Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Strikes!
France is known for its strikes and I have been lucky enough to see a number of them and to generally not to be affected by them. A lot of public universities in France are on strike right now in opposition to Sarkozy and his proposed education reforms.
Here is a video of the occupation of my school my other University's students. This was of past Tuesday, and yesterday there was another small demonstration in front of my school.
However, despite these strikes and occupations I have seen, Paris strikes are apparently not as intense anymore. (click here).
Here is a video of the occupation of my school my other University's students. This was of past Tuesday, and yesterday there was another small demonstration in front of my school.
However, despite these strikes and occupations I have seen, Paris strikes are apparently not as intense anymore. (click here).
Monday, March 23, 2009
Music -- Kristina Emmott
Yes, a second post today. I just wanted to put in a link here to my friends new CD "Words Take Flight". CLICK HERE. Kristina Emmott is a friend from Burnaby, and she is releasing her first CD in early May!! I got to see her perform live a few times last summer and I really enjoyed it. She plays the guitar, writes her own songs and is talented at both. Three of her songs on the site are serious while the fourth one, the Chocolate Song is a must listen for all chocolate lovers :) . For her CD release party, my friend Chika is one of the openers, some of you know her I believe. Anyhow, enjoy!
Tourist Week Part 2
So, to pick up where I left off. The Strike really had no effect on me or most people at all. I will write about Strikes here later, there were a few amusing things about this one in the end, including my school being occupied by students from other universities.
On Friday I had class ALL day, as usual. So, skip to that evening, we went to a Spanish dinner where we had homemade Guspatcho (is that how you spell it), and Paella with Calamarie. It was alright, but I always find that Calamari has an odd odd texture.
On Saturday we went to Chartres to see its big Cathedral. It turned out to be a group trip out there with 6 of us going. It was really nice a cute town. In the evening we wanted to go to a Jazz club, but ended up listening to blues music at a random place on Rue Mouffetard which is a street lined with restaurants and bars in the Latin Quarter.
On Sunday we just had enough time to wake up, go to the Catacombs, walk through Jardin de Luxemburg and do a bit of shopping before Gloria had to leave to catch her flight. It was really nice having her, and my place here feels empty now. However, I will not be alone long since this upcoming weekend I will be going to Lyon again for the CRIT which is a large sports tournament between all the IEPs in France. And then soon after that I have spring break, and then my mom and Geoffrey and Brittany are coming!
My time in Paris is decreasing fast! But, I would not say that time is really flying super fast. The past week felt like a couple weeks. I am doing so much here that time seems really long in many ways. I just got my final exam schedule and I will be done courses as of the 23rd of June. This means that I will have 76 days of Summer break. I hope to stay in Europe until the 1st week of August (I need to now rebook my flight), and then come home and have about a month there. This should give me enough time to organize my stuff and go to Hornby for a bit before I start school there. Geoffrey and my Dad are also planning to come to Europe this summer so I may get to see them for a while. I hope that Geoffrey will travel with me for a week or so and we can visite a city together. My dad is going to Europe mid August, so I may be home before then and have a couple days to see him before he flies off. As everyone is planning their summers I feel less anxious to come home quickly since many of my friends will be away until the end of August as it is.
On Friday I had class ALL day, as usual. So, skip to that evening, we went to a Spanish dinner where we had homemade Guspatcho (is that how you spell it), and Paella with Calamarie. It was alright, but I always find that Calamari has an odd odd texture.
On Saturday we went to Chartres to see its big Cathedral. It turned out to be a group trip out there with 6 of us going. It was really nice a cute town. In the evening we wanted to go to a Jazz club, but ended up listening to blues music at a random place on Rue Mouffetard which is a street lined with restaurants and bars in the Latin Quarter.
On Sunday we just had enough time to wake up, go to the Catacombs, walk through Jardin de Luxemburg and do a bit of shopping before Gloria had to leave to catch her flight. It was really nice having her, and my place here feels empty now. However, I will not be alone long since this upcoming weekend I will be going to Lyon again for the CRIT which is a large sports tournament between all the IEPs in France. And then soon after that I have spring break, and then my mom and Geoffrey and Brittany are coming!
