The majority of this week has been unbearably boring. I always get bored at this point in a term; the days have settled into too much of a pattern and the weeks start to blur into each other because they're all the same. For some reason I didn't think this would happen in France, but this week I've managed to settle myself into the routine of boredom - the kind where you spend so much time being bored that when an opportunity to do something fun presents itself, you're too bored to go for it. In the end you're so lethargic and fed up that being bored becomes a bit of a way of life. It's very boring! But thankfully it just takes a small difference in your routine to snap you out of it, and for me this was sausage and tomato pasta! I should explain that our meals are not very varied here because we don't have an oven, only a hotplate in the kitchen. This means we survive entirely on pasta and rice with various sauces, and because we're not very inventive we only have two different sauces! As such, bow-shaped pasta with chopped tomatoes, mustard (of course!) and sliced sausage was an exciting change and after that I was no longer bored and wanted to go and do something fun!
A good distraction came in the form of the strikes held yesterday by all the teachers, in all levels of education in France. There have been strikes in lots of different sectors of the country this week - mainly in transport as airport workers, train companies and bus drivers have all gone 'en grève' at various points over the week, creating chaos all over the country. Striking is a way of life in France in a way that it just isn't in the UK. For us, other than the traditional British Airways strikes every summer, people demonstrating in the streets, refusing to go to work and generally creating mayhem until they get what they want just doesn't happen. But, knowing that this isn't the case in France, I've been looking forward to going on strike ever since I got here, and yesterday it finally happened! The strike was over quite a few different problems with French education, mainly to do with cutting jobs for thousands of teachers from nursery up to university level and drastically reducing the number of special needs teachers. The government has also recently decreased the number of school days in a week (students have Wednesdays off but used to go in on a Saturday morning, which has recently been stopped) but keeping the number of school hours the same, so kids are at school for eight or nine hours a day in comparison to the six hours that British kids go to school. In the run-up to the strike, posters appeared all over the campus; a 'Children's Rights' stall was set up in one of the squares in the main town, distributing leaflets about how tired children were at the end of a nine hour school day and how they have no time to enjoy any other activities outside of school; leaflets outlining the rising cost of living for students and the government's new plans to privatise university and charge tuition fees were pushed under every door in halls and emails were circulated to say that all classes would be cancelled on Thursday because all the teaching staff were striking. Come Thursday morning the campus was deserted save few 'sauver mon fac!' leaflets blowing across the grass. It was all very exciting and I, along with four other British students, headed into town for the 'manifestation' planned at 3pm. I had expected to get into town to find a few students and some teachers, maybe with banners or something. As it turned out, the town was packed with what seemed like thousands of people, from toddlers carry placards reading 'save my nursery!' to teachers in their fifties and sixties wearing high-visibility jackets and banging makeshift drums and waving banners. They all gathered in the main square and listened to a very impassioned speech by the head teacher if one of the primary schools. Then we all lined up behind a minivan covered in trade union stickers which had a megaphone mounted on the top and we marched through the town shouting and singing and banging on drums. Dijon's nursery school class had made their own drums out of tin cans and sellotape and a few three and four year olds were banging on these as they sat on their parents' shoulders. The university students, of course, were the most vocal and rowdy of everyone and had made up chants and songs about Sarkozy's new education reforms, none of which I could really understand. As we marched along, I began to feel slightly uncomfortable being there - we were getting some very strange looks and it was clear to everyone that we didn't entirely understand all the reasons for the strikes and also that we didn't have any personal interest in it because, in essence, the French education system really doesn't affect us. We also stuck out like a sore thumb because we were the only ones smiling and laughing and taking photos! In the end, we only joined in about half of the march and then left the procession to go and get hot chocolate. But I was very excited to have seen and taken part in a proper French demonstration, however much of a tourist I had acted while doing it!
In the evening I headed along to the student mass at the Catholic Chaplaincy just outside the campus, only to find that there were more than double the usual number of people there and ten times the normal number of priests! It turned out that it was the tenth anniversary of the opening of the chaplaincy and all of the people who had donated money towards it or had been involved in setting it up had been invited. There were lots of past students, some of them with their children, and lots of older people as well. After the mass we went to the chaplaincy for dinner and there was lots of mingling and chatting and it was a really nice evening. I really like going to the student chaplaincy. It's one of the few places where the French students are keen to mingle with exchange students and where people go out of their way to make you feel welcome. Although I don't think that the French deserve their reputation for being rude and unfriendly, I think they can sometimes be a bit stand-offish. They're always really friendly when you approach them and talk to them, but they always leave it up to you to make the first move and they rarely make allowances for your language difficulties.
And now, it is once again the weekend! We're supposed to be having a proper, British roast dinner tomorrow night, as one my friends is staying with a French family who, miracle of miracles, have an OVEN! I'm very excited about this! I also think I'm going to go and check out the natural history museum after a disastrous attempt at map reading earlier in the week left me and my friend Sophie wandering around the financial district, miles from the museum! It has a planetarium and botanical gardens attached, so it should be good. Till next time!
