Wouldn't you know it, but all this week there's been a strike here in France. Quelle surprise! That never happens here! Sarcasm! The French are very upset that Sarkozy raised the retirement age up from 60 and have, predictably, decided to strike. Because of this, my first week of real teaching has been a wee bit messed up. My favorite part about European strikes is that they are planned ahead of time and they come with clearly marked start and end times. To me, it doesn't really seem like there's much incentive to compromise if you know that your workers will stop striking tomorrow, but what do I know. Anyway, Tuesday I was supposed to go to Rouen for training, but the greve prevented this from happening, and I had to stay in Le Havre. Interestingly, this means that I have had zero training to date.
Yesterday I found myself caught in the middle of a very rowdy youth demonstration, and I won't lie, it was terrifying. I was walking to catch the bus to get to Mt. Gaillard, the neighborhood where I work, when all of the sudden a crowd of high schoolers chanting Seven Nation Army turned the corner and started marching towards me. It was a little tough to take seriously, given the song and the age of the demonstrators, but then I noticed that they were knocking sings over, throwing barricades into the street, and throwing things everywhere. Eeeek! When I got on the bus, they came up to it, pounded on the windows with sticks, and lay/stood in front of it so that the driver couldn't proceed. For a moment, I thought that it maybe wasn't the safest idea to stay on the bus, but then I remembered that if I wasn't there to teach gym in English, the French kids would have to take gym in French and that didn't sit right with me. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but as someone who was in high school not so long ago, I'm going to weigh in and say that these kids were just trying to miss class. Maybe it was Seven Nation Army, maybe it was the fact that they were all carrying Longchamp bags and holding Blackberries, maybe it was something else, but it seemed to me that they were being unnecessarily destructive.
La vie jacobine!
longchamp and blackberries?? i thought you were slummin' it??
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