Steeeeeeerike ... 3? 7? We've lost count.

The Phillies may be done for the year, but it's still grève (strike) season here in France. The port of Marseille is blocked by the striking dockworkers, which means no deliveries of gas. I waited in line more than half an hour last week at a service station...and I was lucky to find one that had anything to sell.

Somehow the airport managed to stay open, and our visitors from London were able to arrive and depart, no problem. We spent a great day hiking along the cliffs overlooking the sea...
...where we could also see the oil tankers waiting for the port to open up again. They're there along the horizon.
Another stop on our "France on Strike" tour was the university, barricaded to protest...um...something. I'm not sure if we're on strike over retirement age or education reform.

What I DO know is that, as a teacher, striking is a personal choice, until the students barricade the school and you can't get in. My 6th and 7th graders aren't going that far, although a few of them did try to convince me that a strike is actually an official day off, and if you want to go to the protest, you can, but you DEFINITELY don't need to come to school. Sorry, guys. I'm not THAT out to lunch.

But back to our weekend visitors, and the baseball metaphor: we had a fun "France on Strike" activity planned. According to Josh (because I wouldn't know), strikes are noted in baseball stats with the letter "K." So, we decided to buy a bunch of canvases and put a "K" up on the wall each time there's a strike that affects us in some way. Between the time when we decided to do this and the time we finally got around to doing the paintings, we'd lost count of how many strikes there had been. So we just did five and called it even.


Now I need to figure out how to get them to hang straight. Any tips on hanging canvases?

By the way, the olive tree "K" is Josh's masterpiece. He's really digging les oliviers, which is a convenient fascination, since they're everywhere. We've even got one on the terrace, where we did our "Painting in Provence" afternoon.

We are LOVING our terrace. Yesterday we hung out there after work, drinking tea, skyping Josh's mom, and watching an episode of the office. The terrace was also VERY useful on Monday evening, when our electricity decided to join in the spirit of the grève. We turned on the stove to cook our friends one last dinner-en-provence before taking them to the airport, and POP, we blew the kitchen fuse. And, it was one of those old fashioned ones that actually has to be replaced. No way THAT was going to happen until the next day, so we whipped the burners out of the way cool custom-designed-oven/butcherblock thing and set them up on the bar outside. It was a bit cold standing out there in the starlight stirring greenbeans, but dinner still got cooked and the house didn't smell like pork chops afterward, so we might make the "outdoor kitchen" a more frequent occurrence.


En tout cas, the painting-on-the-terrace will definitely be repeated: there's another huge strike planned for November 6th, which just so happens to be the day we're heading in to Paris for a friend's wedding. Something tells me we're going to get some more wall art out of this one.

Josh is Stricken

Not long ago I arrived at the Lycée Saint Charles slightly after 8:30, late for my first class, drenched from an untimely rainstorm, and wondering how to relate yet another traffic jam to my ever-patient, but increasingly exasperated colleagues. The first signs of trouble were walking the opposite way down the sidewalk as I approached the last turn.

Students. Smug students. And a few yards later, glistening under delicate Marseille raindrops, dumpsters were strewn against the high stone wall of the school like toy trucks abandoned for a more interesting game. The police car I saw across the street as I looked up—a clear strike three—drew a hoarse, "Oh no" out of me as I rounded the turn. And there they were. The mob of students, milling about with complete nonchalance in front of the school's gate, which could barely be made out under the welter of twisted fencing, municipal trash cans, and broken mirrors. I can get you the ringleader's info if you need to know how to build a barricade for your particular place of work or study.

Luckily that day the police had managed to forge a path through the barricade so that those students willing to endure the ridicule of their peers could squeeze in and get to class. Most, though, were "at the bottoms of their beds", as one teacher put it. My bed, 30 kilometers away and now stone cold, was no longer an option, of course. Which was just as well, since I ended up with several classes of two or three students, and we had a fine time together.

