Montreal

After staying in Vermont last night and driving for a total of 7 hours (and listening to law tapes the entire way), Boyfriend and I are in Montreal!

It's a very nice city -- much bigger than I imagined, with a beautiful skyline from afar. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have pictures.

We are staying at the outskirts of the city for now and planning to explore a bit more for the next few days. Here are some preliminary observations:

- French sounds so good... I really wish I could still speak it. Ordinary people sound so sophisticated immediately when they begin to speak French.

- "Latin Quarter" in every city is a mixture of grunge and hip. Montreal is no exception.

- Starbucks is good everywhere. :D

- Despite growing up with the metric system, after years of living in America, it no longer has any meaning for me. I have no idea how fast "100 km/ hr" is, nor how many liters my car needs (or whether it's a good deal that it costs 1.03 in Canadian dollars for a liter, for that matter.)

- The traffic lights here are different SHAPES depending on the colors. The red lights are square. The orange ones are diamond. And green lights are round. I guess this is for the benefit of color-blind people.

- Lots of svelte tall European types here. And people are in general very attractive.

- Lots and lots and lots of cafes and bistros.

- Getting INTO Canada took about 2 seconds. I'm sure getting back to the U.S. won't be as easy.

In other news, I've been trying to change my sleeping habits from "night-owl" to "morning bluejay", in preparation for law school. So I've been setting my cell phone to ring every morning at 7 AM for the past few days. I've made similar attempts before. I'll keep you posted on how this one goes.