les grèves:
during my very first week in france, i wake up in the morning to discover sacha and jean-louis having breakfast in the middle of the day, because sacha doesn't have school that day (or ever). apparently, there is a strike, and his elementary school teacher is marching in the manifestations, so no classes, all cartoons. jean-louis explains that the strike is about retirement ages, but he doesn't seem too worried, and i really have to go to the bank, so i shrug it off and head out the door. the main street, cours victor hugo, is completely blocked off as hundreds of bordelais brave the rain to fight for their right to play shuffleboard well into old age. (does shuffleboard exist in france? bocce is really popular except it differs from the american version in that one must skillfully avoid dog mess in the path as well.) after that, i don't really think of the strikes much, as they occur every couple of weeks and don't affect my daily life, save the tram schedule becoming a bit warped. but now the french are les grèvistes par excellence, because sarkozy is only listening to his financial ministry friends and not to the people. can you say french revolution part 2?
anyway, one day i decide to follow the protesters, that night at dinner i tell nathalie, and she bursts out laughing. she runs to turn on the television and i ask her why. she can hardly talk for laughing, and in between breaths she tells me that sans doute, i will make the bordeaux evening news as a blonde american student marching with every union in france. for some reason, i get emails from the student union at bordeaux 3. i think it was the first day of orientation, when i had to be at the university for 8am to sit in a giant amphitheatre with every other foreign exchange student that spoke very little french. i signed a paper for a student bookswap, so we wouldn't have to pay the bookstore prices. good idea, yes? at middlebury, this is a wonderful idea. we get about 1% back for what we paid, so if we can stick it to the man, as much as we can in a small liberal arts university in the middle of vermont, we do so. in france, book swap is synonymous with communism. i am now on the email list for the student communist groups, to which i have tried multiple times to unsubscribe, but am always told that someday, i might change my mind. this also, undoubtedly, blacklists me in the united states à la the days of mccarthyism. it will go on my permanent record, along with the times i got kicked out of a public library or didn't pay for parking at the beach. regardless. i am a bit offended, actually, when this list that i can never escape never tells me about the fact that the university will be blockaded in protest. excuse me? what? i don't actually know what blockaded means. i've studied may 1968 in paris, i've seen the pictures, yes. but blockades are a tactic used in the times before facebook and causes and celebrities who become goodwill ambassadors. blockades do not belong at the university. i brave the crowds at la victoire and fight my way onto the tram against the masses like it's the fourth of july at hampton beach and the tide is coming in. the tram is stopped every two seconds for the parades of strikers, but like a good student who participates in activities (read: i paid the 10 euro sports and activities fee and i INTEND to make it worth it, bordeaux 3...) i press on for the very important task of my yoga class.
yoga. in english: i either start cracking up laughing because the professor compares us to the forests surrounding campus, or i feel like i'm in labor as i'm trying to hold my breath in the left nostril and exhale in the right, or i end up slowly sliding away from whatever pose i'm supposed to be in and just hope that she doesn't use me as an example of chi gone terribly terribly wrong. in french, yoga is a task rivaling reading ancient greek literature in the dark while climbing mount kilamanjaro, without sherpas. the goal in yoga, first and foremost, is to relax. unless of course you're in hot yoga, in which case the goal is to sweat youself to death and pass out while standing on one foot wearing spandex. when yoga is in french, i cannot relax. instead, i am trying to understand the instructor, who has a strange accent, as if she learned french in a kajikistan military camp and then flew into bordeaux. she also thinks she's hilarious, and makes these little jokes to herself out loud and giggles incessantly, which i get approximately five minutes after, when it's no longer appropriate to laugh. i'm also trying to keep track of my breathing as well as the vocabulary for body parts that i never learned because bellybutton is a useless word. i also have no idea what i'm doing in terms of the poses, because they change every week, and even though i try to hide myself in the back, making it virtually undetectable that instead of meditating i am surreptitiously watching everyone around me to make sure i'm doing it right, because i am suave and graceful (i can't even believe i just typed such a heinous, boldfaced lie), there is a giant mirror facing us so we can better form our postures, read: watch the flamingo in the back as she tips over.
the good thing about yoga is that it is unaffected by the strikes. (i think if my professor's hair caught fire, she would also be unaffected, and make a joke about how her hair is particularly luminous today, a comment i will only understand after she is completely bald and resembles the dalai lama) because as i walk out of yoga, i see a most curious thing: all the academic buildings are empty, because there are chairs and desks stacked ten feet tall from the inside, blocking every entrance to the university. there are times in my life where i start laughing uncontrollably, because this is very obviously not real life (david at the dentist?). this is one of those times. except this time, it is real life, and after trying all the doors to the building and finding them all blockaded, i give up. (question: what in the world would provoke college students to get up very very early in the morning, sneak onto campus, and stack heavy things in front of multiple doors? answer: the terrifying prospect of having to work past 60, or if their effort in class is in any way indicative, the terrifying prospect of doing work at all) after coming all the way from my apartment in the center of bordeaux, to pessac, the suburb where the university is, i am 1. irritated for making the trip 2. excited at the prospect of a free day, the hopes of which are quickly dashed as i realise nothing is open because of the strikes, and 3. strangely relaxed, because of the yoga. i find that this curious mix of sentiments often sums up my life in france; for there are always little things (or big, blockaded things) that go wrong, or are so vastly different from life in the states that they annoy me, but somehow, nothing seems too insurmountable or complicated, for i am in france, and why waste my time getting frustrated when i can go for a run along the river? or drink mint tea next to a giant cathedral in the quartier st. michel? or find a boulangerie and wander the cobblestoned streets (always mindful of dog mess) munching on a baguette that will surely spoil my dinner? if i have learned one thing in france, it is that everything eventually works out. nothing stays the same for very long, so there's no use stressing about it when everything turns out right in the end. tout va bien.
