YQB Jour 13 - "I climbed my suitcase"?! and other tales from my French class

Today I just finished my second week of class, and am at the midpoint of my stay here in YQB. I will give you a glimpse into the life of a French immersion student.

The school is located in the heart of the Old Town, 30 minutes walk away from my home. I have four hours of class everyday, and I spend the rest of my day wandering around the city, and doing my homework. The course is focused on conversation, and my biggest challenge is understanding what other people are saying. I learnt a lot of vocabularies in the past two weeks, and I can really feel my French improving. I have not dreamt in French, yet . . .

The majority of students come from Switzerland (German speaking), Mexico, and the USA. It's interesting that the Swiss don't go to the French speaking part of Switzerland or France to learn French, but fly all the way to Canada. They told me the French speakers there are not as welcoming and helpful as Canadians. Also, the courses in Europe are twice as expensive. Finally, by coming to Canada, they get to travel around North America before heading home. Sounds like good reasons to me. Besides those three main countries, there are students from all over the world. For example, I met my first Liechtensteiner here. Not surprisingly, she works at a financial company that manage trusts for "really rich guys".

Most of the students are under 30 years old, and one girl in my class is only 17. At the age of 25, I am already the second oldest person in the class. I feel old.

As for climbing my suitcase, it was a case of confusion cased by multiple definitions of a word. The word "monté" usually mean to climb, like to climb up a mountain or climb into a bus, and that was the only definition I know. So when I saw the sentence "J'ai monté ma valise" in my homework, I was thinking "I climbed up my suitcase"?! What were the authors smoking when they wrote that? However, the word "monté" can also mean to lift up something, like lift a suitcase up to the overhead bin. This is one definition I will remember for a long time.

Finally, we have this strange creature in every classroom. Does anyone know what it is?