Heading from my adventures in Seoul, I am now in a lively, French-speaking dominant city, sweet ole sweet Montreal.

What brings me here? Well I got accepted to learn French for five weeks with the Explore program and fortunately, I got the bursary so accommodations, tuition, and for the most part, food is all covered! More information can be found on their website here.

I didn't want to start a new blog to document my Eastern Canada escapade, so I will be continuing on this blog. In fact, I will be changing this blog's name (once I come up with something creative!), as well as use this blog to document my future travels (will be more organized once I find some techy help!).

I arrived last Friday and thanks to my previous study tour to Taiwan, I reconnected with a friend I made there two summers ago and she was generous enough to host me this past weekend. I got a quick glimpse of Montreal's downtown area, suburbs, artsy/hipster area, jazz festival, and even Old Port where I saw the fireworks for Canada Day (HAPPY CANADA DAY!). A special thanks to this wonderful friend, she really went out of her way to accommodate me and help me settle in =)

Culture Shock #1: not really, but because my friend lives in South Shore, a suburb area away from the main island of Montreal, the predominant language known and spoken is French, but I didn't expect the guy taking my order at Timmies to be so flustered that he had to ask his manager to take my order, haha found it funny that my Canadian go-to franchise didn't have English speaking employees.. but that dude probably thought I was some foreigner from some English speaking land LOL 

I don't have much photos to post yet, because due to last minute flight time mix up (thinking my flight was 1pm, when it was actually 1am), I rushed packing and packed the wrong charging cord, so until my express package arrives with that, I will just be documenting photo-less.

So far, I find Montreal pretty similar to Edmonton, in terms of driving and traffic, but, its definitely a much livelier city. There are plenty of people downtown past work hours-most out to have some drinks, and maybe because its the long weekend, but there's lots going on where ever I go (buzzling like Whyte Ave in Edmonton all over the place).

Compared to my exchange in Korea, its funny how similar this program is, well, mostly in terms of my language classes because tomorrow I will be taking a placement test which will put me into an appropriate French class. I'm pretty sure I will be in beginner 0, so there's actually no need to bother with this test haha. I totally can't recall much other then greetings and numbers since my elementary school days, and its ironic how I gave up on French due to my dislike back in grade school and now I'm coming back to pursue it.

All in all, I'm looking forward to these next five weeks of being immersed in a French community. It will be challenging, and it is already. I feel more language barrier here than during my time in Seoul as I don't comprehend any French at all. Though, most people, like Koreans know English, they just don't use it unless they know you don't understand French. However, because this is an immersion program, the students coordinating the activities choose to only speak French to you to force you to speak and use it too.

Well, that's all for now, I will keep you followers posted!

Gotta shut down my Korean for now and turn on that French side of me! Oui Oui!