Photo © Elena Vazquez
Smile we are filming you.
Blow me a kiss.
Art Project.
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From the monthly archives:
November 2009
The air is so crisp this time of year in Montreal, I literally walk down the street breathing in so deep, I can only imagine I look like I’m smelling something completely foul. It isn’t as cold as I remember however, as a friend of mine griped about last night.  Can’t say I’ve met a French person who liked the bitter cold as much as he does. I mean, I’m a fan of the seasons myself, but you don’t hear me wishing for below zero temperatures! He described a time last winter where it was so cold it made your face swell. Swollen faces, that’s what we have to look forward to everybody.
I have wrestled back and forth so many times as to whether or not to live and work in Montreal. There is something about this city that I just can’t place. The je ne sais quoi factor may seem like a lame excuse to avoid making a definite decision, and in part it is.  It is based more on a feeling than any other palpable explanations. The sense that this is my city, a place I can wrap my mind around. For years I went to school and worked in NYC and the pace was addicting, but I never felt like I kept up to speed.
I can’t tell you the happiness it brings me to see old faces that I don’t get to see that often. Tomorrow I get to see La Bande de Boudoir. We chose this name in honor of our bar and our common penchant for cheap drinks and some laughs.
Ok I fess up. You can see that there are still leaves on the trees in these photographs. That is because they are the photos I took a couple months ago on my last trip to Montreal. My camera is currently in the shop breathing its last breath. The staircases of the homes in Montreal are very much an image I have of this city and when I walk by them I know I’m really here.Â
These pictures are relevant to the feelings I have at the moment. Can I have nostalgia for a city, that I’m currently in? Most likely because I’m not sure if I will stay.
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People in Quebec speak French, however they don’t speak as the French do. The accent, the words, the expressions are all greatly different than the Francophones overseas. Admitedly the accent took awhile to get used to. Quebecois tend to speak quickly with a more nasal quality to their sounds, versus the French who seems to always be pushing words out to the front of their mouth were they will stay. The Quebecois also love to contract words, not helpful for those who can’t catch on to such subtleties.
Who are the Quebecois?
Quebecois Expressions and Idiomatic Phrases
BonjourHi
Hello hi
Ok granted this isn’t a word, but if you’ve spent more than an afternoon in downtown Montreal, or more than 15 minutes in a department store, you will get the words BonjourHi spoken to you, so closely jumbled it’s as if it were one word. This is a bilingual city afterall and most people, in particular those working in restaurants, stores, etc need to speak English and French. Since there is not distinguishing factor on who is Anglophone or Franchophone, the bonjourhi serves to allow the person to answer in his or her stronger language.
Ta Blonde
My Blond
Calling someone your blond is not in anyway refering to their haircolor. Any blonde jokes are not refering to a ditzy personality, or an aloof demeaner. If you tell a blonde joke you better make sure your girlfriend isn’t nearby because you will be making fun of her.
Mon Chum
My bud
To make matters confusing, the word chum can refer to a boyfriend or a male friend. Makes the ‘what are we’ conversations you have with your significant other a little harder to decipher. Are we chums or are you my chum? I also find the traditional French word for boyfriend a bit strange as well. If someone is your petit ami they literally are your little friend, otherwise known as your boyfriend.
Baise-moué l’ail
Kiss my garlic
Come on use your imagination. Kiss my garlic… Kiss my… Don’t know how garlic became appropriate for such a term, but hey, to each his own.
Avoir mal aux cheveux
Have a hairache
If you ever woken up to a splitting headache caused by excessive amounts of alcohol.  We aren’t perfect afterall. To be mal aux cheveux means you have one of the worst hangovers of your life. It’s so bad naturally your hair hurts.
être tiguidou
It’s all good. Everything’s peachy. Okey dokey. Everything is fine.  All is well. Everything’s in order. A-ok. I think you get the picture.
Lâche pas la patate!
Don’t let go of the potato.
Hmm this is an interesting one. When someone says don’t let go of the potato they don’t want you to wimp out. In other words, don’t be a pansy. Not really sure why you have to hold on to a potato to do so. Maybe it has something to do with poutine?
Se laisser manger la laine sur le dos
To let eat the wool right off your back
If you let someone eat the shirt off your back, well then you’re a complete idiot. Although not so sure the other guy is that smart either.
J’ai la langue à terre
I have my tongue on the floor
In Quebec if you have your tongue on the floor it means you are extremely tired or extremely hungry, which can be a little confusing since each time you say it, you will need to elaborate which one you mean.
Note on cursing in Quebec: Similar to other cultures, the Quebecois have appropriated seemingly ‘good’ words and turned around their meanings. Religious terminolgy can be used to express discomfort, annoyance, or merely to tell someone off.  By turning these relgious words into something negative, the Quebecois made a statement against the church, who had a stronghold on French Canadians in the past.