My time in Paris is decreasing fast! But, I would not say that time is really flying super fast. The past week felt like a couple weeks. I am doing so much here that time seems really long in many ways. I just got my final exam schedule and I will be done courses as of the 23rd of June. This means that I will have 76 days of Summer break. I hope to stay in Europe until the 1st week of August (I need to now rebook my flight), and then come home and have about a month there. This should give me enough time to organize my stuff and go to Hornby for a bit before I start school there. Geoffrey and my Dad are also planning to come to Europe this summer so I may get to see them for a while. I hope that Geoffrey will travel with me for a week or so and we can visite a city together. My dad is going to Europe mid August, so I may be home before then and have a couple days to see him before he flies off. As everyone is planning their summers I feel less anxious to come home quickly since many of my friends will be away until the end of August as it is.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tourist week
Hello everyone,
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of updating! I need to restart, so I shall. What is new in France? A BIT, not so much.
From what is new with me personally: I have a friend from Vancouver staying with me this week, Gloria (find her Travel blog on my blog list). It has been fun doing a lot touristy things here with her. On sunday when she arrived we did a walking tour with NewEurope. The tour is free (donations collected at the end), and good! It is the same tour company that I did my Berlin walking tour with. Then on Monday we went walking through the Marais. The Marais is the Jewish part of Paris (and the Gay part), so we had a bit of a Jewish day. I attempted to have a Jewish day a couple weeks ago, which was a complete failure since it was a Saturday... Shabbat... so everything Jewish was closed. Anyhow, this Monday we had no problems and went around shopping, eating Falafel, ect. My friend's knowledge of Hebrew got us a free Falafel sample too! Language skills come in handy at very random times.
Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day) we went to the ballet in the evening. It was the "Troisieme Symphonie de Mahler". It was at the Opera Bastille, one of the big opera houses in Paris. We arrive at the Opera at 710, and the show was at 730, and we did not have tickets. So, we went to the last minute line up, which only sells tickets 15 min before the show, so we were actually on time! We got great seats (5th row, fairly central), for 15 euros, a great deal. The show was amazing! There were about 70 dancers accompanied by an orchestra and an opera soloist.
Yesterday we went to Versaille, which is fabulous! It is huge, we spent 7 hours walking around and just got the basic stuff visited. With my bus pass here I get free entry, so that was nice. Also, being mid-week and low season we did not experience huge lineups like many do. We took lots of pictures and shall post some here soon. At one point we asked an asian man to take our photo, and after he asked us to take one... but he pulled back the camera and handed it to his friend, he meant to take the photo WITH us, not of him. It was a great day which ended at LaRotisserie, a restaurant in Belleville which is run by a different NGO each night to raise money, the idea is neat, the food was OK, but the company was awesome as I met back up with the people I traveled with to Morocco.
Today has been chill; I went to school and am now catching up on unreplied emails and some homework. The city is on Strike today and there are big manifestations all over town. The past few weeks have been funny in that sense... pretty much all the Universities here are on strike here (not including mine, since it is an Institution and not a public University). However, we now have to present our student cards when entering the building due to apparent thefts (but I am not sure that is the real reason). I bet they lose more money hiring the security guards than they would in stolen goods. Ironically the school got occupied Tuesday afternoon by protestors who came in through a back entrance. I am not exactly sure what that all was about, but they are gone now. Some of my friends at other Universities here have been very affected by the Strikes and I have heard stories of students returning home, since their semester is already as good as a loss with their courses being suspended now for over a month. France is definatly living up to its repupation for having a lot of strikes and protests.
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of updating! I need to restart, so I shall. What is new in France? A BIT, not so much.
