Week 3: Getting lost in a corn maze and more!

There seems to be a common theme emerging that the most interesting things happen to me on Thursdays. Last week, what started off as a normal day had a totally unpredictable ending.

Le Grand labyrinthe Servlinks

Let's start at the very beginning. In the morning, I got my first paycheck! Woohoo my Canadian bank account works! I asked my housemate whether we could go food shopping to try out my Canadian debit card. We did just that and it all works well which is a relief. I had a bit of a mare at the till because after inserting my card into the card reader it wanted me to choose between CHQ and something else and I wasn't sure which to press but I learnt that you choose CHQ for debit cards, or simply resort to contactless...

Casual party snack; "Unripened cheese in brine"

After shopping my housemate, who is a basketball coach at the school that I teach, invited me to come to training so I could see what some of the extracurricular activities look like here. Then I had lessons to teach. After school, I came back home and after I got changed I heard our doorbell sound. I opened up to find the couple from France that would be staying at my landlord's Airbnb for the night. I went to get my landlord and he helped them settle in. My landlord speaks very fast in French and so after he spoke to me I wasn't exactly sure where I was going but he had mentioned something about going to a cornfield with the couple from France and if I wanted to come. I had no other plans for the evening and so I agreed.

The next thing I know, he's handing me a headtorch and saying he has to go to volleyball. I am left in a cornfield, a few miles out of our town with the two guests from France! We enter the corn maze and unsurprisingly get lost...I felt like I was in a comedy movie!

When we finally managed to find our way home, after a lift with the man who owns the maze, my housemate asked if I wanted to go and watch some improv at his Cegep (Cegep comes after secondary school which you finish at 17). I said yes and went along. I didn't understand a lot of it, apart from when one of the actors pretended to eat a live chicken because he wanted to learn to fly and you are what you eat...yes, very bizarre.

This is what La Fontaine looks like!

After the improv, we got invited to an after party! I played a beer game called La Fontaine which was super fun and met a lot of lovely people, even the improv teacher was there!

On Friday, I taught some more classes. The last class was with the youngest students (12-13). They were super enthusiastic and about 8 of them came to ask me questions at the end of class. One of the girls asked if I had ever tried Canadian apple pie because her mum had made some and if her brothers didn't eat all of it I could try some. So sweet!

View of my town

Saturday was a pretty slow day but a big night! We were celebrating my housemate's friend's 21st birthday. We went to Levis and ended up in what is supposed to be the best night club in Quebec City! It was a really fun night and I learned another drinking game, this time with cards in which you assign different things to each card and then go in a circle pulling a card each at a time.

As we got back quite late from Quebec City, Sunday was just spent relaxing. Same goes for Monday, me and my housemate watched a documentary about the West Coast rap culture and I had a few lessons to teach.

The lake behind the house

On Tuesday, I had a busy day. I had all four lessons to teach but I enjoyed it. The last class of the day was rather challenging, especially because they had misbehaved previously before I had met them and they were told that if they hadn't written out the lines they had been told to they wouldn't be allowed to participate in the class. A rocky start...but it was all fine, they were noisy but curious and asked many questions. After school, I went to give my housemate's friend his belated birthday present and then went to the cinema to watch Jeune Juliette. It was a really sweet film about a girl growing up and tickets are only 7 CAD on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Bonus!

Today, the weather was beautiful so my housemate and I spent some time outside. We went to his dad's house which has the most amazing view and a lake just behind it! We then hiked up a mountain and sat on a rock to see the view of our town. It was tiring but definitely worth the climb!