Today I celebrate not being in the States for a whole month! I would say being in France for a month, but technically we didn't arrive in France until Saturday, though we left on Friday... but I wanted to celebrate now :)
This past week has gone faster than any before. I am realizing that that is a trend I should just acknowledge. As we get into the lifestyle here we don't feel the time passing NEARLY as much. Its actually pretty nice. We are getting stuff done and I am really feeling like I am a part of the school here.
Not a lot has happened this week. We went to school, went out at night and generally had a French week. We did go to a protest (or Manifestation as it is called here) which was a VERY French thing to do. It was SO crazy. We met at a square called Victoir with at least almost a thousand other students and marched with signs and banners and everything to this building where the main office of all the Universities in Bordeaux is and stood there and yelled. Then we marched to Hotel de Ville (City Hall) and stood there and yelled. Then a man came out and started to talk, all about how they heard what we wanted and they were still working it out. This didn't seem to please the people who actually knew what was going, so we all (the whole crowd of a couple of hundred people) sat down right there where we were standing. I assume that this was to show that we came to hear more, and so the man talked some more. I don't know what he was saying, since it was hard to hear and very foggy over the megaphone (not to mention he was using longer French words that I don't know). After a while the man stoped talking and we all got up. I thought that the people would just wander away, but appernently the Manifestation was not over. They all got back in a line and continued to march!
The main part of the manifestation being over, we decided to get on with our day, and so left the parade.
That was about it for the week. And Saturday I hope to go out with some people from my French class and see a few museums. We will be tourists together :)
I will let you know all about it :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Do you know what they were protesting?
ReplyDeleteIt had something to do with the teachers not having to take a test before coming teachers. If they don't have to take the test then there is no guarantee that they know what they are talking about. Plus, they are trying to make teaching competitive, apparently like in the states, and the students don't want that. So the crowd was a mix of students who value their education and teachers who don't want to have to fight to teach, if that makes sense.
ReplyDelete