Yogurt Review!

La Mayenne is known for its dairy products (just like Wisconsin!) and I have really been enjoying the dairy stuff so far! Obviously I eat cheese and bread basically all day, every day. And I’ve been eating a LOT of yogurt. It’s strange because I almost never eat yogurt at home—it always makes me feel sick. But not here, for some reason. Selective geographic lactose intolerance?

I just bought a giant pack of fruity flavored yogurt: Danone Taillefine. The first one I tried was lemon. It was SO refreshing! It was a really light flavor, and granted I love anything lemon, but it’s really just a tasty yogurt. It’s funny because I feel like in the U.S. it would have to be lemon meringue pie or lemon cheesecake or something. There’s always a gimmick. Extra creamy or fluffy or moussey or whatever. They should start selling more basic flavors. I bet that would do well. 

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!

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!

Hilarious story in the local news

20 tons of ham spilled on the highway, near Saint-Roch.

Yum yum

The best thing about living in France is that I'm totally justified in eating bread and cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The downside: crumbs all over my apartment...

Personne ne laisse Bébé dans un coin

 

Translation:

"That would be SO cool, if our guys knew a whole routine by heart so they could do that with us!"
"Yeah, even if that implied that they were gay."

(Image from the delightful http://www.penelope-jolicoeur.com/. Can I just be her best friend already??)

Day Trip to Rennes

Yesterday a bunch of the female assistants headed out on the train to Rennes. We've come to realize that weekends are basically full of nothing here, so we should take advantage of any opportunities to get out and about. So the 8 of us enjoyed a day of shopping in Rennes!

The train took us past some beautiful countryside and adorable towns. It took less than an hour to get to Rennes, so it made a great day trip. We headed straight for the center of town, and probably ended up hitting a dozen shops. The streets were crowded with people and the stores were even more full. Apparently saturday is the day to shop in Rennes? It got a little overwhelming at times, with the music and the talking and the chaos. But overall it was a good day and the city is beautiful. I'll post some pictures later of the architecture in Rennes.

As we walked over one of the many bridges in the city, someone remarked, "Does every French city have a river running through it?" It makes sense, if you think about it. Rivers were/are ideal for communication, transportation, and industry. I'm sure we've talked about this in one or more of my classes over the years. There's a quote by someone...can't remember who, that talks about how in France and Europe, the cities were here first, and then the roads were built to serve the cities. In the US, the railroads and highways dictated where cities would be placed. Sarah Vowell has this amazing essay about the intersection of Michigan and Wacker in her book Take the Cannoli. It's all about how the entire history of the US can be told from that physical location.

Wow. This has gotten really off-topic. I bought a cute dress for work and some earrings, and really enjoyed the day out.

Later we went out to L'aventure Cafe, a sort of beach/jungle-themed bar that has a couple of inches of sand all over the floor (yuck). It was fun, and definitely very different from O'Regans! Today is another jour de rien, so I'm going to clean my apartment and maybe force myself to write a few lesson plans.

Tomorrow we're having a costume party to celebrate Jen's birthday. Should be fun to see what everyone comes up with out of our very limited wardrobes!