Moushin & Larami, je pense à vous...

Sorry for the lack of, well, anything in the past week or so. Everything here feels like it's out of whack, with Thanksgiving & not being home for it for the first time in my life, not having class until who knows when, and planning a trip to Germany that's been way more of a hassle than I had bargained for. While the transport strike is technically over (meaning they're still in negotiations, no one's really satisfied, but the train unions thought they'd try to get the French back on their side by giving them some mobility for a bit), the blockage at my university is continuing with no real end in sight. I've been working again, trying a little to get into a new rhythm but it's not that easy when I'm never really sure what will be happening each day.

Paris sort of feels like a powder keg right now. The threat of the transport strike starting anew, the potential of fac-blocking students attempting to take over the whole city, or restless suburban youth who have once again decided that lots of fires and riots is the only way to get revenge for the deaths of more young people at the hands of police are all contributing to this tension I feel mounting. This time, in Villiers-le-Bel (a suburb to the north of Paris), two more young boys (15 & 16) were riding too fast and without helmets on a motorbike (which, in the first article I read, was allegedly stolen, but that accusation seems to have disappeared...) and crashed into a police car. It seems easily enough to be just another tragic death, but this is a Paris suburb - only hours after the accident, riots broke out, and by today 80 policemen had been injured and a large number of buildings - including a library, I want to add - had been burnt down and busted up. It's the same story as two years ago, two young boys with non-French names die, their neighbors take to the streets, set cars and buildings on fire and attack police with whatever they can find - including guns. It's the same questions, only different words : did the police chase Bouna and Zyed into the power station where they met their deaths simply because the police are inherently against all non-White French people (or at least because these policemen had bad intentions)? Or did those kids have something to hide, be it the fact that they didn't have their papers or something worse? This time, it's, did the police hit the kids head on and then leave them at the scene to die? Or did they actually steal the bike, and, in their haste to get away, hit the side of the police car while going way too fast? None of these questions will ever have answers, but it's obvious who is on which side. Now, it's just a matter of how far it'll go this time. It's the same spark, will it set off another wave of riots till all of France is consumed? Will Sarkozy answer again by calling these kids thugs and criminals, while he's the one taking away all their future jobs to buy airplanes in China? I'm not saying that huge riots are the right way to answer things ; it doesn't take long until people start dying and rioters burn up an old lady because she's on a bus and they couldn't wait for her to get off to set it on fire. I'm just saying that Sarkozy's response to the riots in 2005 was less than sufficient and certainly less than respectful, which I imagine doesn't make suburban kids want to kill police any less. Anyway, I hope I'm jumping the gun this time and that someone will act in a positive way before I start seeing the burnt-up shells of cars in Creteil.

Sorry to leave such a downer, but I've been thinking about it a lot.

On the other hand, I apparently have friends : Vegetable Man and Nighttime/Sunday Market Man. Vegetable Man's from the market, obviously he sells me vegetables, but he is really nice and always remembers me and talks to me about Bush and Sarkozy being friends. Nighttime/Sunday Market Man works at the market that's across the street that is open at all the times that every other market is inconveniently closed, and the other day I saw him in the street and he recognized me, and then this evening he told me I am the only American who speaks French well. Anyway the point wasn't to talk about weird people in my neighborhood, just the fact that people in my neighborhood know me as that American girl who speaks French well...it's pretty cool. It makes this place feel a little more welcoming when I've got people I can strike up a conversation with regularly.

