3 Strikes, you're French!

Well, welcome to France. Today marked the first day of the Transportation union strike. That means that out of 700 trains of the metro, only 48 will run. Those 48 are automatically run and don't need drivers. This is apparently some sort of attention getter for the new conservative French president, Sarkozy. What stikes me as odd (no pun intended) is that the strike comes BEFORE any sort of negotiations have taken place. Not only that, it's planned weeks in advance and everyone is made aware of it. I thought one of the purposes of a strike is to inconvenience people so that they know of the impact that the "strikers" make. Not the case here. I've known for a while of today's events.

Because of my awareness, I brought my camera along and left ten minutes early to take Zac to school. In case of a potential chaotic moment, I wanted to capture it. I've seen strikes, but never one that affects so many people. I mean, the street sweepers had a strike, but some of us can bear a dirty city for a day. However, transportation - wow.

When I was walking over to the family's flat, I bumped into Isabelle, Verena, and Balthazar. Isabelle was laughing about the strike and said "Welcome to France. Two things are very common in France - lice and strikes!" Oh yeah, did I mention that Barth and Verena had lice this week?

Zac and I set out early on our trottinettes. I hope I am spelling that right because it's a new word for me. There were SO many people out walking. Some were on rollerblades, some on bikes, many on foot. It was kind of nice to see so many people. No one seemed really grumpy, which I expected. If you are expecting a strike, I guess it gives a person time to prepare and adjust.

We finally made it to his school on time, even a little early. I found that it is faster by foot and trottinette, than it is by metro. Something to think about for the future. I had planned to go to class today. After further thought, travelling miles on a little trottinette convinced me otherwise. You guessed it, I missed ANOTHER class. I feel like a total slacker, but each time it has been completely out of my control.

Since I had a little extra time, I took the long way back home, hoping to get some pics. I managed to grab a few, as well as some great ones of Invalides, which will be in a later posting.

You can click on each picture to see a larger view. Then you can see how many people are actually doing their morning commute by foot, bike, or car.




I went home and began to upload my photos. I fell asleep while doing so. I climbed up into bed around 9:30 and woke up at 2:00. I didn't even set my alarm because I knew that I needed as much sleep as I could get. I struggled for an hour to wake up. In and out of consciousness. It was heavenly.

Upon waking, I checked out the news to find out that the strike would extend through Friday as well. GREAT! I would once again have to miss my French through Songs class. I wonder what that class is all about. After collecting Zac, we raced back to the house. I realized once we arrived, Helena, the housekeeper, was not there. She couldn't make it since she lives just outside of Paris and couldn't find a way to work. That meant that I had double duty. Not only that, but ooShop delivered. That is the internet grocery store that delivers an obscene amount of groceries to the flat. Obscene amount, you ask? Hmmm how about 10 bottles of orange juice, five packets of sandwich meat, thirteen tubs of butter, 24 bottles of sparkling water, 8 liters of milk, a dozen cracked eggs that leaked all over the rest of the groceries, snacks GALORE, ten bottles of body wash, and on and on. So I was a little exhausted after having to put all of that away, cleaning the flat, and cooking a new meal (curry chicken with Mediterranean rice). It actually turned out well. Let's hope tomorrow gives me a little bit of a breather.