It’s been a couple days now we didn’t write and we’re sorry about that! For those who may be worried, everything and everyone is going fine!
Sunday evening, we were invited to a welcoming reception in the wonderful house of some people who work at “Arts Illiana”, the host of this part of the tour. There were a lot of people and the evening was very fun! Our hosts are really nice people. We had the opportunity to exchange with them and to eat good food. Also, as it was in the basement of the house and there was a”house-car”, we had few glasses of wine and bear! At the end, we shared a bit of our music and gave an idea of what would be the workshops through out the week. Everyone had a very good time and it was the beginning of a nice week!
Monday, at noon, we were presenting a mini-concert/workshop in the city’s library. Few people showed up and again we had a good time. We met a lady who’s from Rimouski, 2 hours away from Québec city! She’s here in the States for about 40 years now. That was nice to chat with her. As it was Valentine’s Day, the lady from the library gave us some sweet treats! Yay! We always like that!
Workshop at the library
In the afternoon, we went for a workshop in a middle school for about 340 students. That was a nice one! By the end of the activity, one of the teachers just to his girl friend, another teacher of that school, to marry him. That was the first time Mauvais Sort was part of a proposal! And fortunately, she said yes!
On Monday, we just had 2 workshops. In the evening, Trevor (from arts Illiana) and his wife invited us for dinner. We had a good time. Their two sons, who were just having some chocolate bars (thanks to Valentine’s Day!), were really excited by the sugar, but also by the fact there were 6 musicians from Canada in their house! After the kids were in bed (but obviously not sleeping!) we discuss lots of different subjects with our hosts. We talked about politics, religion, social health and so on. We discovered this family and us share almost the same point of view about a lot of things. What we know – or think we know – about people from the US is not what the entire population of the US thinks or do. For sure it’s the same with other nations and it’s impossible to know everything on everyone, but it was satisfying to discover we had the same way of thinking about some social issues. By the way… Don’t worry, we were not that serious all evening long! That was an interesting evening and we thank Trevor and his wife (Karry, Carrie…?) again!
Nicolas
Today, we had 3 workshops. First in the morning, we went at Westminster Village to play for senior citizens. They really enjoyed that and we did also! The workshop begun a little “noisy” when Patrick’s cell phone rang loudly! He wasn’t able to stop it ringing! That was right during the time Pete (our host of the day) was doing his presentation of the band and the “Arts Midwest World Festival”. We felt very sorry about that, but we explained that Patrick kept his phone turned on because he’s waiting for his girl friend to give birth of a baby girl. This can happen one day or another. Fingers crossed the baby girl will wait untill her father is back home, in a few days! It turned out it was not that call with a capital C! *sigh*!!
Patrick (with the "r" in the throat!)
The two other workshops were for music and choir students of an high school and music therapy students of a college. For the first one the band room was full. Unfortunatly for the last one, there was a mistake in the schedule. The class was at 3 PM and we were set to be there at 4 PM. About half the students were there, but we had such a great time!
Guillaume (with a really nice t-shirt!)
Tomorrow is the public concert. The theatre is amazing and hopefully a lot of people will show up. Éric (sound engineer) went to the theatre today because all the workshops were acoustic. He made a big part of the work we normally do to set up the stage before a show. Everything will be easier and quicker tomorrow! We look forward this concert and hope it will all go well again for the recording!
Blurry François-Olivier
For the rest of the week, there are a few workshops to go and another mini-concert on Saturday night. Friday is our day off, so we’ll think about what we’ll do then!
Stéphanie
Oh! We forgot to explain the title of this post! We just learned some days ago (thanks to Éric who made a research) that at some point in the past (year 1774 or so) a part of Terre Haute as well as other sections of the Midwest was included in the Province of Québec! It may explain why the city has a french name!
Take care! See you tomorrow… hopefully!
MS 
