McGill Campus

I've reached another clear milestone: my first year of grad school in Montréal has ended. A few days ago my sole final exam, Arabic, was held in the campus gym. We wrote the exam for over three hours, our class's two rows of desks separated by parallel rows of students taking a German exam (I presume to keep wandering eyes from copying answers.) I think I did reasonably well.

Final exams should have marked the start of summer vacation. However, in Montréal this year--even now in late April--fair weather is yet to arrive. After finishing my exam I walked out of the gym and stepped into evening snowfall.

Whether the temperatures in this city do ever rise I can soon stop caring about when winter ends in Montréal. I'm on my way out of town. I have tickets down to New York leaving on Tuesday. I'll call on friends there for a few days then fly back to the Pacific Northwest. I'll see friends in Portland and then--what I'm most looking forward to this summer--spend time with family in Seattle over the entire month of May.

Come June I'll move along to a familiar place in the Midwest. I've finally received good news back from one of the scholarships to which I applied for summer study. I've just learned that I've been awarded funding for another intensive session at Indiana University's Bloomington campus. I was last there four summers ago for a different language (then Uyghur, now Persian.) The funding is somewhat different, too (then Title VIII, now Title VI FLAS.) I'm pleased that I'll have places to go and languages to learn this summer.

I do still have a couple outstanding issues to tie off the semester before I leave Montréal. I need to turn in a final submitted draft of my thesis proposal before month's end. I need to write a lengthy term paper for my Chinese Brushwork course. Though the deadlines aren't imminent I am hoping to get those cranked out before I make my way down to New York just three days from now.

Next stop, among many this summer: New York City