Here is the love letter my host brother Oussman handed me the other day. For the record I am Mariame and he is 27 and married. Please enjoy: (oh I cant read his handwriting in some places so thats partially why some of this makes no sense- also he only made it through middle school...)

J'ai l'honneur et le plus grand plasir de vous ecrire cette missive lettre.

Je demande au bon dieu que ma lettre vous trouve dans le meilleur situation quont a moi dieu merci ainsi que tous mon eutourage.

Il y a eu un poignet taux que je voulait te parler je mes nouvelles. C'etait plus forte que moi. Mais il faut aussi que je vous le dire. Pour que tu puisse me comprendre.

Concentre-toi, et ouvre ce sac une petit suprise pour toi.

Regarde fixe eu avant, nez points, bouche minuscule, yeaux rayonant, caracteure puissant. Ton regarde caresse mon ame, Tes yeaux font lalumiere Je mes jeurs, Ton caracteure me faitmange les doigts. Parce que tu es le divisieur de mes ides. La dividante de mes cauchmaurs, le quotient de mes jeurs le reste de ma vie.

Mariame pour te dire que je vous trouve tre charmante. La luxieuse des luxieuses, belle des belles. Ta s'eusabilite aux rayons briante m'empeche de dormir. Je te donne mon coeur pour que tu puisse connaitre ma valeur.

Tot par l'empleur de ta beaute eternel que je tes chosi parmis les nombreuses filles de blanc. Car tu es pleine de frecheur et de douceur Comme mes reves de jeunesse.

Mariame avec toi je serai l'homme le plus heureux de la planette lesestre.

Je vous demande de me comprendre dans ces missives lignes. Et quoi qu'il arrive garde le pour un secret. Je veux demande un grand pardon et encore une foi pardon et garde le pour un secret. J'ai reellement ton coeur et envert moi repond a mon appelle et nous partagerons une amour si reflexive.

La valeur d'une lettre ses une reponse. Il faut me comprendre c'est que je vous arrive du font le coeur.

-de la part de Ousmane Niang



After he gave this to me I ignored him the next day and then left the village to go a meeting. Yesterday he sent me this text:

BONJOUR DEPUIT QUE TU A RECU LA LETTRE TU M'A PAS DIT UN MOT EST CE QUE JE TES FAI QUELQUECHOSE DE MAL. ET JE CROIYAI QUE N'IMPORTE QUI A DROIT D'AIMER ET ETRE AIMER DIT MOIQUELQUE CHOSE
OUSMANE NIANG

I did not reply, todayhe called and I did not answer. Tomorrow I am returning to the village and its going to be awkward.

I hate my life

I found myself in a reflective mood since university has come to an end (as of today I officially passed all of my classes) and I often wonder how much I have learned and changed during this time. Tonight I sat down with a glass of wine and watched an entire democratic caucus on C-SPAN. Yeah, I think change has occurred.

Over the summer I got a few txts from some random person ususally about sipping cocktails poolside-txted back to ask who it was and got some women's name as a response, but didn't bother to respond telling her that its a wrong number because well txts cost money and I am a bad person. Anyways I haven't gotten one in a while until this morning which read:
don't forget to put aside dec 10 for NYC christmas lunch at doubles miss you and going stir crazy

I miss you too, and wish I was going to be in NYC on the 10th so I could meet you for lunch but unfortch I will be finishing a paper that day. Hope someone shows up!

1. Old people love talking about dead people and seem to make it into some type of competition.
Some old lady talking to my Grandma: "My husband died three years ago."
Gma: "Mine died nine years ago."
Old woman standing behind me having a different conversation at the same time: "My brother died on the beach at Normandy on D-Day."

And I think that makes little old lady number three the winner.

2. Old people are impatient. When the bus showed up I was suddenly in a mosh pit of 5 feet tall people bum rushing the bus. Both myself and the bus driver seem to share the fear of someone breaking a hip.

3. The chance of getting lung cancer increases exponentially as the price of the slot machine goes down. $5 slots the air clean and pure, at the half penny slots (yes those really exist)I could barely see the machine through the haze.

4. I also learned that Helen was in fact correct when she said that she would do nothing if won $100, since well I did (plus the $100 my Grandma gave me to play with) is going straight into my bank account.

There is nothing I love more than waking up at 8:30 in the morning, biking up hill to the other side of the city in the 100% humidity that is summer in Montreal to go to a job interview, only for the lady not to be there.

