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!