Winter Carnival

I have left British Columbia which will have to be done justice in another post soon. I am in Quebec city now at an undisclosed location. Rest assured that if you have a traditional Christmas card lurking somewhere in your home, with a picture on the front of little gothic buildings, churches with spires and snow everywhere, then I am one of the little figures walking around in scarf, coat and hat on it.

Quebec city is something out of a chocolatier's fantasy land. The snow is falling gently here, there are snow sculptures bigger than cars and tonight I went to a huge outdoor party with 3 crazy French people (from France, not Quebec), 1 Brit and 1 Aussie to an outdoor party at the Ice palace, where they were playing a weird fusion of country and western with French discotechque music and continuous line dancing and rock and rock demonstrations on stage. Imagine Shania Twain vomiting up Celine Dion on speed and you're somewhere close.

Despite the amazingly crap music we all danced in the snow in front of the ice stage, fuelled on tiny cups of hot mulled wine. It was snowing as we went for our mental dancing in hats and beanies in front of a stage completely built of out ice, and it was probably only minus 2 degrees, instead of the minus 10 I experienced on my walking tour of the old town today (where I met the same people I went out with tonight). And I have some video of it on my camera of the same crazy snow dancing which you will all have to wait for. Probably a long time :-)

Quebec is arguably more French than the French. My schoolgirl studies of the language have some back to me in a dizzying rush and I'm sure mon professor, Monsieur le Docteur Crispin from All Saints would be proud of me- I can still only speak in the present tense, my grammar is appalling, my vocab is ok and I can still order a coffee and (barely) deal with an emergency situation (the Aussie sprained her ankle at the dance party and had to be carried home but the security guards thought she was on something instead).

If I was independantly wealthy, I'd move in for the winter, eat poutine (chips with gravy and cheese curds- otherwise known as a coronary condition in a bowl), study French, get fat and be tres content.

However, I am sure some jumped up little bilingual 19 year old with big teeth has been crowned Snow Queen in my place since the festival started last week. Focussing on my mission to hunt her down and wrest my rightful tiara back from her might be difficult now. So many distractions, many cups of hot chocolate to drink...