Recently, Montreal was visited by a group of Champlain Professional Writing, and Business majors. It was great to see familiar faces from my major again and talk to them about my experience thus far. They arrived around 11:30. Wesnide, Genevieve, Shona, George (my Writing the City professor), and I greeted them all and told them a little about the amazing city of Montreal. After our discussion and Q & A, I toured the students around the academic building. Then the Professional Writing majors and business majors split ways.
I took the writers a few blocks over to show them our residence. I showed them my apartment. Luckily we didn’t catch my roomies in their pjs, because they were still sleeping.
From the residence, I walked the Professional Writing majors along St. Laurent to Chinatown, where we sat down for lunch. I’d wanted to try Hong Kong Restaurant since George told me about its delicious Chinese food during one of our classes. One of our first classes for Writing the City was at Maison Kam Fung in Chinatown, the best Dim Sum place in the city, according to George. We discussed our writing over a delicious cultural lunch. It was a really fun class, except, I, not eating red meat, had trouble finding vegetarian dishes.
We met up with George at Hong Kong Restaurant. As we walked in, George teased me and pointed out the hanging, dead duck in the window because he knows I hate meat. As a group of ten, we sat around a large table with the biggest lazy susan I’ve ever seen in the middle. We noticed the menu was in three languages: Chinese, French, and English. We all thought that was a good example of the multitude of languages and cultures in Montreal. We all ordered food, and the various dishes came out one by one. We soon realized the portions were very large and that we ordered too much. I was lucky and got to take home all the leftovers to my roomies, who were very excited for the free food.
After lunch, I took the Professional Writing group down to Old Montreal. I gave them a “Top 5 Things to Do in Old Montreal” list including an awesome cupcake shop “Les Glaceurs;” on the most famous churches in Montreal, the Basilique Notre-Dame; a really interesting museum about Montreal, Pointe-a-Calliere; a bizarre costume shop called Ponton Costumes; and an Inuit/Iroquois art museum, Galerie Le Chariot. I had a lot of homework to do, so I left them to wander, and agreed to meet up for dinner later.
A few hours later, I met the writing group at the Spaghetti Factory on St. Paul for a delicious Italian meal. They were all pretty tired from the day, but commented on the fun things they did and all the exploring they got to do. Overall it was a great day. I hope to see more Professional Writing majors in Montreal in the near future, because it had been an amazing opportunity me, and I want others to experience all Montreal has to offer.
