So, there was a strike yesterday.
A BIG strike.
Like, as in, I had eight hours of school. And two hours of class.
Why don't we strike like this in America?
Okay, it was something called a "blockage." Now, when I hear "blockage" and "strike" in the same sentence, I get this unpleasant image of some high-schoolers stuffing the toilets full of toilet paper in some sort of awful rebellion. When the French hear it, they think of a very special type of strike done by students.
What happens is this: students gather around every single gate into the school grounds, and they close the gates. So far, so good. Then, they take every single dumpster and trash can and road block they can find and shove it up against the gate. This, my friends, is my idea of a strike. This is the theory: you can exit, but once you've exited, you can't get back in.
And it would be great if it actually worked like that, but in reality they let you in and out. It's just that most students choose to remain out. All. Day. Long.
And of course why should the teachers miss the fun? They don't necessarily take part in the blockage, but they stay home all day and don't come in to teach their classes.
Thus: eight hours of school, two hours of class. I had to go to English and Cinema. I was heartbroken. (Best. Day. Ever.)
The only problem is that they closed the cafeteria too, but that's easily solved by going to a grocery store and buying nothing but junk for lunch.
When do we get to do it again? Keep messing up, please, French government, because it's like a holiday when you do...
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
May You Have an Interesting Life
Well played, little brother. Well played.
He's been nothing but irritating for the five weeks I've been here, but today he was showing his mother his school notebook, and she asked him about the family picture he was supposed to draw for homework. "Are you gonne draw all of us?"
"Yes. Alexia...and Mama...and Marjorie...and Sandrine...and Papa...and Josie."
And I was floored.
Besides that, there's nothing much to really say. My life has become so interesting that it's actually incredibly boring. I've settled into the closest thing to a routine France offers. Great for my life, bad for my writing, but you can't have both, and frankly I'd choose a routine over having interesting things to blog about. (Wasn't there a Chinese curse to that effect? "May you have an interesting life.")
There's nothing much I can really talk about except for school, I suppose. How boring is that, I live in another country, and my whole life still revolves around the most boring thing possible. The irony is bitter.
Well, let's jump right into it.
The funny thing is, I'm typing this, and you would never know if I didn't tell you, but my handwriting is changing pretty drastically. Teachers still use blackboards over here, and their handwriting is so inexplicably French that I was completely flabbergasted my first week of school. It's hard to describe for anyone that hasn't seen it themselves: a sort of half-cursive, half-print scrawl. It manages to look messy and perfectly sculpted all at the same time. I think the best way I can word it is that half the letters are in cursive and half of them aren't, but the half that is and the half that isn't changes with every individual person. With that sort of influence, it's all I can do to stop myself from outright writing in cursive. I would, if I thought my cursive lettering was in any way legible. So I've settled into a sort of loopy print, using all of the little loops at the ends of letters that my Kindergarten teacher always called "monkey-tails" and my third grade teacher always called "childish". Well, whatever. My handwriting has become French-y and therefore requires no explanation. (And trust me, they really can't explain it to you.)
That is, however, only when I'm using a ball-point pen or a pencil. The second I try using one of the very popular fountain pens everyone seems to have here, my handwriting resembles the chicken scratch I used to have in sixth grade. I'm so incredibly glad we never turn in assignments, we just read answers out in class, because if I ever had to turn in my handwriting, they'd deport me. Nevertheless, I continue to write my notes with the fountain pen, in the hopes that someone other than me will be able to understand them someday.
Trust me, though, we take a lot of notes, and by the end of the year, I'll likely have made some improvement.
I suppose as long as we're talking about school supplies I should mention my organizer, which is the oddest and most convenient thing I've ever seen in my life. It's sort of like a binder, only it has about twelve different plastic tabs sticking out of the sides. When you pull back the cover, there's a whole bunch of sturdy plastic dividers connected to the binding. On the front cover is a bunch of little write-in windows next to each tab, where you write the names of your classes, and then you take your class papers, pull back the tab that corresponds to the correct class, and stick the paper in. It's almost like a file folder, except that the pieces of plastic aren't connected to each other, the whole thing opens like a book, with two pieces of elastic at each open corner to bind it together. Before I go home, I'm going to buy a new one for my senior year and use it in America. It's the most handy thing I've ever seen in my life.
Keeping on track with school supplies, here are a few more things no French kid would ever be without:
-A pencil case. This isn't necessarily true in my high school, but in other American high schools I've been told that carrying around little pencil cases can make your popularity suffer. Here, people look at you kind of funny if you don't have one of your own to put your miscellaneous writing utensils in.
-Ridiculous lined paper. This stuff is like graph paper on steroids. There are lines everywhere for absolutely no reason that I can figure out.