Oh, and I wanted to tell a tale called French Bureaucracy at its Finest. It has to do with banks and transfering money to another country. I'm not at all sure how that works in the US, so my first transfer ever being done in another country/language was probably not the best foot to start off from anyway. I was so proud of myself, I knew I had to do the transfer today so I went and found the bank in Creteil so that I could go there this afternoon, I did all the research online and it was great. I go into the bank, tell the girl I want to make a transfer to Germany, and she says, Oh no, no, you have to go to your Agency, which is the place where I opened the account. Which is in Paris near MICEFA, suuuuper convenient. Not. But I had to do it today, so I had to go to Paris during my lunch break before 2 p.m. So I go to the place where I opened the account, go in, the lady's so nice, she helps me fill out the form and isn't even annoyed that I've got no idea what those blanks mean...only when I'm done she says, oh, Mme Jousserand opened your account. Well, she doesn't work at this agency anymore, she moved down the street. Your account moved with her. It's probably better if you go there and send this transfer from there. It's right down the street. So I went, did the transfer, no big deal, got my checkbook and everything. It was so nice of them to let me know that my entire account had moved!!! Luckily it wasn't far, it could have been a lot worse and even right after the transfer was done I was laughing about it. And I got to eat Greek for lunch, I found another (cheaper!) Greek place right next door so it was worth it. And I even made it back to Creteil on time...

Well, I should go to bed, as I have...ONE CLASS tomorrow, yeah grammaire du texte! Gute Nacht!

Le Mans!! et toujours la grève!!

This past weekend I went to Le Mans, a city in the Centre region of France, to visit my friend (pen pal) Frederick and his wife Anais. Actually, this blog entry has to start hilariously on Friday morning when I decided it was a good effort to try to get to Creteil (I have to say that sometimes my power of reason is not at full force at 6 in the morning), I talked to a bunch of people in the station who told me I could get a train in 25 minutes but they couldn't guarantee anything for the afternoon. For some unknown reason I thought it would be a good idea to take that train, I made it all the way to Creteil, and I talked to another guy in the metro who told me there were three trains in circulation that could stop at any time. I went ahead and walked to the school (again, unknown reasoning here) where my morning class was all assembled but Aude (the teacher) wasn't there. They really wanted to have class anyway, they suggested we do it in the hallway, but I told them I couldn't really do that and they had to tell me what do because I don't actually know the procedure for when the teacher's not there. Thank goodness those kids are awesome and took themselves to la Vie Scolaire where I talked to the guys who felt so bad about me having come and just sent me back to Paris. So at 9:30, I caught the LAST metro of the morning back to Paris. Needless to say we were packed. Like sardines. In a crushed tin box.
I made it back to Paris, took a little nap, and then woke up and called ILPGA to see if they were blocked or not - and they weren't! (I found out last night from Anne that part of the reason they started putting different parts of universities in other places than the main building is so the can't block them all...) I went to class there, and my usual professor couldn't come, but we had a different woman who I liked a lot. There were only 5 of us, and I was the only non-French person, and we did some review, but it was still fun. Apparently there's a minor in Finnish you can do where you take at least one other course that's practically entirely grammar...some of the girls were talking about it. Oh well, this suffices for me, at least it's the one class I actually have!!
So after Finnish, I went straight to the train station (lots of love for line 4), where I found out that NO TER's were running (that was the train I was supposed to take) so I got to take a TGV instead and didn't have to pay anything for it! I had to wait in the train station for a lot longer because I didn't want to get to Le Mans and have to wait in the train station there for someone to get off work, but I will never get to the train station that early again - it was FREEZING and there was no place in any cafes...I had to keeping going into the same bookstores over and over to get warm. But I finally got a train, and it only took an hour to get to Le Mans (the TER would have taken 2,5!). I met Fred in the train station, and we walked to their apartment from there. It's a really cute and typical French apartment, the kind with a separate toilet and bathroom and everything. Anais made dinner, she's a great cook and I ate really well all weekend. We all went to bed fairly early on Friday night, but we got up Saturday morning to go to the 'bio co-op,' it's an all-organic co-op a little ways outside of town. On the drive there, I got to see that Le Mans is actually surrounded by a Gallo-roman wall and has a really nice little old town. The river Sarthe runs by the town, too. The co-op was really awesome, there were so many fruits and veggies, stuff I'd never seen before like the 'potimarron,' it's in the squash family and is orange like the tramway. It was really fun to look around at all the amazing food in there, and all entirely organic, even the cheese!
We had lunch, and then we decided to walk around Le Mans, they were inaugurating the new tramway that weekend, so there were tons of people and music and lots and lots of orange. The tramway's orange, like you can see in the picture, and apparently the mayor asked everyone to wear orange for the occasion (none of us had any orange...). We walked around the tram lines, then to the main square (Place de la Republique) and up to the cathedral, which sits on top of a big hill and is surrounded by the old town. The old town's really cool, it's all old half-timbered buildings and lots of tiny cobblestone roads. The cathedral was really nice too, not as impressive as in Chartres or anything but still really beautiful. We walked around for a while, and then we went back to the other part of town and went to some interesting shops there. They were having some projections on the buildings at Place de la Republique, so we went there for a little while, but they were kind of strange and it was getting cold, so we ended up going back to the apartment and eating a cabbage lasagne that was excellent. I stayed up with Fred for a while and looked at all their wedding pictures (they took a big trip around France afterward, to Bretagne and Bordeaux and then to the south too).
On Sunday I went to the main market with Fred, we took the tram one way but it was SO crowded because it was free all weekend, so we walked back. We just got some cheese and looked at the book stand (of course), but then we went back for lunch (I got to try the potimarron, it was yummy) and then afterward we went to l'Arche de la Nature, it's a big nature place like 20 minutes from Le Mans. It's a big wood with farms and stuff, but unfortunately it was raining and freezing, so we didn't get a chance to walk around. They were having a fair for apples and chatignons (like chestnuts but not...) so I got to smell apples and watch goats, which was excellent. I got some apple juice that I've yet to open, but I'm sure it'll be excellent! Unfortunately I had to go like right after we got back, so we had some hot chocolate and I changed my socks, and then it was time! Luckily I got to take another TGV back to Paris, but getting back was another adventure. There were no buses, so I had to take the line 4 and 1 metros, but when I was in there listening to the announcements about other lines, several of them had no trains running at all. It was really disappointing to come back to that after having such a nice weekend not worrying about what trains are running and which ones aren't. Sigh. Also, my school's still blocked, they voted to block it until Thursday afternoon, when they'll vote again. I couldn't get to Creteil at all today, so...stuck in Paris again, at least this time I'm going to attempt to go to the movies! (as long as the electricity's not on strike...which it very well might be)
We're having a large Thanksgiving gathering on Friday night, I'm really, really looking forward to it! Hopefully everyone will be able to get here!!

