An upside to these interviews is that we feel an obligation to order in any café that we enter, and we're never disappointed. While everything here in Canada is a little less than twice the price it would be in the states, the quality checks out, and we have no regrets interviewing a passionate Frenchmen over a "London Latté" or "Dirty Chai".
However, the interview process is intimidating and demanding. We've realized an extreme difference in the willingness and the openness of the Montréal citizens depending on what are they're residing. For example, the young Francophone citizens who like to eat their lunch on a blanket on the Old Port are much more likely to reject us for an interview (and much more likely to be monolingual...in French) than a seemingly busy white collar gentleman attempting not to spill his coffee over his laptop. Now, it seems like it would be the other way around, but we've had much better luck interviewing informed businessman than we have lazy boutique-goers.
We're also developing an appreciation for the process of the interview rather than the result. We sat down with an older Mexican immigrant, who seemed put off by the interview process at first, but warmed up to us quite quickly. She was by far our favorite interviewee- talkative, warm, and honest. We discovered that Maribel was an immigrant from Mexico and came to Canada interested only in being a Canadian, and not being a part of some overwhelmingly separate culture that Quebec offers. She said that Quebec just happened to be where she landed, and that she believes that if Quebec were to separate from Canada, she would move to another province.
This situational conclusion was something we haven't gotten from any other source, so it was so interesting to us that Maribel created that ultimatum for herself and made a decision.\
We realized later, with great disheartenment, that we had completely lost Maribel's interview. The recording disappeared somewhere into the cyber-universe, never to be recalled. It was heartbreaking to me that our most successful interview could be lost, but I think it sort of taught us a lesson that this project isn't about asking what people think just to objectively reach a goal number of interviews, this project is about people, and their experiences with this culture in which we've so fully immersed ourselves. Luckily, Maribel gave us her email, and we hope to get an online interview from her, but overall that's not what matters. We sat and connected with someone right in the center of their universe in Montréal, Quebec, which truly is a city like absolutely no other. This city is a phenomenon, and honestly we now better understand what our project really is about than when we wrote the proposal. I am never going to forget this city, and I'd live here in a heartbeat.
As far as our language immersion goes, I've been given a new perspective on language. You can enter as a tourist in any city and be amused and entertained by the throws of a foreign language, but to actually attempt to make a connection with people that don't speak your language, it's revolutionary. It'll change your life. I reached a point where I was attempting to make conversation with a woman who virtually no English at all. She knew how to say sorry, you're welcome, and thank you, and that's about it. When speaking to her, I realized that my thoughts were being conjured in English, translated to French, and then communicated and I had a revelation that's hard to explain. When someone says house to you, you see an image of a house in your mind. When someone says maison (French for house) to me, I think of the word house first, and then of an image of a house. I'm beginning to believe that unless you grew up with a language as your co-first language with English, that intermediate step will never really go away. When the woman I was speaking with hears maison, she immediately sees a house, and the word house means nothing to her at all. I keep trying to image what it would be like if my immediate knee-jerk reaction was to say "Je pense..." instead of "I think...". Don't get me wrong, I can think quickly in French and I don't have to sit there and think to say "Est-ce que je peux avoir--" to order a meal, but all that sentence will ultimately ever be for me is a translation of an urge that's not French by origin.
Til next time-
Claire
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