La grêve continue toujours

Hello all!  Sorry for the long time between posts, but I have been living my wonderful life here instead of writing about it!  I am feeling at home in Angers now, it doesn't feel like the last time I was here when I studied abroad in 2008.  Then it felt as though I was in just in a stage of my life, but now France feels permanent to me (this might be scary to some of you readers!).

I am sitting on the Thalys train to Holland right now to visit the family and thought that this is as good of time as any to update my blog since I have been oh so quiet over the last two weeks.

This is a pic from the local paper.

At this time, there is a massive grêve (strike) in France because the age of retirement has been raised from 60 to a whopping 62!  The country that works the least in the world is now complaining because they have to work a little more.  This strike is the biggest I have ever seen in France and has spread throughout all facets of life.  Transportation is down, schools are closed and public services such as trash collection have stopped.  Angers was in a bit of chaos during the last week.  The trash is just piling up in the streets and starting to smell really bad and the city was placing barriers around the mountains of trash in order to somewhat contain it.  Luckily the trash collectors have gone back to work but with the amount of trash that there was on the streets the collectors have still not caught up.  Therefore there are still huge piles of trash everywhere including outside of my house.  It got so bad that when I wanted to take out my trash, I no longer had to find a dumpster I could just throw my trash outside.  My friends lived right above one of the biggest trash piles and resorted to just throwing their trash out of the 3rd story window.  What is worse is that the kids who are on strike have gone to kicking and opening the bags of trash so now not only are there bags of trash everywhere, but there is litter partout!

The trash is not the only part of the strike that has affected me.  My students have also gone on strike which has prohibited me from working since I have gotten here.  I have yet to teach my own class and I won't be able to start until the 4th of November at the earliest!

When I say that my students are on strike I don't mean that they just stopped coming to school, no French kids take striking VERY seriously here.  Striking to the French is like baseball to Americans, it is the national past-time.  On the first day of the strike I unwittingly decided to go to my lycée anyways to see if there were any students there at all.  As I rounded to corner to the street on which my school was located I was met with the whole student population burning fires and barricading the door to the school.  I instantly turned around for fear of being recognized but I wasn't quick enough.  Some of my students tried to get me to join the strike, but it is not my battle so I just left.  After a few days I decided that I wanted to do something for my pay check so I returned to school and broke through the barricade to get to the door.  I wasn't met with very many happy looks or words when I did this.  The school was deserted except for a few teachers and the few boarding students who have been blockaded in and are unable to leave.  All in all, going to the school ended up being a waste of time.

The strike has also caused the transit across France to go absolutely haywire.  I was trying to take a TGV from Angers to Paris today and low and behold my train was canceled.  The only remedy to the situation was to hop on the next train with 100s of other people like me who didn't have a seat and stand in the corridor for the 2 hour train ride.  I made it but by the end I swear I was about to kill somebody!

My internet is about to go out because I will be entering Brussels soon so I will continue my update soon!  Miss you all!

Best weekend of my life!

Hey there all!  Life in France is going well as usual.  At this point I am pinching myself because I can't believe that it is real.  I received some great news!  My contact professor at my school told me that I have the opportunity to stay in France through the end of their school year, so of course I said yes.  Now instead of coming home at the end of April I will be coming home in the beginning of July.  I am so happy I can barely stand it!

Now for a little bit about my past weekend.  On Friday I went out about town with a few of my English speaking friends and met some of my friend's French friends who were super cool.  They apparently thought the same thing about me because the next day I was invited to a party at one of their houses.  The only thing was that the other American who was coming wasn't going to be able to arrive until around 12:30am so I would have to go alone.  I sucked it up and ignored the fear and went alone.  It turned out to be amazing!  I walked in and everyone was nice and wanted to have conversations with me (in French of course).  The next day I was invited to go hiking in a town 20min by car outside of Angers called Rochefort (where the bleu cheese is made).  Obviously I said yes so we all (there were 5 of us) hopped into the Nissan Cube and drove to the cute little town of Rochefort. 