L'Assemblée Générale

So I thought I'd follow up a little bit, because today I spent 4 hours in the 'Assemblee Generale' of my fac (university, but who wants to write it out every time?) to figure out what exactly people are against and what exactly they're trying to do to get Sarkozy to break. Of course in heated debates, I can't understand all the French, but this is what I found out.

The Assemblee Generale is pretty neat, it really does consist of an enormous group of people being fairly democratic about every single thing. At the beginning, they explain what they'll be talking about and why for the rest of the meeting. Then they had a debate about the law, each person got to speak for 3 minutes (called interventions) where technically no one's supposed to interrupt but people do anyway. Then they had some 'perspectives,' some ideas they had about other things to move to next (like another Assemblee Generale and the Assemblee Nationale and stuff like that), and they had proposals, again a bunch of people speaking for 3 minutes each. At the end, we voted for 14 proposals as well as whether or not to recognize the strike and whether or not to block the school.

Basically the law is how I explained last time, and most people are in agreement the things need to be changed in facs because of the huge numbers of students going to them and the fact that government funds are changing around. The problem is that there will be some pre-inscription requirements, I think, and less public funding, so there will be a lot less students each year (ok, I admit I am not entirely clear on this point, but I'm working on it). However, about the companies financing schools, basically they're trying to create facs with special niches that will only send students with special degrees to those firms - problematic because those degrees have no value outside of some big organisation that's financing the school. Most people support the 'abrogation' of this law, which means that people are recognizing there needs to be a change but are refusing this law (la loi Pecresse) entirely, they think it should be thrown out and something new started. Some people think, though, that some parts of the law should be kept and other parts negociated, because if everyone agrees there needs to be a change, then why start over entirely?

