Trois-Rivières, Québec: the start of my "immigrant experience"

Bonjour! If you are reading this, you probably know the basics of my last couple of years. In June 2018, I retired from a 32-year career teaching mostly French and Latin. In September 2018, I returned to my school as a long-term sub for the 2018-19 school year for the Latin teaching half of my position because they couldn't fill it. My catch phrase all year was "#irreplaceable." My other catch phrase was "bonus year." I was delighted to have a year at a school I really did enjoy, with kids and families I really did enjoy, and with fewer responsibilities and time commitments, just pure teaching and doing the fun stuff.

So why have I just moved to Trois-Rivières, Québec for a year? There is a little bit of backstory to fill in here, too. I spent the summers of 2017 and 2018 here at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), at the École internationale de français (French Summer School). My particular program was sponsored by the Road Scholar organization, formerly Elderhostel, which I found simply by Google searching French immersion programs in Canada. I knew that I wanted to spend some of the summer of 2017 living in French, and really wanted to do it in Canada just because I like spending time in Canada. So I applied, got in, came here, and really liked it. The city is a clean and safe city of 137,000 with a cool art, music, and theater scene -- right in my wheelhouse! The university has an excellent reputation and the campus is also clean and safe. There were 40 of us and we stayed in on-campus apartments which were like new, four to an apartment with our own bedrooms and shared kitchen, living room, and bathroom. I tested into the advanced class; my instructor was outstanding. And several times a week we had excursions to museums, historical sites, parks, everything the area had to offer. The three weeks also included two Saturday trips to Montréal and Québec City, each about 90 miles away. To explain to people where Trois-Rivières is, I always tell people to imagine a straight line between Montréal and Québec City; Trois-Rivières is at the midpoint.

In 2017 I kept careful track of every hour I spent in class or on a sanctioned educational activity and used that for my teacher recertification hours for 2018.

I enjoyed 2017 so much that I came back for 2018. I was very pleasantly surprised to have the same outstanding instructor again. I had roommates that I really hit it off with, an English teacher from Arlington, Texas, a retired entertainment industry attorney from Los Angeles, and a nurse from the south shore of Boston. And I experienced it differently this time since I wasn't tracking contact hours for recertification credit. I was just here to enjoy being here.

And something else felt different in 2018. I noticed that I felt really comfortable making my way around the city, and I'm not a city person. Once I drove somewhere just one time, I remembered how to get there again with no problem, which isn't like me; usually I'm writing down distances, street names, landmarks, etc. because I know I won't remember and I have no visual aptitude at all. And not only did I feel really comfortable communicating in French with francophones (Canada term for people whose first language is French) on campus and in the city, I enjoyed the challenge. I mean, I was hardly ignorant of French having taught it for 32 years ... but I've spent almost all those 32 years teaching beginners. It never really put my French to the test. And I really enjoyed feeling like I was learning something new every day, as much about Québec culture and history as about the French language.

So that's why I'm back here. I wanted to put myself to the test. I could very easily have stayed at my school and transitioned from my half-time long-term sub job this year to continuing on as a day-to-day substitute teacher. Everything about my Maine life has been great. But I knew that if I settled into a routine next year of subbing and doing other fun stuff, I would be happy and have fun, but there would be no learning, no challenge. And I felt really called to look for a learning and challenge opportunity -- and specifically, here. Many of you reading what I'm about to say will think I'm nuts if you don't already ... but I am feeling very specifically called to be here at the UQTR. Not a specific reason. Just purely intuitive. I wrote a poem about it over the winter called "The Sirens' Song." Everyone reading this who knows me as a Latin teacher will no doubt appreciate the reference to the Odyssey. Here is the poem. (I write all my poetry in English and French.)

la chanson des Sirènes / The Sirens' Song
The ancient Greeks believed in the Sirens
   who sang to sailors to seduce them and draw them to their island.
I know that they exist today.
   But not in Greece.
   They live in the St. Lawrence and St. Maurice rivers
   and I hear their song every day.
Should I answer their call?
Les Grecs de l'Antiquité
   croyaient aux Sirènes
   qui chantaient aux marins
   afin de les séduire et de les attirer vers leur île.
Moi, je sais qu'elles existent aujourd'hui.
   Mais pas en Grèce.
   Elles habitent le fleuve St-Laurent et la rivière St-Maurice
   et j'entends leur chanson chaque jour.
Devrais-je répondre à leur appel?

