Finally arrived (Rimouski Part II)

The bus ride was quite pleasant, I managed to sleep through a good chunk of the first half. Then there's a break... I hop off in hopes of finding some food (I ate breakfast at 4:30 am and it's about 10:00 right now) but there's only a restaurant or vending machines and I have 10 minutes, so I get some water. Back on the bus, we head off again and I try to contact the girls who are already in Rimouski to let them know that I managed to catch an earlier bus, I think I got Kollene. The whole ride was pretty scenic...just hamlets mostly. There was one town that had a gas station, a convienence store and a strip bar, and that was it. Eventually, I get to Rimouski and catch a super cheap cap ride to the Cégep (we've finally uncovered that secret) residence, where I wait half an hour for Kit and Kollene to come...we put my stuff in Kit's temporary room and head to explore town.

Let's do a quick recap of how far I'd travelled so far...by posting this, I have destroyed any chance of someone coming to visit.

Back to the story...
We didn't find much but purchased some maps and had some coffee, we went and got some groceries and then I went to meet up with my landlord, who was late because he had gone to meet me at the bus station, but I wasn't there because I got an earlier bus, what a nice guy! Thanks Marcel!

The room I am to rent is not available just yet, so he takes me to the seminary where we run into Alix. She had been on the bus I was supposed to be on and he thought she was me, but she had figured out that we were part of the same program. Alix is from Manitoba. Here is my room at the seminary:


Desk + sink + power plug - ground = no place for laptop = garbage!



That cabinet smelled like death. It made me feel right at home.



That was the bed I slept on for just under a week. Next to there was a grounded power plug, but it was upside down. Where the hell am I?



Complete with hippy-stained glass. That contraption on the right side of the door was to open the stained glass window.


ooh artsy.


They were super nice, they even put my name on the door.

Alix showed me around the seminary, having been there for a full hour before me, I think. The bathrooms were co-ed, half the stalls were for the girls and half for the boys. The boys' side was regularly smelly. The showers: co-ed too...it was all weird. They had all this crazy old furniture that was in mint condition, like no one had been in there since 1963. We explored around for a while but the most exciting thing we found was a giant cabinet full of index cards...and this:


A machine so old, it held these:


Little tiny glass bottles of pepsi. You put the money in and slide it across and pull out your can.. it was really strange. It even had a bottle opener from back in the day.

Later on we met up with Kollene and Kit and headed out for dinner at La Maison du Spaghetti. There were no free tables until the waitress said, "wait, non-smoking?" "yes" "ooh then follow me, lots of tables." She sat as at this little porch thing in the restaurant which was quite empty, even though there were maybe 8 tables there. Oh Quebec, never cease to amaze me.


Alix, Kollene, Kit.

After dinner we roamed around a bit further but then just headed to sleep, since we were all quite exhausted after day 1.

Day 2: I don't really remember, except we met up at some point and eventually went to dinner at the retro diner where "sauce rouge" (red sauce) for pasta means meat, which didn't really make sense since I explictly asked "is this meal vegetarian?" anyway...they give you enough food for like 3 people. It was ok...

Monday morning was the first day at work, Alix, Kit and I all work in the same building, Kit and I in the same office. Kollene works at the musuem. So we got there and someone showed us around and then we just hung out. Eventually the big boss came in and talked to us...and everyone took their turns asking us really banal questions. Eventually the Monday morning meeting began, pure torture since it lasted about 2 hours. I saw two movies that day, "Boogeyman" (Denmark) and "Zlydni," (Ukraine) the latter I ended up translating.

Most of the rest of the week was spent being super bored due to lack of work. We all met up a few more times during the week to either go for coffee or dinner or something. There are probably lots of photos of that. Maybe we'll do something exciting soon so that I can not bore you with pure text posts.

Oh yeah, one night we also caught the sunset, Rimouski is on the St. Lawerence River (Fleuve St. Laurent) and we're so far east that it's salt water, so there's a tide. Check it:









The pinacle of Avenue de la Cathedrale.