On my 3 hour lunch break...

Just tried to have my first serious conversation about the grève with 2 of my colleagues at the lycée. Did not really go well. I said I didn't understand how kids--14, 15, 16 years old--could really be thinking about retirement. They said that it DID concern the students because raising the retirement age means people will be working longer, which means that these kids will have an even harder time finding jobs. Well, to me (and I think to a lot of young Americans) that's just reality. There haven't been enough jobs for years. Recent graduates are scrounging around for any job they can get (TJMaxx, anyone?) and a lot end up taking positions like the one I have, as a way of postponing the real life job search. Or they choose grad school, in hopes of better qualifying themselves and getting the edge over competition.

In the US, if you're complaining about people not having jobs, you don't show it by skipping out on work! Seems counterintuitive to an outsider like me.

I'm tempted (and it would be easy) to say that this strike is stupid. But that's not really true...It's just not something I understand.

So when I got to school at 7:45 this morning (in basically pitch blackness), there were tons of students outside the front gates. That's sort of normal, because usually they all stand out there and smoke before school. But they had also blocked off part of the street with traffic cones and garbage cans, and they had made a couple signs attached to the fence. I had to fight through the crowd to get in, and I even had to break up some guys who had linked arms to form a chain. When I got to the teachers' lounge there was a meeting under way. Apparently, they were voting about whether or not to join the students on strike.

The vote was a yes (from the 10 teachers present), and they made signs declaring their support. Isabelle (not participating) and I went to our class and only had 2 students. They decided to switch the schedule around and combine classes for English. This meant that Isabelle and I had a free hour, so we went and had a coffee in the lounge.

When we went back to the room an hour later, there were about 7 students in our class. Another 4 joined us from another class, and there were rumors going around that the headmaster had told all the profs to go home. We decided to have class anyway, and spent a good half hour talking about what was going on. Eventually we got to some English. I introduced myself and told them a little about where I come from, and then they asked me questions. Typical. I can't wait to actually teach a real lesson.

Everyone keeps saying that things will be back to normal after the fall break. That's three weeks from now! I seriously don't know how anyone gets anything done in France! If I had this much extra time in the US...imagine how productive I would be!