Black Thursday? More like grey… January 29, 2009

Well today was meant to be a day of massive disruption and protest, but like Adrian in Angers, it seemed a bit of an anticlimax. Up at campus I certainly didn’t noticed any difference apart from it being a bit quieter with fewer people coming up for lectures. I know there was a big march organised starting from the Maison de la Culture in the afternoon, so perhaps it seemed like more was going on in town. I did see a few buses up at campus when I’d expected none, and indeed looking on the Ametis website they claimed to be providing 80% of normal services today.
The Paris airports didn’t seem to shut down totally, apart from AirFrance flights of which about 40% were cancelled, and instead were only registering delays of up to an hour, this partly due to problems with fog as well. SNCF services varied throughout the country; while Eurostar, Thalys and other international trains remained unaffected, the TGV was completely cancelled and TER and Corail intercity trains at 30-50% of normal service. Some parts of the Paris metro and RER were running as normal, while the majority dropped to half or 3/4 of normal service.
For French speakers, here is a very comprehensive report from France 2: Grèves et Manifestations en France For the English speakers, here is the BBC’s report; Huge Crowds Join French Strikes

Other areas of industry were also on strike but to a lesser extent and effect. The one other main area to be affected other than transport was the education system. Two of my three lectures were cancelled today, and many lecturers who would have been willing to continue lectures gave up because their students weren’t able to travel to them. For those in the education sector, this day of striking follows on from the one in November, in continuing protest against reforms and the elimination of 13,500 jobs announced for the coming year. I got a flyer tucked into my door this week from the UNEF student syndicat, mainly to encourage support for today’s strike but also outlining their general opposition to the changes. In summary, they are against: funding reforms, elimination of the post “teacher/researcher”, the “masters” level extension of teacher training

Campaign Image from UNEF.fr

(which will exclude those who cannot afford another 2 years at university), and the general cutbacks in the number of jobs in the education sector. They are for: an emergency plan for young people at the bottom of the employment ladder, a national diploma system and for it to be recognised by employers, and deep reforms in the university system so it returns to behaving like a public service. The flyer is emblazoned with bold statements such as “The death of the public university”, “We will not be a sacrificed generation!” and “In the strike there is a dream.” For those in the education sector then, this is a bigger fight than they can win in one day. To that end, many lecturers are suspending their lectures indefinitely from Monday, unless they see changes being made in their favour. Many of the student body are also taking part, both by raising awareness, taking their own campaign to the government and by not attending lectures themselves, in solidarity with the lecturers. In theory this suspension of lectures could go on for weeks, and with no time to recover lectures lost before the exam period, the exams could be very simple indeed! In practice, it will probably only last a week or two at most, and in fact only one of my lecturers has so far announced his participation in the strike, accounting for 4.5 hours of my timetable. Another 5 hours could potentially also go, but I have yet to find out about those. Six of my lecturers have either not mentioned it, or expressly said they will be continuing their classes.

Anyway, enough about the strikes! The hockey match I went to on Tuesday night was certainly a new experience – I did enjoy it even though I’m not really much of one for sports, and even found myself getting quite caught up in cheering Amiens on. The match was the Amiens Gothiques vs. the Briançon Red Devils, and unfortunately the Devils won 4-3. We were all surprised how long we were there; the match started just after 8 and we didn’t leave until about 10.30, because although each match is three sessions of 20 minutes each, the clock stops frequently when the puck goes out of play or an offense is committed. It wasn’t too violent, there were lots of collisions and slamming into the walls, and the refs have to keep hopping out of the way of the players and puck, but there were no proper fights, just some facing off after a collision that the refs quickly dissipated. When Amiens scored a goal for the first time, we all had a laugh because these four pink tube streamers popped up from the corners of the rink with GOAL!! emblazoned on them, the crowd was cheering and blaring horns and on top of that they have a special victory tune they play whenever they score! They do seem to take it quite seriously; there were lots of people in costume or with team shirts, or with face paint, and there was one corner in particular that chanted and sang encouragement and songs for the entire game. The tickets were only 8 euros and I’d definitely go again, it’s something I could get into! I took some pictures, most are on Facebook but I’ll post a couple of the best here.

On the Ice and Preparing to Strike January 27, 2009

Just been quietly ticking over the last couple of days; getting more work done mostly. I finished La Double Inconstance and did two pieces of Spanish translation. I might get some more grammar work tomorrow but other than that my only work will be to write up my Spanish and Medieval French grammar notes. I was quite suprised by La Double Inconstance; I wouldn’t have thought that a text chosen for degree level study would be so short or so boring. Even as short plays go, this one must take the biscuit for least amount of action. In fact there is no action; the entire play is made up of scenes in which various combinations of the six characters discuss love and who is going to marry who. Silvia and Arlequin are the lovers at the beginning of the play, but the Prince wants to marry Silvia. She is adamant she won’t leave Arlequin so while Flaminia and Lisette, two women of the court, try to alternately talk round Silvia and seduce Arlequin, Trivelin the Prince’s man also tries to talk Arlequin into leaving Silvia and accepting the Prince’s honours for doing so. There is a slight twist in that Silvia had already met and sort of loved the Prince but she didn’t know he was the prince. In the end they do get married, and Arlequin marries Flaminia. But there really is no action, it’s just pure dialogue. Anyway it’s not the most complicated plot to get my head round so studying it shouldn’t be too taxing.

