Montreal Day 2- Event Day

A few other cultural things have caught my eye. There are blinking green lights instead of green arrows, but then they also have blinking green arrows...I haven't seen a solid green arrow yet, and I wonder what the difference between the blinking solid green and the blinking arrow is. Also, Christin ordered an iced coffee in Toronto from Tim Horton's, which is a chain that you see everywhere up here, like Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. What she got back was basically a coffee flavored smoothie. In Montreal, Dan ordered an iced coffee, and got a regular cup of coffee with 2 or 3 ice cubes in it, not nearly enough to make it iced.  Finally, Dan noticed that the tap water in the hotel has a slight spicy meat aftertaste.  How weird is that!!

The event went well. I facilitated the same session that I did in Toronto, but I think the Toronto portion went a little better.  I managed to research and book a hotel closer to downtown Montreal with the help of Laurie sometime during the event.  The lunch provided at both venues was awful, so I was very excited to learn that Angelo, the manager of the presales force here, was providing us with a cookout for dinner!

I ate way to much, but I couldn't pass up the chicken, pork, and salmon kabobs. I also had a local beer brewed in Montreal that was pretty good, and I don't even like beer all that much.  

Desert rolled around and we were introduced to a new type of cheese, Types de Moins, I think is what it was called. It was really interesting to prepare because he had a special cutting machine just for this type of cheese. A scraper went around the surface of the circle of cheese and made a sort of funnel or cone shaped slice of cheese, then Angelo dumped some mint jelly into the center of the cheese  cone. It was quite excellent.  After that, the canolis were brought out, which were also delicious. The night was topped off with some port. It was a very French like atmosphere with tons of chatting and a lot of wait time for the food. James, an engineer also staying the weekend in Montreal, Dan, and I were also able to get a few pointers on some streets to wander and where to go that wasn't too touristy in Montreal.  I can say for certain now that my French is just about gone, I could not understand anything the Montreal team was saying, but Dan dived right in and was able to hold his own in a conversation. It made me a little sad to realize that my French is not only really bad now, but practically nonexistant. My accent is still very good though...

Work's over, now it's time to have some fun!