We are pleased to inform you that you are in satisfactory standing. Satisfactory standing means you are allowed to continue your studies in the upcoming academic year. Please click here for more detailed information on your academic standing decision. All students are responsible for checking their unofficial transcripts for their final fall/winter grades and their academic standing decisions. Please note, if you have registered in summer courses you will have a new standing decision in September, so remember to check your record again before the end of the add/drop period this fall.


McGill University: Where satisfactory equals excellence since 1821.

Tonight Helen and I watched the series finale of Buffy. I have watched many a complete series of shows since we started Buffy a year and a half ago but there is something special about that show. It may be the frozen pizza that we shared; placed lovingly on pizza seat or the excitement we each had for certain characters; insert guttural sexual sounds for Angel during the first half of the show or guttural sexual sounds for Spike during the last half of the show but it was something that was in us both (even if Helen had previously seen all the episodes). And now a month or so before our stint as Rooms is over in mould apartment we have completed the series and I shall never be able to watch an episode of Buffy or eat a frozen pizza with out thinking about this period of my life.

There is an episode of Friends when Ross who is on sabbatical after the Sandwich debacle is complaining to Joey about being bored. He goes on to list a whole bunch of stuff he did that day; Joey looks at Ross and tells him that he has just listed a weeks worth of stuff. I tend to take the Joey approach to life aka I do nothing. But today was a Ross day, it started off with an 8:45 am dentist appointment for my med evaluation which turned into a whole big mess since they decided that I have three fillings that maybe kinda could possibly need to be refilled, so they scheduled me for three separate appointments at the end of June to refill each one of these things separately (since they are on three different sides of my mouth- I really don't get that logic its my mouth its not like they are on opposite ends of the country) and refused to sign to evaluation form (although they did charge me the forty bucks it cost to fill it out) despite me telling them that I could send it in now with a note saying that I am getting them filled on another day and then mailing in confirmation that this has in fact happened.

Since I had all of medical forms with me I decided to head over to McGill to double check that they could do all the lab tests I am going to get next week. After standing around for about thirty minutes in the over crowed waiting room of people full of fun contagious diseases and a trip upstairs to the lab room, I was informed that they have never heard of one of the tests I need to get. Great, and when asked where I could possibly get this imaginary test done in the city I was informed to go to the hospital and handed a sheet with directions on how to get there but no phone number of the lab to call (the hospital is located next to Estevan's apartment aka up a hill in the middle of fucking nowhere) and I am sure as hell not biking over there to be informed that they too have never heard of this blood test.

Next failure comes after a trip to James Administration- well actually I went to the library before that where despite not being able to find one book I wanted (libraries confuse me) I did take out Douglas Coupland's JPod which I am excited about, so we will only call that a half fail- anyways I stopped by James Admin to pick up stuff I needed to renew my CAQ and study visa with the plan to stop by the Galaries pick up an envelope from Dollarama and mail everything out today, only to realize that I still need a passport sized photo. Damn it, so close to actually accomplishing something. I ended my morning on the semi productive trip to the bank where I did my sketchy money transaction of taking money out of my American account from the guichet and then walking up to the counter and handing over the wad of twenties I just took out to be placed into my Canadian account.

Ok thats my weeks worth of things to do all done before the time I normally would wake up, now what should I do?

Since I am still unemployed and well generally lazy, I spend way too much time in my bed on my computer. Most of this time is spent watching entire tv series in a matter of a few days thanks to various websites supplying links. But it can take a few days for a new episode to show up on these sites and I am impatient, but for those of you in the US without tv, you are able to watch most of these shows on the channels website, but these websites are restricted to those viewers outside of the US. When not watching tv I have started to put Pandora on in the background (as is the case at this very moment) since I have sufficiently outplayed my Itunes. Well I just checked my email and received one from Pandora that stated that starting May 16th Pandora will no longer be available to stream in Canada due to licensing and since my IP address is such and such they know I am in Canada.
This leads to the next topic of IP addresses. Basically I am creeped out that people can figure out that I am looking at their website. More or less because again I am big loser and while I am watching these tv shows or listening to Pandora I am reading through peace corps blogs. Basically I spend several hours at a time reading through 27 months of adventure of these people lives and for those currently serving in Senegal (a country that I might be placed in) I tend to check theirs on a semi daily basis. Basically I am a stalker and have become self conscious that these people can tell that some person in Montreal is spending hours on their website a day.
Moral of the story is that I need a life.