So I don't know yet why I'm being called to be specifically here. But I'm giving myself until April 2020, the end of the university school year, to find the answer. I'll be taking classes with regular students in the École internationale de français. And I'll be looking for music opportunities too. Some have actually already materialized. That will be the subject of my next post.

So how is it going so far, four days in? I keep thinking that what I'm experiencing must be what it feels like to be an immigrant to the USA. Interacting with a landlord, a bank teller, a post office clerk, a store clerk, and a librarian in French definitely raises the bar from teaching a French I class. I'm soaking up new vocabulary all the time. I'm constantly on websites to find out key words I'll need before I need them. I haven't heard spoken English here even once. But that's part of why I wanted to be here and not Montréal or Québec City. Montréal has a huge English-speaking community and is truly a bilingual French-English city. Québec has loads of tourists. Trois-Rivières has neither tourists nor an anglophone (Canada term for people whose first language is English) community.

Even as much as I wanted this experience, there's an adjustment involved. I haven't understood everything that people have said to me, which is frustrating, and embarrassing if I think I'm answering the question they asked and that wasn't it. And I've found myself engaging in three "cheats":
1. I'm taking the self-checkout when I can instead of interacting with a clerk. I need to stop that.
2. I walked all over a store looking for light bulbs instead of asking a clerk where they were because I wasn't sure of the word for light bulb. I thought "ampoule" but wasn't sure. (It is indeed "ampoule." A lesson to me to trust my instincts -- just like I've been telling students to do for years!)
3. I can actually speak French very well (and am not just saying so myself, I get compliments from francophones on the quality of my French), but my speaking ability exceeds my listening comprehension ability. I have a little hearing loss and am wondering whether that's a factor. So I caught myself in interactions with a store clerk a couple of times speaking much more slowly and hesitantly in French than I do naturally so they would go slowly and speak clearly in return. I need to cut that out.

There is also the adjustment to being away from loved ones. I would have almost certainly been spending these last few days doing things with friends and seeing people I know wherever I go. I'm six hours away now. I have two friends up here, one of whom I met in the Road Scholar program, one whom I've known since University of Maine years. The former is out of town until Monday, the latter is busy moving, so neither is available. So I guess I'm more of a social creature than I realized as I've felt a little lonely and am not used to that at all. That will pass, of course, so I'm not in the least bit worried about it. I just surprised myself.
A really nice moment happened just when I needed it to: I was out for a walk on Thursday and the two Road Scholar program leaders from the previous years were driving by together, saw me, called out and waved, and did a U-turn to come say hi and give me a hug. That felt great at a moment when I'd been feeling a little isolated.

There are probably rules about how long a blog post should be and this is probably it. So I'll leave these stories for the next post: what my living arrangements are like here, photos of my apartment and the neighborhood, and stories about how I've already found musical opportunities.

Two footnotes:
1. There are older posts on this blog that have nothing to do with this Trois-Rivières experience. Feel free to read those and comment on them!
2. I mentioned my poetry. Here is the link to my bilingual poetry site which has a lot of poems inspired by my summer 2018 experience here: http://sites.google.com/view/poetepoetdiane

I like to end my posts with discussion questions, so here we go:
1. Have you ever taken something on just because you felt called to as opposed to having a rational/analytical reason?
2. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt out of your element but knew it was a good learning experience for you?
3. Have you ever surprised yourself with your reaction to something?
I love it when people respond to my post in the comments, and I'd love to get a good discussion going, so please jump in.

I'll try to incorporate more photos in future posts; the following will be a good start!