YAY IT'S THE GRÈVE!!!!

Ok. So as you may have noticed, my posting has been, shall we say, slacking. Let’s attribute this to my obvious rejection of NABLOPOM. My theory is that Ysabel has been posting enough this month to account for me and all of the other people who claim to have a blog, but are usually too lazy to actually post or post random uninteresting things. (PS I fit both of those categories).

Today I experienced a true cornerstone of French culture. La grève (strike). Yes. Today the majority of France was shutdown. To begin with, the trains (SNCF) in France went on strike last week to protest their retirement age and conditions and are still going strong this week. On top of that the students here are getting pissed due to a little thing called the LRU (Loi sur la résponsibilité des universités). Basically the law wants the universities in France to become more autonomous, but the students are afraid that with more autonomy, the French universities are going to become too commercialized and begin to be run by the corporations that will eventually sponsor them. So today the students joined up with the unions of SNCF along with the French functionnaires (employees who work for the State) and employees of EDF/GDF (the electricity and gas providers in France). Just a side note, functionnaires account for 5.6 million of a total French population of 61 million. Quite a considerable amount.

This was truly a unique experience. I woke up this morning with a sore throat and not the slightest desire to go to class. Nonetheless, I woke up, showered and then went to my first class. My first class today was Sociéte et Culture, which is a course offered by the Department of International Relations. Since there are only foreigners in this class and is offered in a building separated from the others on campus, it went off without a hitch. Ugh, 2 hours talking about the war in Indochine. Anywho, cut to after class. On the way home, Mira, Angelica, and I went to the other main buildings to see what was going on and were surprised by what we found. All of the doors had been barricaded with wooden palettes, chairs, chains, construction barrels and chairs. If I get a chance, I’ll try to sneak some pics tomorrow. So luckily, no classes tomorrow since most of my classes are normal classes with all French students.

This afternoon we decided to profit from the strike and went into town. I bought a new scarf and then Angelica, Mira and I went to an amazing candy shop while we were waiting on Claire and Jean to sign up for internet at their apt. On the way back to meet them, we met all of the people who were on strike. Boy, was that a sight to behold. The street was completely full of probably about 3,000 people (Mira, help me here. I’m bad with numbers.) Several of them were really pumped up and chanting while waving placards and brandishing roadside safety flares. However, the majority of them didn’t look very enthusiastic and probably would have preferred to be somewhere else (such as in the candy shop buying the marvelous violet flavored candies that I had today). I saw several of my teachers and French classmates amongst the crowd. Namely one crack-head teacher that teaches a class that I dropped.

In other food-related news, I branched out today and made mashed potatoes for the first time today. MMMM. Luckily the hardest thing was peeling potatoes with a knife. It’s true that you don’t miss things until their gone (ex. potato/carrot peeler). Oooo. And Jean’s mom sent her a package with Kraft Mac & Cheese in it today. So we had that for dinner. I also had the best pizza of all time tonight. Angelica and Pierre went to this pizza place downtown and brought 2 pizzas back. They were made with a fresh cream sauce and topped with mushrooms, foie gras and filleted duck breast. Mmmm. Okay.

Well I guess it’s time for bed now to prepare for my long day tomorrow of doing nothing since there are no classes. Hooray. Hopefully I will get a chance to post this at some point tomorrow if I can make it to building 24 since all the others are barricaded and the library is closed. Anywho, happy grève-ing to all.