Cultural Observations, Types of English & Rewards/Challenges

Cultural Observations :

I did not see the ESMB offices yet, so I do not know if they display cultural objects. I do know that the JFK high school has a couple paintings and flags, as most high schools have. 

As I said earlier, I have not visited the offices yet and I should go next week, but since it is a schoolboard, I expect that they listen to Virgin Radio or NJR as most of the Montreal people do. As for newspapers and papers lying around, well Mr.Cohen did tell me that they were a lot, since they write a lot of articles in their own journal.

For holidays, my internships hosts don't celebrate St-Jean Baptiste all the time, but they will if they have the occasion to. They do celebrate Canada Day, usually by spending time with family and going to see fireworks. They also celebrate Thanksgiving by having huge dinners with their families, but I don't know about other celebrations.

My hosts also celebrate Christmas with their families, they say they have huge dinners with exquisite food and then they unwrap gifts.

Types of English :

When I went to the press conference, I heard slang english. It was mostly spoken by the students that I interviewed. Other than that, my hosts speak formal language, sometimes familiar but I speak the same at times.

I have done a lot of reading and writing in my internship, but mostly in french for their twitter account. In english, I read a press release and some informations for the Stay In School press conference, as well as some tweets from accounts that only speak english.

I did not have the opportunity to use my five chosen idioms for now, but I intend to when I will have the opportunity. It just didn't fit with the language I had to use on the day of the press conference.

Rewards and challenges :

In my internship, the most difficult aspect to me is the fact that I am mostly taking care of their french twitter. I have a hard time with my blog posts afterwards, because I can never say what new words or expressions I have learned. Next week it should get better, hopefully.

The best part of the internship, to me, was the press conference. Meeting Mathieu Darche meant a lot to me, as well as interviewing him. It was also very nice to see that the press conference had a good effect on the kids attending it, and that some of them were anxious to go see the hockey game. Darche is a graduate of McGill, so it showed the kids that you can succeed in life and be successful in school as well.I love interacting with people so I loved this, compared to being at home and taking care of a twitter account.