Tag Archives: Friends

Québec Part V: Saying Goodbye (5 Things I’ll Miss about the French Province)

I’m a pretty sentimental person, so as I think about the 5 weeks I’ve spend here in Quebec it’s easy to think of lots of things that I will miss. Since I’ve promised to try to write all my posts about Quebec in French, however, I’ve narrowed it down to one for each week.

The Food

Everyone knows that the French know what is up it comes to food. This past Sunday, for our last weekend together, several of us biked to a waterfall close-by for a little picnic. We stopped by an outdoor market on the way to pick up some bread. We bought a loaf of sun-dried tomato and chocolate cranberry bread. Afterwards we went to the fromagerie and bought several types of cheese. A couple of us also picked up a bottle of wine from the corner store (yes, there is wine available everywhere here). Then we sat in front of a waterfall feasting on bread and cheese and the grapes we packed along.

cheeseandbread

Then, of course, there were the restaurant-style meals we are fed each and everyday by our hosts.

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Quebec Pt. IV: 3 Indespensible (and Free) Tools for Translation

I cannot take personal responsibility for finding a single one of the amazing resources I’m going to include below. Instead, I have to give all the credit to the friends I’ve made here in Trois-Pistoles. If any of you happen to read this, thanks for being so rad.

Word Reference

Alright, I have to admit I still use Google Translate now and then, but there is a good reason teachers always tell you to stay away from it. It’s doing translation, and that is all. Unfortunately, literal translation can go very wrong. Like the time I planned a trip to France and told my hosts I could be “catching a coach” from the UK. Turns out instead of using the word for the vehicle, I used the French word for a sports-team coach. Awkward.

googletranslatefail

Also, Google Translate can be a little lazy sometimes.

So, when you find yourself searching for the right word, turn to WordReference instead. It’s not going to pretend to do all the work for you, like Google Translate, but it also isn’t going to pepper your translation with hilarious nonsensical phrases.

WodReference has “two of its own dictionaries plus those of Collins” and the French dictionary alone has “over 250,000 translations”. You can also find a verb conjugator and a forum for each language. Generally speaking you can find every possible definition of a given word, along with any idioms associated with it. If you do have trouble finding a word or phrase, however, you can often find an answer in the language forum. Continue reading

5 Lessons from the HIMYM finale

So, How I Met Your Mother is finally over. And the internet is pissed.

Spoilers below, obviously.

This is what everyone wishes they could do to the writers.

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I was a Voluntourist

In an article that started trending recently, “The Problem with Little White Girls“, blogger Pippa Biddle shares about her experience doing short term aid in Tanzania. While her group of private school kids had flown in to build a library for an orphanage, they were actually terrible at construction:

“Each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure… It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level…”

Biddle goes on to ask her reader to reconsider short-term aid. Continue reading

A Culture War Report: Facebooking the Ukrainian Protests

Social media is rapidly becoming a common source of news. For me personally, scrolling through my Facebook news feed can feel like picking up the morning paper. I have get to read comics, funny/uplifting stories, and even, these past few weeks in particular, serious current events as they happen. Sometimes, when you’re lucky, networking through Facebook can mean you might be able to contact friends who are near where those events are occurring and get a perspective you might not hear in the news. I had that opportunity with the Ukraine Protests and will be sharing with you the experiences that were shared with me.

Around mid-February I started to see this video circulating on Facebook:

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Fame Day: Christmas Traditions

It’s actually pretty hard to write a Fame Day post for Christmas since it’s now pretty much synonymous with materialism, something that most people agree “eats you from the inside out.”

But dang it guys! I really love Christmas! I love all the lights everywhere draining energy and creating light pollution. I love the repetitive Christmas music on the radio. I love giving and (gasp) even receiving gifts (though I try to only purchase gifts from businesses I feel happy supporting ex. fair trade, local, etc). So much about how Christmas is marketed goes against the things I want to be socially conscious about, and yet I can’t seem to help loving it. I think this probably comes down to the many fun traditions my family has had, and the way the season forces us all to drop everything going on in our lives just to spend time together.  

So I’ve decided that for today’s Fame Day post I’m going to share a few of my favorite traditions, and I would really love if you could tell me a little bit about yours. Continue reading