then there are blackbirds

littlebutfierce asked about my adventures with French, which I have to say are not exactly... progressing, lol. I spend most of my time in my monolingual school bubble, which means I'm not used to switching gears outside it, which restricts my listening comprehension and vocab more than they otherwise would be (judging by my experiences in Chinese-speaking environments). My ability to parse the Quebec accent is maybe marginally better when my brain flips the switch, but I still can't understand most of what dance-buddy S is saying. To be fair, he's from rural Quebec, so his accent is more pronounced than most other people's I've encountered. I don't think my reading comprehension has deteriorated super badly, as I've had no trouble grading assignments written in French or reading emails or fb group messages with Francophone friends. Text is more forgiving for me, in French- I'm better at working out meanings through context through reading than listening. It's completely different than Chinese, in that sense, where illiteracy means I'm always working at comprehension the other way around.

In terms of French news/podcast-type listening sources, my adventures are basically non-ventures, alas. I've never found a good way to integrate those into my daily routine, and I try to avoid youtube spiraling for reasons of productivity, but music seems like it would be more promising? I'd appreciate any song/artist recs people have!

So! I did a bar tour, a food crawl, went to tam-tams at Mont Royal with various people, stopped by the YUL EATS food festival at Quai de l'Horloge on my way to check out the Brazilian festival (& then abandoned it because there was no dancing yet), and wandered back through Vieux Port and Vieux Montreal and Chinatown, but my favorite place in this city so far is 21 balancoires. Best stumble-upon EVER. :D