Anna in Coutances: La Grève

So as you may of heard, France is striking. If you haven't heard, here's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/world/europe/20france.html?ref=europe

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Yesterday was our orientation meeting in Caen for all the English language assistants. Caen is usually an hour by train if I can get a direct one. Well, with the strike train service has been heavily interrupted so to make my 10am meeting I left my apartment at 6:20am. The SNCF website kept crashing because so many people were on it trying to look up the revised, limited schedules, leaving with the only option of going to the train station to find out. I got to the train station to find that there would be a "train" running at 7am to Lison and at Lison I could make the connection to Caen. Ok, it was my only option so I'd take it. I sat around until 6:50 or so and noticed everyone getting up and heading outside out the front doors of the station. Hmm, weird. I looked up at the departures board and realized that there were no platforms listed just "Autocar" for all of them. The train to Lison had been replaced by a coach bus.

Let me just tell you for a minute about how much I hate buses. They're fine in general if you know where you're going or what's happening, but other than that I hate them. On a subway or train, if you mess up what you're doing you just get off at the next stop and take the next train back in the other direction. Buses can easily change routes, miss people at stops and often don't have large stations with a ticket person to answer questions.

So I got on the bus, confirming with both driver and passengers that it was indeed going to Lison. The stars were still out and my breath was frozen though I started to warm up on the bus. On the bus long enough to just start feeling overheated and sick to be thrown out into the 0 C air at Lison. The strike had reduced service so greatly that at the stop after Coutances, St. Lo, about 10 people were turned away.

At the Lison train station I saw my roommate, Huimin who had left an hour earlier that morning to try to make for medical appointment for the immigration office in Cherbourg. Her train had been canceled and she was stuck waiting another hour and a half for the next one. Actual trains were running out of Lison, and being one of the first stops I was even able to get a seat.

I made it to Caen and even took the tram and found the high school where the orientation was rather easily.
It was pretty typical orientation stuff, mostly a mini lesson on how to teach and some ideas of how to work with the students. The more beneficial part was getting to meet all the other English speaking assistants for collège and lycée. Everyone was really nice and other people in small towns commiserated with with. I've also met some people who are a little closer to me, only 20 min on train or so, rather than trucking all the way into Caen or even further.

I was able to make it home, relatively easily in fact, though it did take me a good 2 hours.

This morning the strike continues as my first two classes have been canceled. We'll see what happens later today; the students (and some teachers, I believe) have set out a blockade in front of the school gates. Living in the school, it doesn't really affect or bother me when a class is canceled. I'm just hoping this strike business clears up in time for me to go on vacation Friday!

**Update I headed out to the grocery store this morning and for a walk seeing as classes weren't going to happen. On the way there I ended up seeing everyone gather for the demonstration and actually ended up on the back end of it all as I came back from the grocery store. The photos are from today.