Okay, so regardless of what I had promised, my backlog of writing and thoughts hasn't gone up yet because I left earlier than expected and my notebooks are at the dorm at the moment. Perhaps tommorrow night.
I'm hanging out at my great-aunt and uncle's house for the weekend and it's really nice. It feels a little bit like home strangely enough. It's out of the city, for first of all. And although these are relatives that aren't as close as those back home, they're people I've known for more than a few months. And there's french, and there are references to the family, and to home, and to all sorts of things that only familiarity can cause. But the familiarity goes even further than that. Today I went to church. Without occasion. The first time I've done that in years I think, since recently I've only gone for Christmas and Graduation Mass. And although I don't believe in God, and I'm not religious, and I always feel bad about going to church and faking it, it was familiar. We sat with a woman that my great aunt knew and they spoke french of the way out...just as it always was back home. And it stuck me. She spoke french. And although I knew this before, I never realized it was quite as present and prominent as this. Apparantly back a few generations ago and since that time a bunch of people came here to Connecticut from Northern Maine for work and such and settled here. There are apparantly spots of dense mainer populations where there is a lot of french being spoken and such, and that's so cool. I'd really like to see if I could trace where all the families have spread out to...or perhaps someone has done that already?
Something to keep in mind to look into I suppose. See? There it is again. My stupid sense of self destructive motivation. Grr...
Anyways, I had something better to say but it's gone. So yeah....there is Northern Maine culture in some parts of CT and that's pretty neat. I figure I'll be coming up here more often.