The Cathedral at Rochefort

The town was absolutely beautiful and we went on an 8kn hike through the vineyards.  On the hike we saw a bunch of small, local French farms with animals.  It was absolutely picturesque.

After the beautiful hike we went to a small bar in Rochefort to buy some bottles of wine from the vineyards which by the way was excellent.  As we were sitting there having our wine and wonderful conversation the church bells began to ring.  Again, I can't believe that this is my life.  After awhile these two local older men sit down at the table next to us and we begin to discuss wine with them.  They told us that they had a cave de vin and that they made their own wine and that we should come back and taste some of it.  We said yes and all piled back into the Cube and were off.  The house was built in the 15th century and was absolutely beautiful.  The man let us try three of his wines which were all exquisite and he talked to us about the history of the area which was captivating.  Only three families had owned the house since it was built in the 1400s and at one time it had been a tannery.  He told us about the pirates that used to go down the Loire river and about the history of the wine in the area.  We ended up staying and talking until 11h00. 

We got back to Angers at 11h30 and STARTED to make our dinner which was a traditional French meal made from fresh local ingredients.  It was to die for and of course their was more wine.  Definitely the best Sunday of my life and we have all decided that le dimanche est le nouveau jeudi (Sunday is the new Thursday)! 


There is a large grêve (strike) in Angers and in all of France today concerning the rise in the required age for retirement.  As an American I find this absolutely hilarious that in the country where people work the least in the world they are striking because they might have to work a little more.  Anyways because of the strike the students at the lycée where I work also striked and barricaded the entrance so alas I did not have to work today.  I guess we will see what tomorrow brings.  

The Return of the Long-Awaited Blog Post!

Hello all, yes I know that it has been far too long and that you are all anxiously awaiting a new blog posts on your computer ;p, and some of you have even been asking me directly to make one (::cough:: mom ::cough::) but I did not have internet access at my place until yesterday so I was unable to make one!  Now I am back and have so much to tell you! 

The view from my apartment window

In my last post I told you all that after much work I was able to find an apartment right in the heart of the city that is absolutely fantastic.  I met my upstairs neighbor yesterday who speaks English pretty well which is cool and we had a good conversation about trips and traveling and such, so at least I know that one of my neighbors is cool!  I know that all of you have anxiously been waiting for photo documentation of my new digs, so without further adieu, here you go! 

So far France has been awesome, and I am pretty sure that it is going to stay that way.  I have already had some crazy adventures.  My other American friend Lindsey and I were hanging out in a bar speaking English and these two French boys came over and say with us because they wanted to speak English.  Alas they were horrible at it so in reality they butchered English and we responded in English and then had to translate into French because they didn't get it at all.  One of them even asked us if we could speak with a British accent because they could understand that better.  I responded curtly by asking him if he could speak with a southern French accent for me in return, I think he got my point because he dropped the idea of us speaking with British accents. 

It turns out that these guys were engineering students at a school in Angers called ENSAM and they invited us to come to a party at their school bar (because schools have bars in them here).  Probably wasn't the best idea but Lindsey and I agreed and our adventure began.  We were lead across the river to the school and taken down a back entrance, to an old monastery which serves as the dorms.  This is so crazy to me by the way because these people are living in a building built in the 14th century like it is no big thing.  We were lead through a room with this symbol painted on the floor and down a dark hallway (at this point Linds and I had a bad feeling) and then we turned a corner to find a bunch of drunk bearded nerds in robes.  All Lindsey and I could do was burst out laughing.  This was kind of like a fraternity for the school in which they all wear these decorated robes and don't shave for a year.  The boys that brought us left us to go get their robes and the everything got a LOT less creepy.  In the end it ended up being harmless fun and the boys thought we were hilarious and all they wanted to know was about the differences between American and French university.  Overall it was a very good night, and something that I have never seen or experienced in my life before. 