-Planners. Some of the cool factor in your planner is revived here in France because you buy it yourself, and therefore decide what you want it to look like. Some of the more expensive planners have a whole bunch of interesting things in them. The cover of mine is Harry Potter. (I saw a scary goth boy running around with a Hello Kitty planner in his bag.)
-Glue stick. I can't see that many people in America using this. It's more of a second grade thing for us, but for teenagers here, they're incredibly convenient for when you want to paste a handout into your notebook.
-About a million notebooks. Every single one of your classes must have its own notebook. It doesn't matter how incredibly insignificant the notes or how little you have that particular class: if you know you don't have that class a lot, you use a smaller notebook. Using loose paper is branding yourself a loser for eternity. Or something.
There are other classes that require more specific things, like a calculator in math, or your gym clothes for sport. And you have to bring your own gym clothes, there's no uniform. This sounds totally radical until you realize that there are no lockers in the whole school, and you're stuck lugging around a plastic bag filled with gym clothes every Tuesday.
Speaking of gym, though, you'll never guess what sport we're working on now. (I'm actually so convinced you'll never guess that I'm just going to tell you.) Rock climbing. The entire end wall of the school is littered with those stupid colored rocks. Last week was the tutorial for how not to kill yourself with your own harness and how not to kill your partner with the rope, and this week we actually got to try it.
My partner and I each got about three feet off the ground before agreeing that we were both incorrigibly terrified of heights. We snuck off to watch the jocks instead of actually doing anything. It was pretty fascinating, although my neck kind of hurt from looking up so much.
Turns out I really don't need to worry much about sport, though. I weighed myself this morning out of morbid curiosity (and also because I could swear none of my clothes were fitting anymore) and after doing some really tedious conversions, found out that I've lost twenty or twenty-five pound here. Jeans that were fitting perfectly a month ago now are too big by like five inches. I went and bought another pair yesterday, though I'm not sure if I like French jeans more than American ones. There's not much variety, it's either skinny jeans, or skinnier jeans. Ouch. Tight much?
Oh, and the toe situation is fantastic, as usual. He burned it again today. Ouch. All I can say is, if that man ever comes near me with a caustic chemical and says the word "Brûlée" (burn) again, I'm heading for the hills. France is not worth this, seriously. I'll go back to the land of painkillers and anesthetics in a heartbeat, don't think I won't. Back where chemicals are more theoretical than medical.
I'm torn between wishing I had more to write about and being incredibly thankful I don't. Coolest part of the day so far? I checked out the seventh Harry Potter book from the school library's English books section, because I knew I had to go to the doctor again today. The thought of holing up in my room reading it is making me way more excited than it should. Finally I can hold a book in my hands and not want to throw it against the wall for lack of comprehension! I almost did, with the first Harry Potter book. This morning I was reading it and every single name is different, it seems like. It's driving me up the walls trying to remember the difference between Filch (Rusard) and Snape (Rogue)...
~Josie Harris
He's been nothing but irritating for the five weeks I've been here, but today he was showing his mother his school notebook, and she asked him about the family picture he was supposed to draw for homework. "Are you gonne draw all of us?"
"Yes. Alexia...and Mama...and Marjorie...and Sandrine...and Papa...and Josie."
And I was floored.
Besides that, there's nothing much to really say. My life has become so interesting that it's actually incredibly boring. I've settled into the closest thing to a routine France offers. Great for my life, bad for my writing, but you can't have both, and frankly I'd choose a routine over having interesting things to blog about. (Wasn't there a Chinese curse to that effect? "May you have an interesting life.")
There's nothing much I can really talk about except for school, I suppose. How boring is that, I live in another country, and my whole life still revolves around the most boring thing possible. The irony is bitter.
Well, let's jump right into it.
The funny thing is, I'm typing this, and you would never know if I didn't tell you, but my handwriting is changing pretty drastically. Teachers still use blackboards over here, and their handwriting is so inexplicably French that I was completely flabbergasted my first week of school. It's hard to describe for anyone that hasn't seen it themselves: a sort of half-cursive, half-print scrawl. It manages to look messy and perfectly sculpted all at the same time. I think the best way I can word it is that half the letters are in cursive and half of them aren't, but the half that is and the half that isn't changes with every individual person. With that sort of influence, it's all I can do to stop myself from outright writing in cursive. I would, if I thought my cursive lettering was in any way legible. So I've settled into a sort of loopy print, using all of the little loops at the ends of letters that my Kindergarten teacher always called "monkey-tails" and my third grade teacher always called "childish". Well, whatever. My handwriting has become French-y and therefore requires no explanation. (And trust me, they really can't explain it to you.)
