Starting at 8 tonight is what hopefully promises to be a huge strike by the SNCF (train system), RATP (Paris transport system), and pretty much everyone else (some of the teacher from Victor Hugo are striking). It's set to be really big, but we'll see, some people think it'll be much smaller than has been forewarned. However, I will be experiencing it full force, since I'm set to go to Creteil tomorrow morning, and the banlieue are going to be the hardest to get into/out of. I just tried to connect to the RATP's website, where they're posting new information as soon as they have it, and there are already too many people on it! Luckily our professor let us out early tonight so we'd all make the last trains/busses home...and we didn't have our class in the middle of the day, so in fact my busiest day was probably my easiest for the week.
Saturday I went to see the rugby game on giant screens at the Champ de Mars (the big field in front of the Eiffel Tower, it sparkled during the game) with Elly and Hannah (and some random other people from Cordon Bleu, where Hannah goes - the cooking school). It was really fun, some random French dude sat with us and explained the game to me, which was nice. I couldn't see that well, but France was winning until about the last minute, when England scored a large number of points and won...thus ended the hope of a home team victory. On my walk home, I ran into Molly and Daryn and Carla (from AU, they're in Rome and Brussels and were visiting for the weekend...I didn't even know they were in Europe!) and they broke a bottle of wine on the sidewalk...
Sunday I mostly relaxed and did some work, my friend Verena from my Finnish class came over, it was very nice. We had tea, of course. Monday was another work day...I was going to go to the library for my history of rock class but then I discovered (thanks to Anne) that libraries are closed Mondays, and plus I got really confused as to where/what/who I was supposed to be looking for. So I went to dinner at Anne's instead, it was really fun. They made a cauliflower gratin that was delicious. Anne & Greg think I should go to the Pompidou Center's library because it's fairly easy to access the books and you don't have to get a card. I just don't know when it'll be possible if it's closed on the days I'm off, I guess we'll see.
Tuesday was an adventure at Victor Hugo again. I had some good kids in the morning, then I had to threaten some kids with 'I will not talk in class' because they were laughing at fart noises (but they were 12 or something, when it's still kind of okay to laugh at fart noises, and then someone actually farted, too...). Unfortunately I'm having a lot of trouble with the 3e European group, I guess because it's the last class of the day, they just never want to work and I choose to stay the extra hour so I can benefit them...I usually get one good (ish) group and one bad group, and the bad group made me so mad because I asked them to write their names on papers so I could read and learn them, and they just wrote nasty things in French (thank goodness they were things I knew or that could have been bad) and I just thought it was ridiculous that I was trying to do something nice to get to know them and they couldn't even respect that. I think I made one kid feel bad, I hope so. I guess I'm dealing with a different level of maturity than I'm used to, huh? At least I got to see a Finnish movie afterward, I went to the Finnish institute with Verena to watch this cool documentary about some kids who didn't do anything with their lives, I thought it was really well done. We're going again next week, and I'm really looking forward to it! It's a nice way to relax after being at Victor Hugo all day!
Today should have been really busy...but I had grammaire du texte this morning (I pleased Mme Le Coadic with one of the texts that I wrote!) and then my first European studies class was cancelled because the professor wasn't there, and the second one was short because of the strike. It turned out to be a good class, too.
So tomorrow should be interesting, I'm totally unsure of what I'll be doing because it all will depend on whether or not the metro runs and how often. Hopefully I'll be able to post tomorrow with some pictures of the strike, and I'll try to get a more complete idea of why they're striking (I know partially, I just want to see how big it is and who actually gets involved). So, until tomorrow...BONNE GREVE!!!!
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