The Grève Situation

(Grève = Strike)

So. As some of you may know, there have been some pretty serious strikes in France lately. I know I talked about them the first day they happened here. If you thought that that was the end of it--basically, you were wrong. Things have definitely intensified.

Oil workers have gone on strike now, which means that there is a shortage of fuel throughout the country. Which means that buses won't be able to run, and that people can't drive anywhere. Furthermore, the train workers are striking. So... nobody can go anywhere in the country.

Basically, the whole country is in an uproar because the government is changing the age when full retirement benefits kick in. Instead of it being 60 (the lowest in all of Europe), the government is changing it to 62 to save some money for the tons of other government benefits everyone gets here. In case you were wondering, 62 would still be the lowest in all of Europe.

Until today, I hadn't been affected by the strike at all. It was a little disappointing, actually. Everyone else had at least one dramatic story to tell, and I had to sit on the sidelines and listen. Actually, my story really isn't all that dramatic. I had thought that my midterm for one of my classes was this Saturday, so I opted out of a free excursion to Avignon and Les Baux de Provence, which I really wanted to see. But anyway. Lyndsy and I went to class today, and our TA told us that due to the strikes, he won't be able to make it on Saturday, so we won't have to come either. So it turns out that I didn't even need to miss the excursion. (Sad face.) But another little exciting bit of news: parts of the school were blockaded today as part of the student grève. Tables and chairs were stacked against all the entrance doors to the school and at the access points to the stairs into the main hall of the school. I got a picture on my friend's camera, which I will hopefully be able to share with you all soon!

In any case, please pray that the strikes don't escalate too much. There has been talk that only violence gets the attention of government officials, but I'm hoping nothing too terrible will happen.

I would also like to point out that I have added new pictures on the right side of the page. I have been doing this pretty regularly, but I haven't mentioned it in my updates. Check them out!

Mountains and Monaco

Again--I've been busy! I feel like I sort of bumble my way through the week without updating here, and then I remember all of the good stories all at once on the weekends. So prepare yourselves. This is going to take a while.

I went to classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at the university (or the fac, short for faculté), and everything went pretty normally. On Wednesday morning, I went to hang out with my French friend at her apartment. I got there and was a little lost because there were four different apartments that were marked with the exact same number as hers. So I called her to find out which one was the right one, and it turned out that none of them were hers. Plus, she'd forgotten that we'd made plans for Wednesday instead of Thursday. We got it all sorted out, and she ended up driving us to McDonald's because we were running out of time to eat before our classes started that day. I know--shame! I don't even like McDonald's in the US!

Thursday was a little bit more interesting. One of my American friends here just got coffee sent to her from the US. We have all been missing our usual non-espresso cups of coffee, so we decided to get up and make ourselves a real American-style breakfast: scrambled eggs with peppers, potatoes, and zucchini, with Old Crown coffee. It was amazing--and probably the best breakfast I've had since I've been in France. After we ate, we spent most of our morning just exploring Aix. I thought I'd pretty much gotten to know the city by now, but it turns out it's a lot bigger than I thought it was. So it was fun visiting places I'd never been before!

Thursday night we went to our theatre class, and a bunch of us went out to eat together to celebrate the birthday of one of the American girls here. We ended up going back to her apartment for chocolate cake with sprinkles! It was delicious.

Friday was a little slower, which was really nice. I had dinner with my French family again, and that was really fun! It was only me, the mom, and the two boys, but the three of them ended up spending a long time trying to say the word "rollerblading", which is really hard for the French, apparently. The family gave me two French DVDs for me to watch this week. I'm really comfortable being around them because their family dynamic is really similar to what I'm used to. It makes it really easy to get along with them. I came back to the apartment and ended up spending the night alone in my apartment--and it was wonderful.

Saturday, I went with a few of the girls from our program to climb what is known as Cezanne's mountain: Sainte-Victoire. I have wanted to climb it since I first saw it a month ago, and I finally got the opportunity, so I didn't want to miss it. We left from downtown Aix at about 11:15 and actually started climbing just after noon. We reached the summit at about 4:00 after we stopped and ate lunch. It was absolutely amazing. I've climbed mountains before with my high school youth group in West Virginia, but that was nothing compared to this. We were so high yesterday. It was absolutely incredible.



