So Carte Bleu...or blue card for those of you aka David Dolsky who can't figure out what is going on..

So today we got up early and went to a big beautiful church which is on a cape. Ok so I dont really know what what the full definition of "cape" is per say..but I know thats what its on because its called Cap de la Madeline. Anyways- point of the story. The church is huge and has beautiful beautiful stained glass windows. The problem is that its still a well attended catholic church so there were people in the santuary, who were promptly chased out by 70 english tourists with cameras. Im not such a fan of that, but I guess what can you do when your home church is a national site protected by the government of Canada? Either way, the church was beautiful and also surrounded by an area of lots of trees and paths and I think it would be beautiful at night although someone pointed out that it might be really cheesy becuase there are christmas lights around all the signs and such. Meh..

After that we went for lunch at a cafe bar. And by the way, all the cafes here are bars and the reverse is true as well. I love that- its awesome except for the perpetual cloud of smoke that hangs around. Oh well. Anyways- we went for lunch and it was pretty good, but when we were done our waitress gave us BLUE CARDS. So these cartes bleus are sweet, you get them randomly when some one in some sort of high position sees you speaking french. And really by high position I mean if you can speak french better that us students can. ANyways- I digress. So apparently the university leader people went all around town and gave these blue cards to the businesses to give to us when we are doing a good job. So you feel like a 3 year old but at the same time its pretty cool. At the end of the 5 weeks, the class with the most cards gets a nice dinner out on the town. So that would be pretty sweet. I even went to HMV yesterday to buy some french movies and talked to one of the workers on purpose because I heard that they have blue cards. Ok Im a nerd but Ive come to terms with it. I havent heard yet if they have red cards. The red cards are the bad ones. You get them when you are heard speaking a ton of english. There is pretty much no tolerance so far, but I havent heard much so far about it. If you get a red card you lose 2 points off your student file, but you can regain one if you go and do something random like memorise and recite a french poem or something like that. Once you lose 5 points not only are you out of here, but you have to pay your tuition and room and board...right now we are all here on a bursary so its free. Having to pay would be brutal.

So last time I did this I definately dont remember the food being so bad. Breakfast is good, lunch there is always the salad bar, but then the real cooked meals are pretty bad. I dont know why, but yesterday the choices were liver or chopped suey. And really by chopped suey I just mean sprouts in soy sauce. Its pretty bad. On the other hand, the other day I had some mexican cantelope salad and that was pretty good. Jello so far has not been screwed up so that is a good sign.

Oh and I might sound like a nob now. Last week I really thought there was a bathroom conspiracy going on. One day I was in the bathroom and there was a hook for my purse and such, the next day..no hook, then the next time there was a hook..then the next no hook! So Im thinking, are students really so hard up that they are stealing the hook and admin is replacing it right away? This was really confusing me for the whole week. Until yesterday. When I discovered that there are two bathrooms in the exact same area...one on the 2nd floor and one on the first. Wow good job sarah!