House Buying

We found a place we liked a lot. It's got a lot of light, the second floor is the bedroom with a railing and no walls so it's wide open. The spare room/office in the back has a closed door. It's got two bathrooms and lots of nice new hardwood. We put an offer in and accepted the counter offer. Now assuming the mortgage goes through fine and the house passes the inspection, we're in.

We'll be moving in June, we've given ourselves a couple weeks over lap so we can sand and varnish the wood stairs and railings. We don't want to be living in it with varnish fumes all over.

The place is at Amerst and St. Catherine, right near downtown and near our first place in the city. Instead of being just west of Parc Lafontaine we're just south. We're at the part of St. Catherine that gets shut down all summer so the patios can spill out onto the street, wicked.

There's also about everything else we can ask for walking distance including a grocery store and my gym. There are Irish pubs, sports bars, fine restaurants as well as less than fine restaurants. We're an underground walk from a Metro that links three different lines too. It's quite ideal.

In French news I've got four tests in a row starting Wednesday. Once those four classes are done I'll be finished the 3rd of 5 classes towards my French certificate. I'm going to take the summer off from Concordia but I'm going to find out what my options are from Emploi Quebec. A number of people have told me about getting paid to take French full time so we'll see if I qualify for that. It will be really good for me since these Concordia classes are fairly advanced. There's no practice speaking in French, it's all about rules, some quite difficult. So I think that with some basic classes I'll prosper. The government French classes are less about advanced rules and more about being able to comunicate with people so there will be lots of practice. I won't learn any grammar I don't already know but as it is I don't understand much of what my Concordia prof says making the rules hard to understand and learn. He's not using vocabulary I don't know, I just don't have an ear for the language yet. That's why these government offered classes will really help. It will be slower and more intent on you being able to communicate, not intent on driving grammar rules into your head. If I can get paid for it then it's going to be a good summer. I also assume they'll be cool allowing me to leave for a couple weeks to work since the point of the organization is to help people get jobs.

So that's the crap I've been up to these last few days.