The French are doing what they do best...

...striking (VERY important French vocab word: grève).

The rail workers are striking against the conditions for retirement, students are striking because they don't want universities to be independently funded, and apparantly a number of other unions are preparing to strike as well (for example, we have been warned of possible power outages due to the strikes), as far as I can tell for similar reasons as the railworkers.

I really don't know what to think. I was talking today with Laurie, the director of the Centre Oregon, and later with Barbara, who runs the Penn program, and both of them seemed pretty frustrated by the student strikes, even though they more or less agree with the precedent. As Laurie said, though, really all they end up doing is hurting themselves, because they miss out on classes that they will have to make up at some point.

It's quite an experience to be here with all of this going on, and tomorrow should be interesting...the students are going to block the train stations in solidarity with the railworkers (whose strike starts on Wednesday) and I'm sure there will be protests and the like going on this whole week. I will post more when I have a better idea of how this whole thing is working out. And hopefully I will manage to form more of an opinion than "grrr...I need to take a train this weekend to go visit my friend. What the hell french railworkers??" or "well, I'm glad that I don't have to take my portuguese midterm this week, but I don't think I'm going to want to study any more next week than I do right now"

Anyway, that is the state of things in France right now...or at least what I know of the state of things. In my personaly life, I had a fabulous weekend, and ended up hanging out with two girls that I met in the TOEFL class, so I'm really glad I did that. I had a total blast that included coming home at 3 am two nights in a row, teaching Europeans american drinking games, listening to Manu Chao, eating bulgarian cheese, really drunk guys dancing on a flaming bar, a pirate themed bar, a guy who reminded me of Hugh Grant, and riding a bike home in the rain. I think that is all the REALLY important stuff. Oh! And can't forget the piercing party witha couple girls from Penn, which was followed by some really delicious (and expensive) hot chocolate. And now I am back in reality, and I spent the day avoiding going to the library because I'm really not even entirely sure what I need to be doing, but I feel like I should be studying because I have 4 tests in the next 4 weeks, two of which will constitute my ENTIRE grade for they classes they are in. All I ended up accomplishing today was buying flash cards and a few other schooly supplies that I was in need of, and making a zillion portuguese flashcards.

Oh! Speaking of going shopping today (this is totaly ridiculous, but it made me happy), I also bought a tea ball that is in the shape of a tiny tea pot and comes with a little tray that you can set it on. I've been wanting to buy loose leaf tea lately, but was having a really hard time finding a tea ball, and I finally found this one and it was so cute...I just had to.

So there you go...and now I need to go to sleep because the slightly elitest political science students are not striking tomorrow, so I still have 7 hours worth of class. Yay.

Bisous.