Either way, I have resolved that I'm against this proposed law. My problem is still with the reaction of the blockage of facs. I still can't understand how this is an affective way to show Sarkozy that they disagree with his law. "OK Sarko, we don't like your laws, so we're not going to go to school - nor are we going to let people who want to go to school go - until you let up." If they're talking about equal education and autonomy for students, then they are being completely paradoxical. They are only hurting themselves and other students by shutting down schools. There are much better ways to mobilize as students and show solidarity for one another. They are also discussing blocking train stations; this is the goal for tomorrow - but the railway unions have already expressed their disapproval of this idea. If students want to show support for the rest of the unions trying to mobilize against Sarkozy, that's not really the way to do it.

I'm almost sure they're going to vote for another blockage Monday, so that it holds over at least until Tuesday when the other major strike should be happening. The potential to be really affective is there, I think, I just hope they let me go back to class eventually...

Your opinions, please.

Today, I began to lose my certainty with the school strikes. I’m supposed to have three classes today, and one of them’s offered by my exchange program. It’s usually at the Sorbonne (the old, famous building), so I took a bike there this morning because it’s too far to walk. When I got there, there were fairly large crowds at each entrance, which were all still shut at around 9:15 or so. By the time 9:30-9:45 rolled around, the students had literally blocked the doors, so people couldn’t really get through without a fight. Annoyingly, I had to get over to the exchange program’s office for my class because at the last minute they changed the location.

After that class, I went ahead over to Censier, which is where I have my other two classes, and it was physically blocked, as in there were tables piled up in front of every door (except to the library). I asked the kids what was up and if I could go in, and it turned out that every normal undergrad class was cancelled; the only classes to be held were special international student ones (like French as a second language ones, not like where I take a class that’s mostly international students but still considered a French class) and masters programs. Tomorrow at noon they’ll be voting whether or not to continue the blockage. So I went over to the library where I found my friend Raoul (he’s French), who asked me whether I was for or against the blockage, and I automatically said yes. I didn’t really have an answer as to why, so he proceeded to explain to me why he’s against it, which is where my confusion started to come in.

What the students are striking against is this law Sarkozy wants to push through that makes universities have the choice to be autonomous. Currently, they are entirely state-funded, and only ‘poor’ students get financial aid (there’s no merit-based financial aid), though schools cost nothing in France compared to what we pay in the US. The autonomy law would allow schools to choose to be financed (partially) by outside organizations, which would then open up more jobs to students who had graduated from the university they finance. According to Raoul, students who couldn’t afford to get to a university would still be funded by the state. Students would also still have the choice to go to whichever university they want.

The problem most students see with this law, like one of the kids holding up the blockade told me, is that they think it is a step toward privatization, like in the American system. However, autonomy does not mean independence; at the end, the government is still going to have a hand in direction of the French university system. I sort of feel like this system can never be completely privatized – in the US, schools were private from the beginning, and it’s kind of a whole, whole different system of who directs what (as in states directing public universities and the national government not really having much of a hand in anything). The problem seems to come in with the difference between autonomy and independence – and there is definitely a huge one (think about Finland, it was autonomous, it had a form of self-government, for years under both Sweden and Russia but wasn’t actually independent until 1917 – and in a case like that, we’d never mistake autonomy for independence).
Raoul and I were discussing how paradoxical this total blockage of the school is. If students want school to be free and free for everyone, how does it make sense to not allow people to do go school if they want to? They are imposing their opinions on everyone else, and now it’s some students who are taking away other students’ independence. The blockage was decided by a popular vote (and will be decided to continue or not tomorrow – potentially until Tuesday, when teachers and public workers are striking). For the French students, it’s no big deal, the school can’t fail over half the students for striking and missing a month of classes. But for the exchange students, we risk being required to stay over the summer to make up classes or not getting credits transferred because we haven’t had enough hours of classes. How is that fair to others who also deserve an equal education? When Raoul asked another kid from our class if he was for or against the blockage, this is what he said: “I’m not really for or against it, I voted for it...” so Raoul asked him why, and he basically said that it was because everyone else was voting for it. He said, “If everyone votes to go to class, I’ll go to class, and if everyone votes for a blockage, I’ll go to protests.” Really well thought out. It made me lose a lot of the confidence I had previously in the well-founded decisions of the French students.

