A New Adventure

Hi!

I’m Mathieu and I’m from Québec, Canada. Yes, that means that my first language is French. (So please excuse my lack of vocabulary and probably a few mistakes here and there!)

I started my first (non student) blog in July 2017 because I was bored at work and had nothing to do, but mostly because I have a degree in journalism. I was a journalist from 2015 to 2017, but when that part of my life ended, I really wanted to keep writing!

Because I like to talk (and write!) about everything, I didn’t want to choose only one thing to write about. That’s why I named my blog “La Rubrique de tout et de rien” which could be translated to something like “The Everything and Nothing Chronicle” (I don’t know if Chronicle is the right word but still you get it…)

Since then, I wrote about my life, my dogs, what I like, movies, books and a lot of other things.

Why in English?

What started everything is that my mom in an elementary school English teacher!

So when I was a kid, sometimes we would watch TV shows like Barney the dinosaur and by the time I started English classes (we only started at 10 years old at the time, so in 4th grade), I knew my colors and everything about the date of the day (we had to change the date on the fridge every day, that helped a lot!!).

That first year was then easy and in High School I always took advanced English. That was a good thing because when I had to take the university test, it said that I wouldn’t have to take English classes (I took Spanish instead)!

My best friend

I met Trevor at the very begging of High School and I’m still stuck with him 17 years later (I’m 29 so that’s more than half my life!!). I’m kidding, I’m kidding!

He speaks French as well as anybody here, but the first language I learned was English. So, when I go to his parents’ place, his mom will speak English to me (it’s been a long time since the last time I went tough…)

I never really spoke English there because I wasn’t comfortable enough with my English-speaking abilities, but at least I was able to understand what she said.

That time I left 6 months to learn how to speak English

Since I wanted that to change, I learn that there was a program that could fix my problem, it’s called Katimavik!

The lady at the job fair I went at the end of High School explained to me that when you’re chosen to do Katimavik, you leave for 9 months (the government cut that to six the year I went…) and you live with 10 other young people like you. Some will speak French, but most only English.

I can tell you that after the first month of volunteering (one of the important reason for the program’s existence) and living at home in English, my speaking abilities were much better (well…less bad)!

Do you guys speak any second (or third, fourth, fifth!) language?

Everything and nothing

I don’t know yet how it’s going to turn out, because to be honnest with you, this is not the first time I try writting in English. Last time, I told myself I was not going to translate everything I do in French here. It was too much and I stopped after two articles...

So, I'll try to write some new things here, but I will also probably translate some of my French articles here.

We’ll see together what happens!

MT