Curling and Cheques

Oh, and we watched curling last night.

I should look to see if I can find an expat-Canadian blog where some Canadian yuppie has moved to the US and is all:

Dear Diary:

Today I ate a cheeseburger. The word "cheques" is spelled "check" here.

Love,

Etienne

We could be, like, sister-blogs and I could tell him to go eat some cheese grits and introduce useful words such as "soul food."

I am looking forward to scratching the surface a bit more here, beyond the list of cliche things that I'm Supposed To Do in Canada. Overall, I don't feel particularly out of place, exactly--I think there's a good chance I'd experience more culture shock if I moved to California or somewhere else where nobody wears black all the time. Here, there's all of the identity politics stuff in Quebec going down, but most everyone has been nice after I say "bonjour" and they seem to want to do things like smile at you and watch sports and wear black which are all things I am totally down with.

One small thing I noticed when we were in Canada last time was the Nanaimo bar. It's a layer of squished crumbs, then some nice-tasting icing, then some chocolate melted on the top. My past experience of no-bake cookies in West Virginia was nothing but horrible. If an alternate name for a confection is "Boiled Cookies," stay away. Nanaimo bars are delicious and not boiled at all, I assure you.