Thursday – Official Strike Day! Let’s see, where do I start. The teachers didn’t show up for classes today…so that was a waste of time…the school entrances were blocked…and there were bonfires throughout the city with people standing around them doing nothing. Not sure what that is accomplishing. From what I was told, there were a bunch of students around this bonfire earlier at the entrance of my building at the uni. No one was really around when I took this picture. The trams are only running some of their normal routes. I can never make it completely to the uni. Yesterday, there was a group of 200 uni students that all layed on the ground in the city center outside of FNAC (a French store) and laid there for 1 hour to protest the strike! (en greve). It is really crazy. I was going to jump in the group of protesters by the fire and see if I could get a group picture, but I don’t know if that would have been okay. Haha. Ya right!
So because school wasn’t going down, Tina and Chloe and I decided to go eat in the city center and then just walk around. After a hearty brunch of crepes and apple juice we walked around and tried on some clothes at stores that were WAY too expensive to buy. I could never afford any of them. Like 200 euros for a shirt. Yeah right.
Anyways, I felt like a scrub today because I didn’t really get ready, as you can see in my lovely picture with the strikers. Haha. Sorry! I know I should be looking like a model because I am in France and everything, but today was just not one of those days!! It was funny because today I threw on my BYU-Idaho t-shirt because a lot of my stuff is packed and I just couldn’t be bothered to put on something really nice today…and while we were shopping, Tina and Chloe saw my shirt and were like NO WAY- you go to a mormon uni? you are a mormon!! And then they kept saying, it makes sense now why you don’t do anything! Haha. So the cat is out of the bag! Hil is mormon! Haha. They just stared at me really weird after that and I was like so what you aren’t going to be my friend now? And then it was all fine after. Ha.
Let’s see, on the tram on the way back a guy started to speak to me and could hear I wasn’t French…and then he was REALLY interested in talking to me, so he sat down by me and started talking all about Sarkozy and the government and why the strike was so great. He asked what I thought about it, and I told him I thought it was really different and I told him it frustrated me a bit because I couldn’t go to school. He was trying to explain to me how it was such a good thing, and I told him that our opinions were a little different because our cultures were different but that I really respected that they were standing up for what they believed and wanted to change in their country. He wouldn’t stop talking and so when my stop came I felt a bit rude but I pretty much just stood up and walked away while saying, “It was nice to meet you!” and then I took off for home hoping he wasn’t hoping on continuing the conversation by following me.
Tomorrow I hope that uni is on! Right after my class ends, I am going to the train station and I’m off to Paris to catch my flight to Germany and then Sweden Saturday morning. After 5 days in Sweden, Germany is next and then I am back in Paris and then Nantes by the 1st of November. This might be the last blog post for a few days. Not sure when I will have a chance to post some new stuff. I will try to update this as often as I can with my Sweden and Germany stuff!
My greatest hope is that I can GET to Paris tomorrow with all this strike business and then when I get home it will be settling down. Tonight, I believe the government is responding to the protests. We shall see if all hell breaks loose! Kinda crazy that I am here when history is being made!
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