Baby's first manif

Today after school I went to the grocery store, dealing with delayed and canceled buses on the way because of the strike (perturbé is the big buzzword these days). Oh, maybe I forgot to mention...the national strike is under way. Obviously there are still some people working, but lots of teachers and students are not coming to school. They had to shut the Eiffel Tower and turn away hundreds of tourists the other day, and 30% of the flights from Charles de Gaulle were cancelled. For us, the main consequence is limited buses and missing teachers and students. For those interested, the strike is in response to a government announcement that they're raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Anne-Marie really reamed out one of  our classes today when they expressed interest in demonstrating. She said (and I agree) that the students skipping class for the strike were just looking for a reason to skip class. This issue doesn't affect them, so it's really silly for them to get behind in class just for this. I sat in the back of the room with my mouth hanging open, really glad she wasn't yelling at me.

On my way back from the grocery store, though, the buses were really messed up so I just decided to get off and walk back home. As I turned a corner, I heard chanting and was face to face with this:

A group of hundreds of high school students, diverting traffic and marching towards the center of town. As you can see, there were police officers around too, which made me nervous, but they were helping to direct traffic, so I'm not really sure what purpose they served. Here's a video of the exodus. The big cheer at about 00:22 is when the two groups of demonstrators came together in the plaza. I would estimate it was over a thousand kids in total. All missing school in the middle of the day....tsk tsk.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on. We celebrated Jen's birthday on monday with a costume party. I went as Rosie the Riveter....symbol of American femininity, all that. Love her.

Me and the birthday girl!

It was a really fun party and luckily I didn't have to go to school until 3 pm the next day! My schedule has been pretty easy so far, but I'm not looking forward to tomorrow...I have 5 classes, starting at 8 am! And with the buses as perturbés as they are, I may end up walking to school. Have I mentioned how short the days are here? It's still dark at almost 9 am!