After my laptop battery was finally wrung dry I packed up and then spent 20 minutes walking around in the mall just soaking it in.
The mall was pretty up-market. I could see the French influence with elegant but simple window and shop design. Interestingly none of the shops had dual language signs with their names proudly displayed in French only.
I was particularly impressed with the shoe shop above and set about taking some “busy shopper” photos to impress the ladies back home. A very pretty shop assistant came out and stood in front of the window for me. You can just see her on the left behind the woman walking past me. I thought it was really sweet for her to pose for me then, on enquiry, I realised she was trying to hide the windows display from my pesky camera. She thought I was steeling her marketing ideas. After a little explanation that I was just a tourist she looked like she half believed me and let me go. I then realised that walking around with a laptop case and a camera made me look a little suspicious. Ah well.
I went into the mall in warm sunshine and when I came out about 3 hours later (2 ½ spent getting my fix on the laptop!) it was cool, heavily overcast and drizzling. Just like home!
Getting back to our quarters from the shopping mall was interesting for a bus phobic person like me (I’m not known for being a great user of any form of public transport).. There were about 20 different bus numbers to choose from at the bus stop. As I’ve found here, the people are really friendly and very helpful. “Parles vous Anglei” (excuse the spelling, it’s bound to be terribly wrong) usually gets a smile and “Yes, I speak English”. I soon got to know which bus number to look for. $2.50 gets you as much bus ride as you like for a couple of hours. After 5 minutes I recognised the university building we’re staying at and had to cut another conversation short and jump off.
Before coming we’d heard on the grape vine that the French speaking Quebecan people like you to speak French, but once you’ve made an attempt everyone so far has been really friendly and helpful at speaking to us in English. I think they’re quite curios about our weird accents. Unlike Americans they generally seem to know about New Zealand. Maybe it’s the Commonwealth influence.
The university digs…
As promised, when I got back to Laval University I took a few photos for you to see where we were staying.
Here’s the entrance to our hostel.
Our rooms are small but comfortable. With concrete walls and floors, you can’t hear your neighbour (unless you are next to the bathroom I’ve been informed). We have communal bathrooms on each floor and male and females are separated onto different levels in the three story building.
I ran into Mr Yates who told me the Juniors were training downstairs so I grabbed my gear and went and took a few photos of them in action. I expected they’d be a bit lethargic after all the travel and the late night last night but I was completely wrong. They were into it with real intensity. And smiles everywhere as they were loving it. I missed the seniors who had gone over to the main sports complex to train in a huge gym. Maybe tomorrow I’ll catch them.
Tonight we had a bit of room swapping to make things run smoother for female and male access to bathrooms etc then it was curfew for the juniors at 9.30am.
Tomorrow…
The plan tomorrow is:
5.30am wakeup for juniors
6.00am junior training until 8.00-8.30am
Breakfast then the rest of the day off for exploring.
Dinner at 6.30pm then possibly a light evening training session I think was the order of the day.
So, hopefully we’ll get some sight seeing in. I’m keen to get down to “Old Quebec” which some from the advance party who went today said it was fantastic.
Time to sign off, it’s 11.35pm here – 3.35pm in NZ. Tomorrow I hope to get internet access to my room (fingers crossed) so I can actually send these despatches when I write them instead of having to wait until the next day to stroll down the road to the mall.
This afternoon’s photos…
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