Open-Ended Conclusions.
So that's it. Chalk up another semester to the tally--six down, two to go. But, if you have been faithfully reading this blog from day one, gripped with anxiety for the next RSS alert that a new posting has been made, you already know that this past semester hasn't just been any old semester in beautiful Burlington Vermont. No my friends. This was another semester of adventure and cultural boundary pushing only two hours north in mysterious and scary Canada. Montreal, more specifically.
What does it all mean? Well, Quebec is a French speaking province, Montreal is the largest city in Quebec, thus most people speak French. All this and it is still only two hours away from Burlington? Yes, that's right! Champlain College's first school owned study abroad site was established close to home, to keep this wily animal on a short leash. Kidding.
I think that one of the most interesting components of this "abroad" experience was that indeed, we have a very dissimilar, but still very identical national culture a hop-skip-and-a-stone's-throw-away from Burlington. Harkening back to something I once read by my favorite sociology professor, many brilliant researchers from around the world are theorizing that the reality we experience on a daily basis is only one of possibly eleven or more parallel realities; after all, we only have five senses. Montreal was like a perceptible parallel reality, albeit one whose understanding required a little fine tuning of some of our more imperceptible senses of the cultural variety.
Finally, on the Burlington front, I'm starting my first summer class today, Nutritional Science, and have been painting houses or power-washing them in the rain for the past week. Otherwise, I've been chill'n like a villain, which was apparently a popular slang to sling in this very city about nine years ago--this according to my eight grade pal whose brother went to UVM. Campus (Champlain, of course) is alive and vibrating with color and perfume. The lavender bush outside my apartment has me waking up to aroma therapy every morning, and then I blow my nose.
Later days, my fellow explorers. Go make pictures on the road like this one I took of a baby tornado outside of Oklahoma City last summer.