Image via: laurent_gilot
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To continue with the idea of the film Fifty People, One Question, I asked myself the very question the film asked. Where would I want to wake up tomorrow? Hmm the answer is more often than not Montreal (if you cannot tell already the love I have for that city). Therefore, this week I decided to mix a little business with pleasure and make another visit to my favorite city up north.
For the Gringa site, I have been wanting to include guides to some of my favorite places. Montreal will inevitably be a part of this project. I will be working on this guide this week and I hope to have it ready and published shortly.
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First Sight of Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu Tourist
Llama and Backpacker
Ancient Structure With New Rooftop
Llama Ready To Attack
Waiting for the bus to Machu Picchu
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Cuy is a popular dish of the Andes, a dish that the indigenous people living in high mountains have been eating for a very long time. Cuy can also be found on many restaurant menus, especially those catering to tourists. Curious tourists want to sink their teeth into cuy, not because they may crave it, but rather because of the novelty. Cuy is guinea pig, and as they say, when in Peru….
While in Peru, I unabashedly thought I’d be adventurous and follow in the footsteps of travel favorites like Anthony Bourdain and Zimmerman. I wanted to fully immerse myself in the culture and food. After all, food is an important part of a culture, one of the defining aspects if you ask me. It is important not to judge the culinary practices of another culture. There is nothing ruder than someone looking down at your plate and announcing “ew that’s gross.” I’ve heard it before, being Spanish and all.
At one restaurant I avoided the cuy because of its expensive price tag, but I was determined to taste it. However on one of our tours they decided to show us not the dish cuy, but rather the guinea pigs themselves. Look at the picture below! I just couldn’t do it after that.
Eek!
Llama is another popular choice on the Peruvian menu. From what I am told it is tougher than beef. Although I didn’t try llama in Peru I did taste some in Bolivia. In true stereotypical American fashion, I had llama on top of my pizza. Although it’s definitely a new topping I’ve never tried before, don’t think I’d ever put it on pizza again.
Here is a picture of an alpaca, cousin to the llama. Alpaca’s are smaller than llamas and have ears that point backwards.
Llamas’ ears point forward and up.
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The challenge: Can you last a week without reading any media outlet, publication, online forum, or blog? Better yet, could you abstain from Facebook, Twitter, Matador, or whatever social networking site you frequent? If you think you can, you are one of the few. It certainly can be done, but not without some discomfort and a slight feeling of disconnect from the world. The obsession with information and consumption has penetrated our society for quite some time now. Employees have become so obsessed with information that many companies have started to block certain sites in order to ensure that employees aren’t surfing the net instead of doing their job. Even those efforts are thwarted since more and more people have a Black Berry or iPhone, which provide constant access to an endless supply of knowledge at any time of day. Most of us need information, we crave it. We want it now, and we want it short and pithy.
Last year Nicholas Carr wrote an article for The Atlantic where he asks his readers, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Suddenly a former literary major in college found himself skimming articles and avoiding novels. It became difficult to paying attention to things that once kept his interest so profoundly. I was also an English Literature major and the current owner of a bookcase full of books that I used to spend hours reading. Now between changing careers, keeping up online and with life in general, I find the task of finishing a novel rather daunting. In fact, the time when I get most of my reading done is when I travel. I personally feel that traveling allows me to put aside some responsibilities, in particular social media, and just experience, without worrying about everything else.
Claiming that the internet and Google are making consumers stupid, is a false and bold statement meant to catch the reader’s attention. I wouldn’t call someone stupid because they read five online newspapers per day and have over 1000 subscriptions in their Google Reader; however that same person probably skims through most articles in order to read more, know more. They aren’t lazy and they certainly aren’t stupid, but rather less anchored than media consumers 10 years ago. There is merely too much information saturating our short attention spans.
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It’s Warm In Canada
by Elena on November 12, 2009
It’s warm in Canada in mid November. This is not what I remember from last year, where the first snowfall came before Halloween. There are vague memories of running out of my apartment in a tshirt and flipflops with a friend who had never seen snow before, only to turn right back around once the novelty wore off and my toes started to get numb. It was just a dusting, but snow just the same.
This weather is unexpected but most definitely a welcomed surprise. Hence after an eventful day of query and cover letters I will be off again to wander about and enter various cafes and bistros. I need to work on the pending assignments I had been putting off. Not a bad gig afterall, working while sipping a latte and having a Montreal bagel. Despite all the gripes and difficulty I may have experienced with my transition to freelance, there have most definitely been many perks, my jaunt through Montreal being one of them. Although I still haven’t figured out a complete balance with the freelance world, maybe that is the point. Working for oneself has it own set of problems and with freelance you are working by yourself, not necessarily for yourself. After complaining for about a week or so, I’ve decided to stop, get to writing, and maybe have a cafe au lait or two.
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