Back Abroad

September 26th 2020: Bonjour! Abbie abroad is live again! I am in Montreal, Canada and having a blast. I safely made it over the border, completed another quarantine, and started classes!

I am living in an apartment downtown in a great area with lots of students and restaurants and fun! My roommate is a third year student from Ottawa and we have been getting along really well! I am teaching her to cook one Sunday dinner at a time! Let me know if you have any recommendations!

My classes are going well! I am the 7th in a long line of polysci students so it has been fun getting to know the family business. I am taking an intro to Canadian government course that is super interesting to learn about how different things are done up north of the border. All of my classes are online but only one is 100% remote in the sense that the professor prerecords his lectures and there are no small group meeting times. This class is trickiest for me, not for the material but because there is no interaction.

I am also learning French!! This small group course is very different than my Italian courses, we have 30 people! It has been fun to see all the similarities between Spanish, Italian, and French but I have learned how much I appreciate that Italian is a phonetic language. In French there are so many letters attached to the end that I don’t say but have to write!

Even though I am not sitting with people in lectures or living in a residence hall, I am still trying to meet people! I have been attending all the extra zoom events so I can get to know people which is much harder to do online!! Hopefully we will be in person for the next term but if not, I have learned I am really good at murder trivia on zoom!

Chef Abbie is also back and I love having my own kitchen!! I hosted my first dinner party, my sister and her roommates came over for a feast! I served vodka sausage pasta (with and without gluten:) ) pork roast braised in milk, and roasted assorted vegetables (zucchini, potatoes, peppers, and onions)! We had a blast!

It has been so much fun exploring the city and walking around looking for hidden spots! Tomorrow I am off to find the best gluten free bakery in the city. Like in every city, each Montrealer has a different recommendation but it has been fun asking everyone’s opinion!

In other news: mamma mia here we go again! is coming to Netflix on Wednesday and I hope everyone has it marked on their calendar so we can celebrate together…from a distance!