Tonight there was a party in Shatner which meant that my shift at Walksafe would end at 3:00 am. With the metro closing at 1 and the 80 bus only running twice an hour I decided that despite the snow flurries occurring when I left the apartment, that my bike would be my best mode of transportation. I was wrong.
Montreal is currently experiencing a wave of weather where it gets a few degrees above freezing during the day and then the temperature drops to around freezing at night (it is currently -1) this causes snow to melt during the day and then turn the roads into a sheet of ice at night.
I departed Shatner and began my ride home, since the Milton gates are closed at night I hoped the sidewalk and proceeded across University but unfortunately the giant sheet of ice between the sidewalk and the road had other ideas, I went one way, the bike slid into the road and my mind went to my laptop in my messenger bag that slapped the road along with my body. It is currently ok (as I am typing this on it) but my shoulder the bag was on it a little torqued.
I took the rest of the ride slowly and all was well until I got half way up St Laurent and my shoelace got wrapped around my pedal.

I am awesome!

If your father calls do not talk to him, tell him you are busy.
-love
Mom

Unfortunately I read this lovely email after my father had called, but it turns out that my reaction was pretty similar to my mother's advice seeing I as hung up on him while he was in mid sentence and proceeded to ignore his three following phone calls.

I love dysfunction.

As the weather has warmed up over the past few days people seem to have a hard time leaving the winter clothes behind. Yesterday I rode my bike down to the language building to pick up a test, due to the warm weather (and my lack of clean socks) I wore flip flops, but since the roads were wet I accomponied the Reefs with my waterproof snowboard jacket. Today on my walk to class (again in flip flops but this time with a more seasonable spring jacket) I noticed a guy in front of me wearing the puffiest down jacket with basketball shorts. But it seems I should get around to washing my socks (and perhaps some underwear) since its dropping down to -10C again this weekend.

My trip to visit the wifey was splendid. We shopped, we ate, we watched copious amounts of t.v, and we figured out what we are going to do with our psych degrees.

On Sunday we headed into Chicago and hit up State Street for some shopping (Urban Outfitters and Payless, oh so exotic), followed by a trip to the Institute of Art for a little bit of culture and a lot of Impressionists and then it was time for some picture taking in front of the bean (can you spot the vagina in the picture) the day concluded with some cheap thai food, my first legal beer in the States and a giant food coma.



Monday was a day spent mostly on the couch, but thats how I like them. I also frequented one of Evanston's cafes and spent the evening pretending to be a Northwestern Psych student so I could grab some free pizza while the wifey attended a career panel.

Tuesday brought us back to Chicago for some shopping in Belmont. I scored some kick ass shoes, the worlds tackiest tie (which I will wear as a belt) and some amazing deep dish pizza complete with waiter who was rather confused when I ordered a beer since I come no where close to passing for twenty one.

Wednesday was a day to say good bye, but not before I saw campus and this supposed lake it sits on. Campus was gigantic far larger than McGill despite having far less people and the lake was indeed Great.


(I have to say I look rather manly in that picture but whatevs, and for the benefit of the wifey and a bean worthy facebook picture the other pics will be webshotted shortly)

Now I am back to Montreal, faced with school work and applications and cold and stress and I already miss my wifey.

After almost six months of a broken light in the stairway and two months of a broken bedroom door, I got around to calling my landlord this morning. He said he would stop by around the end of the day, which I assumed to mean five or six of course but in crazy world end of the day means noon. My phone beeps with a voicemail message even though it did not ring, when I listen to it, it is Monsieur McFrench saying that he just stopped by and rang the doorbell but I did not answer. As I have yet to leave the apartment today, I know that no door bell has been rung. I call him back and he says he will swing by again in a few minutes and asks if I live at 58 or 60 (he rang the wrong bell before but refuses to admit it). He enters the apartment and I show him my door propped against the hallway wall. I quickly learn that McFrench and I come from the same school of home improvement otherwise know as I have no clue what the fuck I am doing so I will just bang shit as hard as possible. He asks if I have saved the screws and I have a screwdriver, I hand them over. He then inquires about a small piece of wood to fill the screw holes. Umm we may have a lot of crap in this apartment but surprisingly we do not keep a pile of wood in our living room. In lieu of wood, he deems cardboard a sufficient substitute and shoves pieces of it into the screw holes. Yeah this should work well. When he realizes that he can not screw things into the door frame, he asks for a hammer and bangs the crap out of the screws. He begins to cough and wheeze and I wonder what will happen if my landlord has a heart attack in my bedroom. I give the door 36 hours until it comes off the hinges. He claims he will be back to fix the light in the hallway; I am excited to watch him stick metal objects in the socket and electrocute himself.

