Jeudi (Thursday), there was a pool party at Mike and John's house. It was bit cold for the pool, so after a few games of pool volleyball, most of us got out and went into the house to play Twister and Cranium en français. I'm proud to say I took part in the longest, most intense round of Twister and wound up winning with my teammate Heather (it was 2 vs 2). Woo! Can't say the same for Cranium, but my team put up a great fight and I think we could've won if Marie Phillipe (who is l'animatrice for the program and is québécoise) wasn't on the other team. We started the game around 10:30 or 11 and finished around 2 AM. Cranium in French is hard!
Hier soir (last night) was the soirée québécoise at Chicoutimi. Basically, it was a huge, traditional québécoise dance party for all the students in my program and the non-music program at Chicoutimi. What a night!
For the soirée, everyone was supposed to dress in the traditional québécoise style. A few of us went to La Friperie and found really cool stuff for basically rien (nothing). I got a $3 jupe (skirt), a $5 chemise (shirt), a 50¢ veil. Combine that with a hemp necklace courtesy of ma mère d'accueil and I became a québécoise peasant girl. Parfait!
The soirée was amazing. There was a traditional québécois band playing live music, including Claude, our professeur (teacher) for les cuillieres, playing all sorts of cool percussion items, the music director Bruno playing violin, a clarinetist, a pianist, a violinist, and 4 students from my group jamming on their violins, viola, and flute. Our dance teacher was also there, leading the dances and performing a solo tap dance for us.
Besides dancing, les animatrices from Chicoutimi organized a ton of traditional québécois activities. The program at Chicoutimi is huge (with over 200 students!), so there were a lot of animateurs (an animateur is a student-helper who organizes the extra-curricular activities for the program, etc). When we arrived, each of us was given a piece of paper with our nom de famille. There were four ''families'' at the soirée, and all the activities were competitions between the families. I was part of the family Tremblay. At the start of the soirée, we all had to find our families. Then we were introduced to all the animateurs, who were playing different roles. There were loggers, a schoolteacher, a nun, a monk, the village butcher, a fur trader, etc. Each family had to choose one student to be the ''mother'' of the family, and another to be the ''father''. Mama Tremblay was none other than my friend...the other Carolyn! Throughout the night, the dance teacher would lead a dance, then we'd have to find our families for a competition, then we'd dance again, etc. It was crazy!
The activites were really cool. For instance, the first competition was for the fathers and one son from each family. The village loggers rolled out an actual log and a saw, and each père et frère had to saw off a piece of the log. The family who could saw through the log the fastest was the winner. The next competition was for the mothers and a daughter. The village women brought out a clothing line with a bunch of vêtements (clothing) hanging on the line. The daughter of each family had to put on all the clothes as the mother took off the clothespins, and then she had to take them off so the mom could hang everything back on the line. I thought for sure the Tremblay family would win, cuz Carolyn and Katie were like lighting, but we lost by half a second. There was also a moose calling competition (with two guys wearing a moose costume), and a traditional québécois marriage. Très drôle.
Last night, interacting with the students at Chicoutimi made us Alma-banians realize how lucky we are. A lot of the Chicoutimi students speak English frequently, and it was obvious they didn't know the dances as well as we did. It was also obvious that there are cliques at Chicoutimi, but not so much at Alma. With the smaller program, I think we've gotten to know each other better than the students at Chicouimi have. I think it's easier for us to be enthusiastic about speaking French, participating in the workshops,. With the smaller group, we can all help each other learn, and there's less chance of someone having a bad attitude about speaking French and influencing others to speak English. I really like this program and all the people in it, and after last night I'm even more grateful for what we have here. I'm definitely going to miss tout le monde after we leave...
Well...I should wrap this up. There's a soundcheck at le Boîte à Bluets soon for le competition d'impro ce soir! I hope we win. Tomorrow we go to le Fjord en arbres for a day of high ropes fun, and then the final week begins. Where has the time gone?
Okay, gotta run. Thanks to those of you who commented on my last entry; good to know you're reading. Merci, à tout à l'heure!
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