We learned in class that Bonjour-Hi is just a way of Montrealers to greet people to give them the opportunity to choose the language they want to speak and how Frencophones do not want Hi to be part of the greeting anymore. As Americans we are not used to hearing such thing other than “Hey,” “hi,” and even “What’s up?” when we say hello to someone. That is why as soon as we landed in Montréal, I was shocked because the first thing I heard was “Bonjour-hi” when I had to hand in my passport to pass customs.

After being in the city for 5 days I have noticed that most of Montrealers use this expression all day long. When someone has greeted me with only “bonjour” and I have said “bonjour” back, they immediately start speaking French and because my eyes open wide trying to process the words the person speaking to me realizes immediately that I obviously don’t know how to speak French whatsoever. Thanks to this way of greeting people, I have truly come to really like the city and not feel like a total foreigner and tourist like I felt the first day. It has given me many opportunities to meet people and learn about the culture and the life of the Canadians, especially Montrealers. Therefore,  really hope the Hi in the expression is kept alive because it opens up the door to many experiences to tourists and people like us studying abroad.

Special thanks to our social tour guide,

Jenilee, for teaching all of us about Montréal and for a really unforgettable week!

You’ll always be the “I” in our OHIO.

  Of course while we were all in Ottawa we all saw the lovely Tulip flowers and such around the city I love flowers, they smell like Candles, which I also happen to love. I wish we had time to attend the actual Tulip festival so I could get a more colofrul array of the flowers but to the left is the picture of the tulips I took while we were at the museum in Ottawa, i took a good amount of pictures of them and decided to share my best one with you guys. So far, my favorite part of this trip has been the flowers and sights, not the excursions of museums or walking but more the parts of Montreal where you could sit and enjoy the view, like the Atwater market or the view from Margaret’s museum.

 Here on the left is a close up picture of some chinese greenery I shot while at the Botanical Gardens next to the biodome, i love this picture, and i especially loved the gardens when we sat down for a rest under a small asian inspired hut, i got to see alot of pretty flowers glowing in the sunlight, I guess i should’ve taken some pictures huh?

This is another pretty plant-ish, it’s one of the pink trees outside of the Museum in Ottawa, I snapped a shot of this beauty because i thought it looked like my all time favorite tree, the Sakura tree, or better known as a Cherry Blossom Tree, not something common to the Newark citizen unless you wanted to travel to Athens, Ohio or Cincinatti.