A long awaited update!

So it’s been almost a month since I last posted anything so I figured I should take some time and let you all know what has been going on since we got back from vacation. The first couple weeks after vacation were pretty “banal” as the French would say, meaning that not a whole lot happened we just basically had class, dealt with even more strikes than I’ve seen in my life time and well that’s about it. I think I should take the time to mention the strikes in this lovely country.

Since we have been in France, a little over 3 months, the train company SNCF that handles all train traffic in France has been on strike two different times (once for 3 days and another for 10) during this time only about 10% of the trains in the country were running and in France train travel is almost like plane travel in the US there are people who take a train every day just to get to work. This needless to say crippled a lot of the countries employees and it is all for an interesting reason. In france, the employees of SNCF get to retire at an earlier age than basically all other workers in France. They can retire at 50 if they have enough years of service. In addition, normal workers pension amounts are calculated as an average of their last 20 years of employment while the SNCF workers are only the last 6 months. So you can see that not only are they retiring earlier but they are also getting more money while they are in retirement. President Sarkozy wants to change the retirement plans for the SNCF employees to better match that of the others. Obviously this has caused a lot of SNCF employees to get very upset even if they are being really selfish. In addition with SNCF striking, other people joined them in the strike for a day here and there to show their solidarity with the SNCF employees. One day the energy company EDF went on strike for a day and just simply turned off power in most areas. Its really something that I’ve never really seen before, and the protests are another whole thing. They’ve had two major protests during this strike the second of which was a march with about 50,000 people that blocked the Tram and Busses for more than an hour as they walked through all the main streets in town.

SNCF isn’t the only group of people that have been on strike. In paris, judges and lawyers have been striking for a long time because of the possible closure of a court house there. The real interesting strike is the College Students. Yes I said that college students are on strike in france and well the high school students have joined in the cause for solidarity amongst students. No our school has not been on strike but that’s only because we are a private school. President Sarkozy wants to privatize the funding of colleges much like its done in the US. The students do not want this to happen because they feel it will make the schools unequal, as of today all the public colleges receive the same amount of funding for things like building improvements and employees etc… So for approximately 3 weeks now students have blocked the entrances to schools and have protested by not going to class and not letting anyone into the schools as well. This has been something amazing to watch because at times the police have gotten involved and tried to pry the students away from the building to let the people who want to go to class into the building. In Clermont, high schoolers were protesting Thursday in the streets and it was definitely a sight to see. I have some photos and a video that I took that you guys can look at.

Ok, enough about strikes. This month we have done a few fun things other than class. The first was Beaujolais Nouveau. The Beaujolais is a wine region very close to Clermont and it’s a wine that you drink very young. The 3rd Thursday of November is the first time every year that anyone can get the wine and drink it. Monsieur Faure (our director) organized a wine night where we all got together and had some Beaujolais. It was a pretty good wine for being less than 4 months old although it really ended up being a hard night to sleep. Because it is such a young wine, you are never sure how its going to taste or how it will affect different people. After drinking a fair amount of wine and returning back to the house I couldn’t fall asleep. I was hot and then extremely cold, I was tossing and turning all night long and it was just not a good night. The next day I found out that 80% of us had the same thing happen to them when they tried to go to sleep. We all asked Monsieur Faure if this was normal and he said, “O yes, you are just not used to drinking wine at night. It’s not good for you Americans!” haha. It was a fun night though and one of the first times we have been out all together since the beginning.

The Thursday after Beaujolais as most of you know was Thanksgiving in the US. Now the French do not celebrate thanksgiving obviously since it is a truly American Holiday. Nonetheless, Monsieur Faure made reservations for all of us and our host families to go to a restaurant and have a thanksgiving dinner. We all ended up sitting with our host families and speaking a lot of French last night and as for the meal well it wasn’t too bad. For an appetizer, we had raw salmon with some lettuce, pickles and a cream sauce. Definitely not American, but extremely French as salmon is a common appetizer at important meals. After that was the main course which was a piece of turkey with a very sweet and tangy cranberry sauce, green beans and puree. Puree is the French version of mashed potatoes but it is amazing its like they take all the air and fluffiness out of the potatoes while they mix everything up. For dessert we had Tarte aux Potirons and Mousse au Chocolat. I assume that most of you can figure out what Mousse au Chocolat is but I must tell you that it was amazing! The Tarte aux Potirons is a pumpkin tarte and it was supposed to be similar to pumpkin pie. It actually wasn’t bad and it was made with real pumpkin. It didn’t have as much spice and flavor as the wonderful American version but it was still really good. For the most part, our host families did not like the pumpkin tarte and couldn’t understand why we loved it so much! Finishing off the night I got to talk to most of my family on the phone which was a nice touch to the night especially since it was my first thanksgiving not spent at home. I think most of us were a little sad to not be at home with our families for thanksgiving but we made the best of the night.

This past week, I have had a lot of fun. I finally started hanging out more with the other international students and my French friends than just doing the same old same old with the K crowd. It has resulted in an extremely fun week. Friday night we went out to this Australian Pub downtown with some of my german friends that I had met a few weeks prior. We ended up trying to find this fall festival but much to our avail we could not find it so we just went back to the Australian pub! It was a fun night and started the trend of doing new things. Saturday night was the birthday of another one of my german friends Beate (pronounced Bay-A-Teh). Again a common occurance we went to a pub for the night with about 25 international students and it was a really really good time. We had Mexicans, Spanish, Scottish, French, German, American, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, and Panamanian nationalities represented with us. We were speaking a mix of French and English and sometimes we would try to speak languages that we don’t speak. I’m trying to learn german phrases but up to this moment I only know how to swear and say basic things haha. Wednesday night was Ana’s birthday (a lot of birthdays last week) so we went out to eat at this Lebanese restaurant where I was the only American that decided to go! Nonetheless we had 11 countries represented at the table: Mexico, US, Panama, Peru, Russia, France, Germany, Finland, Sweeden, Scotland, Slovenia. It ended up being again a really fun night and we stayed at the restaurant for about 3 hours talking and just having a good time.

Thursday night was Brazilian night at the Australian pub and so of course I went there. At first it was just me and Tessa (a girl from K) but then slowly other people showed up and we had about 7 of us at the table and had a pretty good time. They had a live Brazilian band and free appetizers so all in all it was a good night. But the cool part of the night was when we first got there it was pretty full even though we got there pretty early in the night. Since I stick out like a sore thumb in this country, they waiter that we had the night before that I had talked to remembered me and told me he’d find a table. Sure enough, he told a few people to move and grabbed some extra chairs from the back and voila we had a table to sit at for the live music, right in front of the band. Sometimes being the odd one out works to your advantages!

I think that about gets you all up to speed to today. Today should be a fun day, we are going to take a little stroll around Clermont because being December 1st it is the first day that they light up all of the Christmas decorations that they have put up throughout the city including the giant Christmas tree downtown in addition to the Ferris wheel. Also, they have a Christmas market that is opening up in one of the town squares so we are going to go take a look at that as well. I will take plenty of pictures and have them posted for you all tomorrow! I think that about does it for this entry. The blog is now approaching 20,000 words as I have slowed down tremendously from the beginning pace. I will be writing a lot during Christmas break as I plan to do quite a bit of travelling! Here are the finalized travel plans:

Paris, Chartres, Normandie, Rouen, Versailles, Strasbourg, Rennes, Amsterdam, Rome, Geneva, Chamonix.

It’s quite the plan for 22 days of travelling and I should have a ton of photos from the trip to be able to share with you all!

Love to all,

Jon