did you know they speak french here?

I'm on my first-ever trip to Montreal (and to Canada in general, actually. Well, except for those 20 minutes when I was nine years old, but I really don't think those count) this week for my first-ever academic conference.

The conference is the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) annual congress, involving many thousands of people from all over the world. By the way, it's in Canada (or rather, not in the United States) partly so that the Cubans can come, which adds a cool dimension. It's four days of jam-packed sessions - about 20 sessions running simultaneously in about two-hour blocks from 8am to 8pm. A session generally consists of three to six people presenting their papers around a particular topic, and the topics range widely: gender/feminist/queer studies, power systems, citizenship and political participation, art and film and literature, historiography, public health, and about six hundred other things. Many things that I don't get to think about very much, that are sometimes way over my head (especially when they would already be over my head even if the presentations weren't in Spanish), and that I LOVE thinking about.

It's terribly difficult to choose between the sessions, since so many are going at the same time and all of them sound so cool. And I'll admit that it's a little tough to sit in sessions at all, since it's sunny and warm and I'm in a whole new place that I could easily spend days wandering around and exploring.

Everything I've heard about the loveliness and European-ness of this city appear true, even though about half of my wandering thus far was the walk from the bus station to the bed-and-breakfast I'm staying in, which took me directly through what is apparently the strip club district of Montreal (yet I felt totally safe at 10:30 at night; welcome to Canada, I guess).

Goals for the coming days include: absorbing some tiny bit of the incredible academic knowledge that surrounds me at this conference; absorbing this bit of the experience of academia in general, as it becomes clearer to me that that's quite possibly my path (after all, I'm thrilled to sit and listen to people discuss gender and citizenship and empire and social identity theory all day, and find myself wanting to be taking part in the discussion too, rather than just listening. Kind of a flag, right there); finding time to wander the city; finding and sampling, against my better judgment, poutine; heading up to the Plateau to check out the view... and getting some sleep sometime, I guess.

Cuz, to be honest, this "thinking" thing? It's tiring.