Or as Traci stated in her email to me is that the first rule in visiting Chi town is not to call it Chi Town. I am quite excited to get out of Montreal for a couple of days. I have had wander lust bad for some time so I am looking forward to checking out someplace new although I am not looking forward to the whole waking up at 4 am thing though. But I will be hanging with my wifey this time tomorrow; WOOT! Its time for a time!

It has reached that time during a semester where cleaning the bathroom is seen as a more exhilarating option than doing school work.

Also a mocha brownie frappochino with mint chocolate Baileys is one of my best creations, especially when served in the pint glass taken from Dieu du Ciel.

I love spending my Friday nights flirting with 33 year old married men. Did he really think I cared about the difference between cement and concrete? And of course Emily (who does not have AIDS) went home with a cute guy who is our age. While walking home Emily pointed out no matter what I would be going home alone, which is true, but no matter what I would still like the choice.

I told my self I was going to be a good student this semester. Try and stay on top of readings, go to class, and not leave things to the last minute. A month into the semester I find my self hundreds of pages behind in all of my classes and with a paper due tomorrow that has yet to be started. At least there is Wikipedia to teach me the differences between Confucianism and Taoism because I sure as hell haven't been taking notes in this class, nor did I buy the books. Good job, Sarah.

Also, I need to figure out how to keep myself from using my computer after I have been drinking. Since inviting random people to events that even your friends won't show up to is simply embarrassing. As is the fact that facebook insists on sending out emails about canceling events rather than letting them disappear from people's lists and hopefully their minds. Oh well, this should teach me not to try and be social.

I have been planning to write about my birthday night all week, but when I got around to plugging in my camera today, I realized that I hadn't uploaded pictures since August, so here is everything from Fayola's last night to kitties, to Toronto, Christmas and my birthday and random stuff in between plus some good Rubber shots.

I have been pretty good about making it to classes so far this semester and while I know that the add/drop period has yet to end I was still proud of myself for getting to all my classes and I even thought that I may be able to keep this up for most of the semester. Well that ended this morning. I got my self up, showered had coffee and got out the door, shoving my no-name frozen waffle in my mouth as I head to the bus. I knew I would be a few minutes late to class, but I figured if I hustled and caught a bus right away it wouldn't be too bad. I get to St Urbain and my hand glances my back pocket in an out of habit sort of way to make sure my bus pass was still there. That is when I realize that I had worn a different pair of jeans last night and my bus pass was still sitting in the pocket of those jeans on the floor of my room. Knowing that if I decided to walk or go back to the apartment get my pass and then go back to grab a bus I would be 25-30 minutes late to a class that only last 55 minutes I decided to come back here and have a second cup of coffee. Oh and I already plan on skipping my last class of the day to go to SnoAP seeing as I have never been and today is the last day, I figure East Asian Relg will still be there on Monday whereas cheap beer on lower field will not.

My upstairs neighbor and I have been playing a fun game of passive aggressiveness. When I take my shoes off outside of my door, I have been lining them up to the left of the door frame, so that I do not trip over them when I come home in the dark. For whatever reason my neighbor also takes her shoes off on our landing and leave them on a sort of cafeteria tray instead of walking up the next flight of stairs and leaving them in front of her apartment. Every time I leave my apartment I find that she has taken my shoes from the left of the door and scattered them over our door mat. I don't quite get why my shoes are in her way where I leave them, they are not blocking the stairs seeing as I line them up next to the wall in front of her other pair of boots and they are actually neatly in pairs as opposed to me scattering them across the landing and come on her door is up a whole other flight of stairs so if anything I should be the one throwing her ugly boots up to her door. But I don't, instead every time I leave my apartment I neatly re-line up my shoes next to the door and head on my merry way, only to return to trip over them as she has scattered them across the doorstep again. I don't think she realizes who she is playing against, because I am the queen of passive aggressive, and I will keep putting my shoes back where I want them, no matter how many times she moves them.