic­tures of writ­ing. I was too busy, too lazy, too tired… you know the excuses. I redis­cov­ered plea­sure in draw­ing thanks to blog­ging. Tweak­ing my tem­plate and mak­ing all the lit­tle graph­ics for this blog was relax­ing. I’m happy when I look at some­thing I cre­ated, some­thing that just looks good. It’s so sat­is­fy­ing. Music, visual arts, pho­tog­ra­phy… we all need beau­ti­ful things to inspire us in this world.

• Peo­ple are sur­pris­ing… in a good way: I found help and rewards when I least expected it. Jack Book helped me a lot with my tem­plate cod­ing, while Kiviniar made dona­tions using the lit­tle but­ton in the side­bar. Ren­nyBA sent me a troll all the way from Nor­way, I won some $$$ with Lori and I’ve just won a book at Curi­ous Vil­lager! I have read­ers and I enjoy read­ing them. And I have friends in Ottawa who are always here for a good chat, and who made me laugh/ helped me/ fed me. Lucky me!

• Politi­cians or exec­u­tives are lousy French stu­dents: I worked with a few this year and trust me, lots of blah blah. Plus, they didn’t even try to cor­rupt me: all I had was a cou­ple of cof­fee and an occa­sional Star­bucks brownie. I was expect­ing a suit­case full of ban­knotes… espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that one of my for­mer spring stu­dent is being charged with traf­fic of influ­ence as I speak!

• French gram­mar is fucked up: I stopped blam­ing my stu­dents after re-discovering a cou­ple of gram­mar rules myself. Now, I know that as soon as I’ll be fin­ished explain­ing a new rule, an excep­tion would be found. Bum­mer. Trust me, you don’t real­ize how weird your lan­guage is till you start explain­ing it to a bunch of beginners!

• The more you get up early, the eas­ier it gets: say­ing I’m not a morn­ing per­son isn’t even close to describ­ing the sit­u­a­tion. As a explained in this post, my last year of high school was a strug­gle par­tially because we started classes at 8am. But hey, even though I still don’t like it, there is hope for peo­ple like us: I now get up at 7:30 most day, but I treat myself to a good book in the bus, a nice cup of hot choco­late when I arrive down­town and I’m fine!

• It’s bet­ter to freeze your ass shov­el­ing snow in a bliz­zard than to wait for a cou­ple of days: Trust me on that one. See, we all think that shov­el­ing snow while it’s snow­ing is stu­pid. Can’t blame you, been there. But, the secret is… if you wait to long, the snow plow is going to clear to roads and dump all the snow at the end of your dri­ve­way. And then, good luck to shovel and lift the big chunk of ice and snow! So the key is to shovel lit­tle by lit­tle. Or wait for Spring. That could work too.

So… Ren­nyBA, Beaver­boosh, Lori, Chen, Aiglee, Ghosty, Ammar, Diesel, Art, Tracy, Dan, Kirant, Princesse, Max, Gra­ham, Pelf, Angela May, Kyh, Wapen­take, Jorge, Froo­giewoo­gie, JoAnn, Dead­pool, Jes­sica, Spy­der, Johnada… (I must for­get some, but my hands are tired!)

What did you guys learn in 2007?

Related arti­cles:

1. Pic­ture of the Week: Snow Melting
2. Snow Sculp­tures And Win­ter Fun
3. Seven (Cana­dian Win­ter) Facts
4. Not Win­ter Already…
5. 10 Things To Expe­ri­ence In Canada