The strikes have continued, with limited effect, since then. The most recent was this week's when something altogether innovative was tried: after the police foiled their plans to block people out of the high school, some students regrouped around 10 a.m. on Monday and barricaded everyone inside. The vice-principal seemed, rightfully, fit to be tied by all of this, and asked me if such a thing ever happened in the U.S. "No", I said, "We'd never even think to strike...we wouldn't know what to ask for."

I am reminded of the closest I ever came to striking in high school. It was during a mandatory assembly for National Honors Society senior year, when we were all told that we'd be held through the first period, and therefore miss the campaign speeches for class president being televised throughout the school. About twenty of us decided to just stand up and leave on the count of three. After three seconds, twenty of us were up, and, after about four seconds, half of us were back down—myself included—melted by the steely voice of Mrs. McNicolas, threatening all kinds of torment. In retrospect, I should have seen that she was full of hot air, and that I was a woos—and that it's probably best that I wasn't elected, too. Most of all, I can see that I had nothing on the kids at St. Charles. They don't even sit down for the police.

The protest, I suppose I should say, is against a series of new measures being handed down from Paris that will drastically change the face of French secondary education—eliminating certain degrees (for which some students are now on track, and could potentially be forced to abandon), cutting back hours of class time, adding new responsibilities for teachers, etc. The strikes have succeeded in getting the bill pushed back a year, but given how much school has been missed, I wouldn't be surprised if many students will just plain fail this year, anyway, and be forced to repeat it. Things are looking no prettier at the university here in Aix—now the administration has decided to withhold students' grades!

Comment dit-on...oy?

National Pastimes

Today Josh and I went down to Marseille for my official medical visit for permission to stay long-term in the country. They checked my height, weight, and whether or not I had tuberculosis. Pretty routine. I had lost 2 kilos since my last doctors appointment, and when I jubilantly informed the nurse, her response was, “Vive la France!” Long live France, indeed.

The office receptionist was not as friendly, and I was surprised when she didn’t give me any forms to fill out when I arrived. Filling out paperwork is, apparently, the French national pastime. I have already filled out more papers in three months than I would fill out in five to ten years in the US, including college applications. I can only imagine that the receptionist failing to thrust a clipboard into my face was some kind of lack of gentility and warmth on her part. She also mumbled; perfect for someone whose only job is to interact with foreigners.

She wasn’t the only disgruntled French person today; the entire country went on a “pause café” (coffee break) as government offices went on strike to protest against the economy. I think it was something more specific, but perhaps not. I wouldn’t put it past anyone here to protest a concept; after all, headlines declared that the big snow storm a few weeks ago was “un scandale!” Incidentally, I finally got around to asking someone why there is a national fascination with Marylin Monroe, and the answer was, “le scandale.” I think because the French word has such big, floaty vowels, it’s much more fun to say, and therefore more often employed, than the American translation. “Scandal” just doesn’t sound as glamorous as “scahn-DAAAHL.”

Anyway, today the streets of Marseille were packed with protesters wielding signs, and even firecrackers, and Josh and I had to walk an hour both ways to get from the bus station to the doctor’s office. At several points we had to cross right through the “parade route.” I expected to have some trouble—after all, people were shouting and waving around things that were on fire—but we were able to walk right through the procession without anyone noticing us. I didn’t even need to use my really fabulous plan B, which was to take a marker and write some sort of strike-related slogan on the giant envelope I was carrying with my chest x-ray (proof of clean lungs), and then pretend to be part of the strike as we snuck through to the other side. But “les greves” here in the south are not at all scary, and we were safer crossing the strike route than we are crossing a regular street at a crosswalk. If you want to see what it looked like, here's the BBC article with some good video footage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7857435.stm

After my doctors visit, I took advantage of being in the big city to continue my obsessive hunt for a good pair of boots. Every shoe I picked up fell into one of two categories: it had a sole made out of some material closely resembling linoleum, or it was an American brand. I now have a solid theory about why the French so often indulge in their other national pastime: complaining. I used to rag on Americans for always wearing sneakers, but now my USA nostalgia is beginning to extend to footwear. Viva la Aerosoles!