Sunday, June 05, 2005

Festivals

And so the season of festivals in Montreal begins. Seriously, I don't think that I've seen a group of people as eager as Montrealers to shut down the main roads of their city down for some nice partyin'.
This year, le Festival Mondial de la Biere (that's the Beer Festival for the rest of you) kicked it off. It took over an entire intersection, and various numbered tents were put up, each representing a different type of beer. Elated, Andrej (my lab partner), his friend April, Lopa (also my lab partner, but from class) and I headed down to check it out. The number of people that congregated to celebrate beer was staggering: the crowd consisted of pimply (and underage) adolescents, old wizened Quebecois, and of course, the students! All squeeze, jostled and mingled to create an energetic and smelly atmosphere. The premise behind the festival was this: dart through the mass to the very end of then tent to purchase coupons, then (impossibly), try to reach a tent where, breathlessly, you manage to slap your coupon down on the counter and snatch a beer. Finally, navigate out of the chaos without spilling said beer to try and taste it. Whew! It was exhausting, and, in the end, not particularly enjoyable. Quite soon, we decided that there were far cheaper and quieter places to acquire beer in Montreal.
Dazed, we wandered over to a bright and happy place: the arcade. I'd already convinced Andrej to try this game called Dance Dance Revolution, and now it was Lopa and April's turn to try it out. We basicaly made fools of ourselves, but all in good fun. And soon as we slipped off of the pads, a svelte Asian teenager hopped on and proceeded to make us all look terribly uncoordinated (seriously, he was amazing).
We then wandered over to a pub and played cards, foozball, and finally settled into a conversation. All of us being total nerds, some of the jewels of the night were:
"I couldn't stand my old lab partner. He just couldn't titrate properly." --Lopa
"Plants. They are the PINNACLE of model systems." --Andrej
"I can't believe that girl wanted a recommendation letter. She actually made a centrifuge EXPLODE!" --April
It was funny. April is a PHD student, and Andrej is obtaining his Masters, and both of them T.A. a class that Lopa and I should be taking next year. All year I've been hearing the students' side of the story (which T.A. grades easily, what classes have a hard midterm...) when all of a sudden I'm listening to T.A.s talk about the same class. It sounds so different! Scary. It's like they're real people. :P Anyway it ended being a great (albeit random) night. I hope that I'll have more like it. I doubt I'll splurge on another festival until the Jazz festival though (the dancing!! I can't wait).
Well that's it for now. I notice that it seems as though I live a life of pure debauchery, but I really don't. I just chose not to write about the boring stuff, i.e. working at the lab or studying for the MCATs (gulp, not until next summer, but it's never too early to look into it), etc.
Thanks Red Handed Jill for linking me!

2 Comments:

Blogger Kate said...

you're welcome! i meant to link you a long time ago but i'm just lazy.

11:34 a.m.  
Blogger 007 in Africa said...

The comments of the night are so funny. In a dorky sort of way ;)

10:49 a.m.  

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