Bedroom/Main room...yes that's a futon!

 Over the next couple of days I started work at the Lycée David d'Angers which turned out to be very disorganized and stressful but fun nonetheless.  I work at this point with 5 different teachers in 12 different classes of about 30 students each.  I have no idea how I am going to learn my students name's there are so many to remember!  The school is huge and super confusing, I find myself getting lost all the time, and wandering around like a big idiot because I still don't have my schedule down pat yet.  The first week is primarily just observation in the classes.  I mostly come in and answer questions like what is my name, where I am from, and my favorite "why are you here?"  It is funny because every class that I go into I have experienced the same thing from the students.  All the boys are super interested and ask lots of questions (primarily about sports) while all the girls look me up and down and glare.  Hopefully the girls will warm up to me too or this is going to be a really long year. 

Two of the classes have been particularly interesting because I had to do more than just observe in them.  In the first one I had to take a group of students to my own classroom and teach them a lesson that the teacher had prepared for me.  It was pretty fun but a little overwhelming to just be thrown into things on day two.  The students were pretty engaged but one girl did most of the talking.  I will need to work on getting the other kids to talk even if they are shy and/or don't want to. 

In the other eventful class, I was put in front of a terminale class (the highest level) and they asked me questions.  I was preparing for the usual questions like where am I from and why did I choose to come to France.  Nope these kids decided to ask me extremely intense questions like "what do you think about the differences in social security in France versus in America" or "do you think that if there was stricter gun control things like Columbine could have been averted?" I was not expecting to have to answer questions on behalf or all Americans but that is what they asked me.  The teacher just stared at me waiting for a response just like her students.  My favorite question that I got in most of my classes that made me laugh was "do you own a gun?" These kids think that the average American has a gun and that it is normal for everyone to have a gun.  Without thinking I stupidly responded that I didn't but that my sister did which made them think that their assumptions were right that all Americans have guns.  They then asked me if she was a member of the NRA but when I tried to explain that it was because my grandfather is super into guns and got it for her and that she wasn't the stereotypical American they were lost.  So now I think that they think that I am a gun toting Republican.  Haaha, I guess there are worse things to be.

Wednesday was the stage, or orientation session for the program in Nantes.  I went the day before because my friend Lindsey lives there and I wanted to say hello.  I roll up to her foyer and meet a friend of her's who also has her stage the same day as me and knew when and where we were going because her school had given her a paper with all the information (mine had not).  I began talking to her about what she was doing at her school and began to realize that my school had just kind of left me out to dry and I had not completed any of the paperwork that I should have so I started to get nervous, but I thought that maybe she just had a particularly good school so I let it go and the next day we arranged to go to the stage together.  We left an hour before the stage started and hoped on a tram and then two buses.  We rode the bus to where we thought we were supposed to go but we were wrong and ended up getting lost and had to walk for 30min in the rain up hill.  Eventually we found the building (whose address was wrong and not on google maps) a half an hour late and I proceeded to rush into the meeting and tripped down the stairs in front of everyone.

As the meeting proceeded I realized the fears about my school were in fact correct because I was the only one that had to go get a bank account, find housing and all things like that without help from the school (thank god I had Sue) and I was the only one that had not signed payroll information because my contact person had not helped me at all.  I broke down and talked to the head of the program who was outraged and took down my information and told me that they would fix everything.  I am really glad there was this meeting or I wouldn't have even known about the paperwork that I had to do. 

On Thursday a woman who was at the meeting who represents a different school took me to my school and talked to people about how upset I was and everything got sorted out, but now it is a bit awkward because the teacher who was supposed to be in charge got a yelled at.  I hope that it all blows over and we can put this all behind us and work together in the future.  At this point I am nothing but optimistic!

Well, that brings you all up to date somewhat, I promise that I will blog more often now that I have internet access!