Our Sabbatical Life

In the past two Saturdays, we took advantage of spectacular autumnal weather here in Quebec province. Last year, we took the opportunity of my university's first ever "Fall Break" to take a long weekend trip to Asheville, North Carolina.  All it all, the trip was fabulous, packed with amazing food, great microbreweries, and scenic hikes.  One thing that we were slightly disappointed in: Fall colors had yet to materialize in their full glory in the first week of October.  We could see just how spectacular the colors would be, but alas that promise was not quite enough.  We were a week too early. We thought that this year we would be too late to see the fall colors.  Two weekends ago, after our first 4-week session of French classes were completed, I made the executive decision that we needed a break from French grammar.  (Will was as happy as a clam in his false beginner class, but I was in the "Intermediate" level, and I think anyone who had to ...

Yep, we're trying out French again, back in Montreal. We've been woefully behind in our posts, but hopefully there will be several posts in the next few weeks to fill in some gaps.  There will be further posts about Quebec City (back in June!), what we did in Chicago (August/September), experiencing fall colors in tiny little Quebec towns bordering Vermont (last weekend), reviews of Montreal restaurants and a retrospective on my new mission to try out all the best coffee shops within a mile's walk (ongoing). But first, our new neighborhood needs an introduction. We should start with how we ended up in Montreal again.  We were just about ready to reserve our seats on flights to Europe for a 6-week trip through France and Portugal when we started hesitating.  We would miss Katie too much... It would be a hassle to take the little Ryannair flights to Lisbon (and travel from there to the Algarve and then back to France)...  We were already starting to lose the F...