So I realized that I forgot to add something very important in the last post - des grèves (aka strikes). So in France, well and in Europe in general, they exercise their right to strike quite often. We knew this before coming to France, but I was not prepared for how many strikes I would see here.
Our first witnessing of a strike was when we were trapped in one while walking through Picadilly Circus in London trying to find our hostel. This was probably the closest we've been to one so far, and it is really dangerous as an American to be trapped in a strike because we don't have the right to strike in Europe so we can get arrested so we got out of their protest as fast as we could.
The next strike we saw was some young people walking through the streets of Dijon yesterday. They were striking because they wanted more money, smaller class sizes and some other stuff that I couldn't really understand. We also almost got caught in the middle of this one, but Nathalie quickly steered us onto another street.
The third strike hasn't happened yet, but it is going to happen on Monday, our first day of classes, and this one is the most frustrating because it is a bus strike. That means that instead of taking a half hour bus ride to school, we have to walk an hour or more to school. I wouldn't mind if it wasn't on the first day of classes but nevertheless it should be quite the adventure and hopefully we don't get completely lost because it is on the outskirts of town and a 20 minute bus ride from any area of the city we know.
I'm sure there will be more stories about les grèves during our semester here...and I suppose it could be worse, we could have to walk through the snow to school.
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