I’m interested to see what others think. I know many of you are really not into the higher education thing, or government funded anything, but please consider what the reality is for France at the moment, that the government funds all transport and all universities, and let me know what you think. I feel like on principle I should be supportive of the strike, but I also feel like there’s something much bigger here than one principle. I’m just really questioning whether or not this is the most effective way to show that people are really against this new plan.

So, please let me know what you think about this, I'm really having a hard time with it.

La grève demain : ce n'est que le début!!!

My new best friend, Radio France, has been keeping me updated about the new strike that's set for this week. Tonight (Tuesday), it's the SNCF (train network), and tomorrow the RATP starts (Paris transport system). As it's again an open strike, there's no set end date, and it'll only be over when someone gets something done. Best case scenario : the strike lasts until Friday (SNCF & RATP included). More possible scenario : nothing is back to normal until Sunday. Worst case scenario for the poor traveller and best case scenario for the unions : the transport strike lasts until next Tuesday, when 'functionnaires' (public sector workers, including teachers) and students are having a general strike, and then everyone joins together in an Anti-Sarko bloc that completely immobilizes the country. As of right now, that sounds fairly feasible even though it may seem ridiculous to those of you who have not yet fully experienced the incredible power of the French left. Tomorrow I'm expecting to use no public transport ; I might try out the Velib (the bike rental system) but it may not be possible because the bikes are in too high demand during the strike. I can potentially walk to Sorbonne for my MICEFA class, but I will put money on the professor not getting there because I believe she takes the RER - line A is 'quasiment nul' and line B will have no traffic. According to the nice lady in the Creteil metro this morning, there will be no trains on line 8. As for Paris 3 classes, apparently the students & functionnaires are jumping the gun ; they're set to be on strike for tomorrow too. Looks like I might have a free day coming, so hopefully I'll get caught up in some excellent giant protest somewhere. Anne told me she'd take me to one...

In other news, Saturday was excellent, it was strange to see Anne's parents after 5 years but they are great and just like I remembered. Except for that Luc's French got easier to understand (not a bad thing...). They invited me to Orleans sometime, so hopefully I'll be able to find a weekend to go with Anne, though I guess it might not be until after Christmas. It was definitely too short this time, so I hope I can go sooner rather than later! After they went to lunch, I went to meet Faima, which was excellent. I have a much better time understanding her in person than on the phone. We hung around the Champs-Elysees for a while, and then we went to Parc Monceau, and then we went to La Defense for a little bit. It was awesome, I invited her to the Thanksgiving dinner so hopefully she'll be able to come and then we can hang out on Saturday for a little bit, too. I went to Elly's after that, we had dinner and *gasp* watched some TV. I figured I was allowed since it's been 2 months since I've watched any. The rest of the weekend was fairly boring, I tried to get some work done...Verena came over last night to help me organize/read some stuff for my trip to Germany in December, so that was nice to see her (since I probably won't see any of my friends this week...).

I didn't go to Creteil this morning, since I was supposed to be with Amel (who works at both schools) and she told me if I didn't hear from her then I shouldn't come since she didn't have anything for me to do. But according to one of the students, she told them that I didn't want to come...whatever, I guess I don't really want to deal with those kids who throw chalky erasers at my stuff. This afternoon was normal, I've got some homework to grade and a 'prise de parole continue' (oral report sort of thing) for the 3e Europeans in a few weeks (next week is supposed to be another orientation, but we'll see because of all the striking) and then the next week they're going to Caen. I think that'll be a good way to handle things because the kids who actually want to work and make the effort will get a good grade anyway, I know they'll do the thing and I know they can stand up and speak for two minutes. I'd prefer to even take them one by one, but we'll see if that works.

So...Bonne Greve demain!!!!!!!!

Les Reliques de la Mort!

