Yep, that pretty much summarizes it: many cultures and lots of homework!
In retrospect, Kelowna seems a lot more homogeneous than our current reality. There are the most obvious cultural differences—French and English. Hugh MacLennan called them the “two solitudes” back in 1945, before the quiet revolution of the 1960’s. But that’s just scratching the surface. We currently live in a culturally diverse suburb of Montréal, in a multi-ethnic building. At university, Val & I are the only Canadians in our classes. Everyone else is an international student, though some have been in Québec for a while now. There are more people from the former Soviet Union than from Canada! The people I am most friendly with in class are from Senegal and Iran, and Val’s been talking with people from Australia and Japan...all in French, of course. It’s similar at church. We’re in a black church (a couple of staff members immigrated from African countries), which has not been our reality before, and the “flavour” of what a faith community looks like here is different for other reasons as well, simply because it’s in urban Central Canada instead of the rural/suburban left coast. Add to this that the church is on the edge of Montréal’s predominantly white gay village, that our mode of travel is now bus, subway, and walking, and you have more levels to the milieu that is our new experience. As our goal is not just language acquisition, but cultural understanding too, we are absolutely in all of the right place(s)! Our hope and prayer are that we won’t continue to feel on the outside of all of these cultural realities we have the privilege to be amongst. Of course, the sheer volume of homework we have could keep us at home, working (hence the word), chained to grammar workbooks. Language learning isn’t at all about contemplating new concepts, or hypothesizing about anything; it is practice, practice, and more practice! We have two writing, and two oral classes. Each class only meets for 3 hours a week, but each also expects 1½ to 2 times that amount of time to be focused on homework. Translation: you are NEVER wanting for something to do. Would we trade it? Sometimes it feels like it would be easier. We are stripped from our context of connection, companionship, career, car, communication, and comfort. And yet, this is a whole new world, a world we have been invited in to. A world we WANT to know and be known in. So, we will continue to slog through our innumerable grammar exercises and all the frustrations that come with trying to learn a new language, hopefully with smiles on our faces.
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AuthorTom & Val, off on a mid-life adventure (but not crisis) in la belle province! Archives
May 2020
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