When we were at the top, the wind was whipping around us. I wasn't sure if it was because we were so high up or because of the Mistral, but there wasn't any wind in Aix, so I'm assuming it was because of our altitude. Awesome! (Actually, it was a little scary because we kept seeing people's hats getting ripped off their heads, so we knew the wind was pretty strong, and there wasn't really that much room to stand at the very top.)

We made it back to Aix at about 6:30 after waiting for the bus to pick us up for about 45 minutes. While we waited, we made friends with a French family that had just climbed the mountain too. Saturday night I was exhausted and a little sunburned, so I went to bed semi-early before our big day today.

Today we went to Monaco and Nice! We met at the bus at about 8:30 and finally got on the road at about 9. The group was actually so big that we took two buses, but I wasn't aware of that fact until we were nearly back tonight. We got to Monaco at about 11, unloaded, and got to the Palace just in time to see the changing of the guard! It was actually pretty anticlimactic, especially because it was hard to see, but it's also not very exciting. Oh, well. At least now I can say that I've seen it! After that, I went with one of my friends to find the casino because I'd been practicing how to play craps online just so that I could play it once in Monte Carlo. It was really disappointing to find out that there is a 10€ cover charge to get in to the table room. So instead Bri and I played the slot machines--which are incredibly difficult to understand for how popular they are. Basically, our gambling was more like us putting our money in the machine and slapping random buttons until we ran out of money. And apparently this was a common experience among the Americans.

One thing that stood out while we were in Monaco was how clean everything was. It was really funny because my friend and I agreed that if it wasn't an independent state from France, it would be the stereotypical French city. And then we realized that it really is the stereotypical French city anyway because it claims to be independent but it relies on others to protect it. Funny, huh?

Another thing that really affected our day was the wind. Oh my goodness! The wind was insane! At one point, we ended up making a video about the near-hurricane conditions. Fortunately for us, the rain didn't actually start until we were on the bus on our way home.

On the way back, we ended up making an hour-long pit stop in Nice at a parfumerie, or in English, a perfume factory called Fragonard. It smelled really, really good! We got a tour of the factory, and then we got to sample their best-selling scents. Their candles smelled soooo good, and I'm a sucker for candles. I didn't have enough cash on me at the time to buy anything, though. Which was probably a good thing.

Wednesday, we have to go to Marseille to get a medical examination for our carte de séjour, and I'm very excited because there is a Starbucks in Marseille, which (hopefully) means that I'll be able to have my Pumpkin Spice Latte soon!!! You really have no idea what that would mean to me. It's bad enough that there aren't any pumpkins here for decorations and pies, but no Pumpkin Spice Lattes would be absolutely unbearable.

Rain and Strikes in France

So today is the beginning of a nationwide strike involving transportation, schools, and hospitals. We were warned that we may have to walk to our school today because the bus system would be down, and it’s a good twenty minute ride from our bus stop to the school, so I was not looking forward to that, especially as today is the first day in forever that it’s slated to rain. It ended up being alright in the end because the bus system is up during the peak hours, but really limited in the middle of the day. We can still see effects of the strike in odd places, though, because the library in our school is closed for the strike. We’re not sure if it’s just today or if this is an open-ended sort of thing.

Yesterday was a really good day. Our apartment is completely tiled, so it hasn't really felt comfortable because we can't take off our shoes. We found an awesome thrift store near our apartment where we found a 5'x6' rug for 19€--a steal, really. So we bought that right away and a fan, and our apartment is finally starting to feel like a home instead of the place we sleep.

I don't know exactly how dry it's been back in the States, but I know it's been really, super dry here. Trees have begun losing their leaves here, not because it's been cold (although the Mistral has been playing games with the temperature here), but because it's been so dry. It started raining last night at about 11, and it was a beautiful thing. I was hosting a dinner party for several of the program students on our street (there are five of us altogether), and we were doing our homework. We were just finishing up when we heard the sound of the rain on the roof. We looked outside the two windows in our living room, and four of us just watched the people and their umbrellas rushing by on the street. It was so simple and still so gorgeous, that moment.