The weather's been pretty cooperative during our mini-field trips – warm if not sunny. The school organized a trip to a maple sugar cabin (cabane à sucre) earlier in the week - it's a bit late in the year, seeing as sugar season is really in mid-March and early April, when it's warmer during the day but still super cold at night. We were taken to a place called La Cabane à Pierre in Frempton (a very Anglo name for what is apparently a very Quebeçois county in the countryside), where we dined on all-you-can-eat sausages, ham, eggs, meat pies, and beans, of course all drenched in maple syrup. We even had maple syrup on snow, though that was made on a bed of ice as the snow is all gone. It was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. I now want to drench everything in maple syrup. The farm had a couple of guys on the guitar and the accordion out to teach the Anglos how to do Quebeçois line dance and a few other folk dances. It was pretty hilarious to watch about 100 people between ages 18 and 30+ of varying language levels trying to following their instructions, plus the dance floor wasn't really big enough for all of us who went out to give it a go – a lot of stumbling and random bumping into each other. More dancing ensued after that, featuring the Macarena, and oddly enough, Ricky Martin. All in all, a great time was had by all.
I bought a concert pass for the Festival d'été earlier this week – it's a really great deal – for $45, you can go to any concerts you want at any one of the venues over the 10-day festival period. Last night, I went to an outdoor concert featuring Divine Brown, Gymclass Heroes, and Sean Paul. I was really there to see Divine Brown, who proved to be absolutely amazing to see and hear live. The concert was about 4 hours – it rained for about 3 but we couldn't use our umbrella because we managed to find a spot just 3 or 4 rows away from the stage – we didn't have a raincoat (soon to be remedied) so my roommate and I were completely drenched by the end. I can't remember the last time I got so wet w/o doing some kind of water sport! I had a great time though – everyone was singing and dancing to the music in between trying to take pictures and videos of the artists (I got about 3 videos of Divine Brown – SO GOOD) – in the end, no one really cared about being wet. I'm planning on catching at least 2 more shows in the coming week – one of them with Placido Domingo (he's a really famous tenor) and hopefully a show by Pierre Lapointe (highly recommended by my home stay when I said that I wanted to see what Quebec music sounded like) Kiss, Sting, and Styx are also all here this week, everyone's crazy about them, not really my thing but maybe I'll go check them out with my school chums. =P
I saw a Cirque du Soleil performance tonight – under a bridge! It's literally a big patch of dirt under two highway overpasses decked out w/ lights, projections, and screens for an outdoor performance. It's part of the Festival d'été, and Cirque du Soleil gives a free performance every Thursday to Sunday night at 9pm – the performance lasts for about an hour, totally worth the wait and the crowds. Really amazing show – I'm going to check them out again later this week, it's gonna be fabulous!!
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