It's not that easy being green...

...but Montreal is rocking it. This is where I live, by the way. Green, even downtown.

It is so hard to find a plastic bag in this city! They have seriously phased out plastic bags to the point that one must pay 5 cents for one, and it is so passé to not bring one's own bags to the grocery store. Even at the McGill bookstore, I would have had to pay for a plastic bag, so I bought a reusable one for a dollar, which now I use for groceries. If you say you need a bag, they say "Oh." like you hate the environment and shoot puppies. So no more plastic bags, which is sad because I use them for my trash. It seems paradoxical, because if I can't reuse plastic bags, then I'd have to buy plastic trash bags, which seems silly. What to do?

There's also very little litter on the streets, and the new bike share program, Bixi. The bike terminals are everywhere, and I see people riding them everywhere in the city. Apparently, the first half hour is free, and then it's $1.50 for each subsequent half hour, unless you do a subscription of sorts. People are very excited. One of the guys in my class rode a Bixi to our class outing on Friday, and everyone was so curious about how it had gone. Montreal is a really good city for bikers (many bike lanes and the roads are pretty linear), so I hope systems like this really keep appearing in other cities.

I made some friends in class and we went out on Friday, and ending up dancing at a Sco-like place with a new gay friend to some excellent Europop, which eventually became a retrospective of music from Motown through funk. All in all, a great night, and last night I went to this event run by my friend Annie, and her work is in slow, precise movements to be aware of one's body and get in touch with internal things that are hidden by the rapid pace of life. It was kind of difficult following directions on body movement in French, but I certainly learned a few new words, like pelvis, and did my best. I'm really loving the Montreal hippie crowd, and went to another Contact Improv jam today and felt right at home with people that in another life were certainly Obies.

After a week, I feel like I've lived here for several, so I'm looking forward to continuing to settle in. Hope all is well where this finds you.