I got to get HARRY POTTER today!!!! I finally got paid on Thursday, I got a check and everything (even though the whole ordeal with the bank account was so that I would have direct deposit...) so now I can be all fancy and French-like when I buy things with a bank card. It's kinda cool...

I feel like I have nothing to tell, hence the lack of blogging over the past week or so. It's been weird, I'm kind of getting to the stage where the things I brought from home are running out, I've had to get all sorts of things like toothpaste, floss (that was an adventure...I got some from Monoprix but it was horrible, no wax or anything. I had to go to a pharmacy to get waxed floss, and it cost 4 euro!), band-aids (also ridiculously expensive, I guess the French don't get hurt...I'll have a really nice scar to show everyone when I'm home, by the way...)...I'm dreading the time when the choice of what shampoo to get arises. I guess this all might sound kind of lame, but for me, every time something runs out, it's a new adventure of where to go, what to get, and the fact that there's no Crest toothpaste in France. Today I had a nice time walking around my neighborhood, trying to find some things like a pencil sharpener, and I ended up finding a cool organic/fair trade store where the lady gave me some kind of disgusting tasting drink (Guarana cocktail...) that apparently helps you focus and is good for diplomacy, and I ended up getting some coffee (of course) and some nice spices (cinnamon sticks and cloves...I'm going to make mulled wine and it's going to be amazing...). I also went into a random bookstore that had a lot of neat books on religion but the guy told me (in a not very nice sort of way) to be careful of my backpack, and then he watched me the entire time to make sure I didn't break anything. I glared at him on the way out. I tried to make French bread pizza for dinner, but without an oven it didn't really work. I can use my microwave to make gratins, or something (there was metal in there and nothing blew up!) but it just made the bread chewey and got cheese everywhere. I tried to make the other half in the pan on the stove and I just burnt the bottom of the bread. Sigh. Luckily I have Harry tonight.

This weekend was fun, Amy came up again from Vierzon, on Saturday we went to the Indian neighborhood (which is really only one street long) and had really fantastic food, and then we went to a grocery store where I got some henna! Anne met up with us, we walked aaaallllll over the place for a while and ended up going back to Anne's for dinner, and then we went out for drinks afterward. We were talking about Americans with accents in French, and Anne was saying that neither of us have distinctly American accents, but that we sound like some kind of foreigner, or maybe a French person with a malformed mouth. Which I guess is a compliment... :-) It was pretty hilarious. On Sunday Amy and I just hung out, I did my henna and we made a huge dinner, and we watched Umrao Jaan (Bollywood movie, of course). She left on Monday, and I went to the library to do a bunch of good research. I even bought a copy card so that I can make copies when I go...I feel so cool.

I forgot about last Wednesday, I went out (ooo!) with a bunch of kids from my European studies classes. It was mostly French kids, and two Finnish girls (one named Tytti, who I'm going to be doing a little project with on Kalevala for the next class!) and a Polish girl. It was really fun, some random dude on the street gave one of the guys 50 euro so he bought us all drinks. It was cool to hang out with French kids (finally) and I talked with one guy, Raoul, for a really long time about the classes and our professor who never talks about slavery, only the end of it, and who also talks a lot about the end of colonialism...he was glad to know there was someone else who notices and has a problem with how this professor talks about some stuff. Oh, and Raoul grew up in Creteil, he knows where my colleges are, how weird is that? I guess it's actually not that weird, he'slived here his whole life...Anyway there is/was some potential for us going out again tomorrow but I haven't heard from anyone so I'm not entirely sure what's happening, but I will be hanging out with Tytti and working on this project.

Tomorrow I have class again, but only in the morning...I have Grammaire du Texte, and then lunch with Cecile and Cory. I have to work again Thursday and Friday (sigh...) but then I get to see Anne's parents and Faima on Saturday! Then next weekend I'm going to Le Mans to visit my penpal, evidently there are going to be strikes again so we'll see if that even happens. As much as I like strikes, I REALLY want to go to Le Mans, so I kind of hope it doesn't happen! Sorry, SCNF workers!

Sorry about the brightness of the picture, I just wanted to show off my hair and my Harry!!