From what is new with me personally: I have a friend from Vancouver staying with me this week, Gloria (find her Travel blog on my blog list). It has been fun doing a lot touristy things here with her. On sunday when she arrived we did a walking tour with NewEurope. The tour is free (donations collected at the end), and good! It is the same tour company that I did my Berlin walking tour with. Then on Monday we went walking through the Marais. The Marais is the Jewish part of Paris (and the Gay part), so we had a bit of a Jewish day. I attempted to have a Jewish day a couple weeks ago, which was a complete failure since it was a Saturday... Shabbat... so everything Jewish was closed. Anyhow, this Monday we had no problems and went around shopping, eating Falafel, ect. My friend's knowledge of Hebrew got us a free Falafel sample too! Language skills come in handy at very random times.
Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day) we went to the ballet in the evening. It was the "Troisieme Symphonie de Mahler". It was at the Opera Bastille, one of the big opera houses in Paris. We arrive at the Opera at 710, and the show was at 730, and we did not have tickets. So, we went to the last minute line up, which only sells tickets 15 min before the show, so we were actually on time! We got great seats (5th row, fairly central), for 15 euros, a great deal. The show was amazing! There were about 70 dancers accompanied by an orchestra and an opera soloist.
Yesterday we went to Versaille, which is fabulous! It is huge, we spent 7 hours walking around and just got the basic stuff visited. With my bus pass here I get free entry, so that was nice. Also, being mid-week and low season we did not experience huge lineups like many do. We took lots of pictures and shall post some here soon. At one point we asked an asian man to take our photo, and after he asked us to take one... but he pulled back the camera and handed it to his friend, he meant to take the photo WITH us, not of him. It was a great day which ended at LaRotisserie, a restaurant in Belleville which is run by a different NGO each night to raise money, the idea is neat, the food was OK, but the company was awesome as I met back up with the people I traveled with to Morocco.
Today has been chill; I went to school and am now catching up on unreplied emails and some homework. The city is on Strike today and there are big manifestations all over town. The past few weeks have been funny in that sense... pretty much all the Universities here are on strike here (not including mine, since it is an Institution and not a public University). However, we now have to present our student cards when entering the building due to apparent thefts (but I am not sure that is the real reason). I bet they lose more money hiring the security guards than they would in stolen goods. Ironically the school got occupied Tuesday afternoon by protestors who came in through a back entrance. I am not exactly sure what that all was about, but they are gone now. Some of my friends at other Universities here have been very affected by the Strikes and I have heard stories of students returning home, since their semester is already as good as a loss with their courses being suspended now for over a month. France is definatly living up to its repupation for having a lot of strikes and protests.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Printemps in Paris
It is not quite spring, another week and a half, but at least the weather here is starting to look promising! 
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
CREPS
This past weekend I was at CREPS near Lille, it is a sports training facility. Some people live there and train, and at other times sports teams go there together for a weekend, a week or longer to train. About 90 people from my school all went together. It was very interesting, the culture there, for a non-French student. The whole group had a lot of songs they new. Some of these songs are old traditional French drinking and sports songs, while others are ones made up by previous students themselves. They are nearly all very vulgar though needless to say. At one point on the bus everyone started singing and chanting... I had no idea what was going on... but soon enough I did as a guy walked up the bus, and not too far ahead of me proceeded to completely strip down. I was lucky to be on the back side, but apparently this behaviour is normal here, and on the other bus a lot of people got naked to different degrees.
The actual sports training was pretty intense. We woke up at 730 am and kept playing until about 1am with breaks only for eating and a big (and intense) Rock/Paper/Scissors tournament. It was a lot of fun though and gave the teams a chance to bond.
Next Thurday my volleyball team has to go down to Lyon to play a game for the Championnat de France. And at the end of the month we will play in the CRIT -- which is a HUGE (re.3000 people) sports tournament between the IEPs around France. Wish us luck!
The actual sports training was pretty intense. We woke up at 730 am and kept playing until about 1am with breaks only for eating and a big (and intense) Rock/Paper/Scissors tournament. It was a lot of fun though and gave the teams a chance to bond.
Next Thurday my volleyball team has to go down to Lyon to play a game for the Championnat de France. And at the end of the month we will play in the CRIT -- which is a HUGE (re.3000 people) sports tournament between the IEPs around France. Wish us luck!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