That is, however, only when I'm using a ball-point pen or a pencil. The second I try using one of the very popular fountain pens everyone seems to have here, my handwriting resembles the chicken scratch I used to have in sixth grade. I'm so incredibly glad we never turn in assignments, we just read answers out in class, because if I ever had to turn in my handwriting, they'd deport me. Nevertheless, I continue to write my notes with the fountain pen, in the hopes that someone other than me will be able to understand them someday.
Trust me, though, we take a lot of notes, and by the end of the year, I'll likely have made some improvement.
I suppose as long as we're talking about school supplies I should mention my organizer, which is the oddest and most convenient thing I've ever seen in my life. It's sort of like a binder, only it has about twelve different plastic tabs sticking out of the sides. When you pull back the cover, there's a whole bunch of sturdy plastic dividers connected to the binding. On the front cover is a bunch of little write-in windows next to each tab, where you write the names of your classes, and then you take your class papers, pull back the tab that corresponds to the correct class, and stick the paper in. It's almost like a file folder, except that the pieces of plastic aren't connected to each other, the whole thing opens like a book, with two pieces of elastic at each open corner to bind it together. Before I go home, I'm going to buy a new one for my senior year and use it in America. It's the most handy thing I've ever seen in my life.
Keeping on track with school supplies, here are a few more things no French kid would ever be without:
-A pencil case. This isn't necessarily true in my high school, but in other American high schools I've been told that carrying around little pencil cases can make your popularity suffer. Here, people look at you kind of funny if you don't have one of your own to put your miscellaneous writing utensils in.
-Ridiculous lined paper. This stuff is like graph paper on steroids. There are lines everywhere for absolutely no reason that I can figure out.
-Planners. Some of the cool factor in your planner is revived here in France because you buy it yourself, and therefore decide what you want it to look like. Some of the more expensive planners have a whole bunch of interesting things in them. The cover of mine is Harry Potter. (I saw a scary goth boy running around with a Hello Kitty planner in his bag.)
-Glue stick. I can't see that many people in America using this. It's more of a second grade thing for us, but for teenagers here, they're incredibly convenient for when you want to paste a handout into your notebook.
-About a million notebooks. Every single one of your classes must have its own notebook. It doesn't matter how incredibly insignificant the notes or how little you have that particular class: if you know you don't have that class a lot, you use a smaller notebook. Using loose paper is branding yourself a loser for eternity. Or something.
There are other classes that require more specific things, like a calculator in math, or your gym clothes for sport. And you have to bring your own gym clothes, there's no uniform. This sounds totally radical until you realize that there are no lockers in the whole school, and you're stuck lugging around a plastic bag filled with gym clothes every Tuesday.
Speaking of gym, though, you'll never guess what sport we're working on now. (I'm actually so convinced you'll never guess that I'm just going to tell you.) Rock climbing. The entire end wall of the school is littered with those stupid colored rocks. Last week was the tutorial for how not to kill yourself with your own harness and how not to kill your partner with the rope, and this week we actually got to try it.
My partner and I each got about three feet off the ground before agreeing that we were both incorrigibly terrified of heights. We snuck off to watch the jocks instead of actually doing anything. It was pretty fascinating, although my neck kind of hurt from looking up so much.
Turns out I really don't need to worry much about sport, though. I weighed myself this morning out of morbid curiosity (and also because I could swear none of my clothes were fitting anymore) and after doing some really tedious conversions, found out that I've lost twenty or twenty-five pound here. Jeans that were fitting perfectly a month ago now are too big by like five inches. I went and bought another pair yesterday, though I'm not sure if I like French jeans more than American ones. There's not much variety, it's either skinny jeans, or skinnier jeans. Ouch. Tight much?
Oh, and the toe situation is fantastic, as usual. He burned it again today. Ouch. All I can say is, if that man ever comes near me with a caustic chemical and says the word "Brûlée" (burn) again, I'm heading for the hills. France is not worth this, seriously. I'll go back to the land of painkillers and anesthetics in a heartbeat, don't think I won't. Back where chemicals are more theoretical than medical.
I'm torn between wishing I had more to write about and being incredibly thankful I don't. Coolest part of the day so far? I checked out the seventh Harry Potter book from the school library's English books section, because I knew I had to go to the doctor again today. The thought of holing up in my room reading it is making me way more excited than it should. Finally I can hold a book in my hands and not want to throw it against the wall for lack of comprehension! I almost did, with the first Harry Potter book. This morning I was reading it and every single name is different, it seems like. It's driving me up the walls trying to remember the difference between Filch (Rusard) and Snape (Rogue)...
~Josie Harris
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