I also went skating on Sunday, by myself because no one else was particularly in the mood to come. It wasn’t too busy but I only went for just over an hour, just to get back into the swing of it. I do intend on going regularly now I have my skates so I can work on things gradually rather than trying to pack in as much as possible because I don’t know when I’ll next be on the rink, as I’ve done in the past. Tonight I’m actually going to an ice hockey match at the rink with some of the Cardiff group. I’ve never been to one before so I was reading up on the rules of the game this afternoon so I at least have half an idea what’s going on. I’ll try to take some pictures and upload them soon, probably not tomorrow because that’s my busy day of lectures.

Then comes Thursday….or Black Thursday as the press here have dubbed it. There is going to be a major national strike on Thursday, and it’s going to cause havoc. The basic list of people and organisations on strike include; the SNCF national rail company, RATP Paris transport company, other urban transport companies, the postal service, civil servants, the Bank of France and other banks, EDF and GDF the two national energy companies, France Telecom the national communications company, educational staff, hospital staff, the airports, construction industry, magistrates and national radio and television companies. Retired people and unemployed people are also welcome to join the strike, which is to protest against “damaging reforms to employment and salaries” brought in by Sarkozy, and their belief that the government is not doing enough to help unemployed and vulnerable people in the economic crisis.  7/10 French people have declared themselves in support of the strike according to a survey by Le Parisien. It will certainly fire a shot across the bows of the government because one day without all of those services will bring France to a grinding halt, and the strikers will succeed in sending the strong message of “you can’t ignore us; look what happens when we aren’t here.” I admire them for being able to coordinate something of this scale; I don’t think an equivalent demonstration could ever happen in the UK, but it is ironic when you think that in France they still, despite any reforms, have some of the best working conditions of any industrialised country, and yet they still aren’t happy about it. I just hope that it’s all over by the weekend because otherwise it’ll write off my birthday weekend in Paris. More to follow on Thursday….

A Night Out and A Day In January 24, 2009

A few different things make up today’s post; firstly I’ve booked my flights home for the February holiday. As it happens I’m going home rather than to Keele now, which is a shame in a way as I won’t get to experience Keele with all my friends still there again, as when I go back in September the majority will have moved on and graduated. Ah well, these things happen. Instead I will get another week at home and some more time with friends and family there.

Last night I went out with Alice, Joe, and Joe’s visiting girlfriend for dinner and drinks, partly as a catch-up and partly to distract me from recent events in my personal life. The others (Katie, Vicky and Oli) are in the UK at the moment for various reasons, so it was just the four of us. We ate at Steak Easy, an American-style restaurant, and then went for drinks at My Goodness, a (predictably) Irish pub. My Goodness is a favourite student haunt in Amiens, especially among Erasmus students but although I’d heard alot about it this was the first time I’d made it there! A pint of their cider is expensive, but very good! Unfortunately I slightly overate at Steak Easy and the cider didn’t help my stomach any so I wasn’t feeling 100% to appreciate it fully. Next time! Overall it was a good night out and made a nice change from the quiet and early nights to bed I’ve been having recently.

In contrast today was a quiet day in; spent catching up on sleep this morning and then ploughing through some work this afternoon. I did 150 sentences of Spanish grammar exercises and then followed that up with reading the first Act of a play; La Double Inconstance (Marivaux) that I need to study for Wednesday. There are only three acts so I should be able to read it and the prologue and “keys to the text” section that accompany it as well. This is for the Litterature: Theatre module that I’m taking, for which we study three plays in all. Once they arrive in the post I also need to start studying the three works of poetry for the Litterature Comparée: Poesie module, which are Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Horace’s Odes and Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal”. Heavy stuff! I do admit to finding some amusement at the lecturer’s pronuciation of English place names and other words in her introduction about Shakespeare on Friday, but I shouldn’t really – my French probably sounds funny to them! In a strange coincidence, the unsuitability of the French language to rock music was brought up in the lecture and then again today in a BBC article Dad sent me the link to; New Lingua Franca Upsets French. In the lecture she used the example of French rock groups singing in English because the French language doesn’t suit the cadence or style of rock music as a contemporary example of the reason Latin poets didn’t ever consider writing in the style of Greek poets; because the Latin language was not seen as able to fit the cadence of Greek poems. As it happened Horace was the only poet to adapt the Greek style to Latin. The article brings up the example of rock music as an example of the insinuation of English into French culture (something which is generally resisted and resented!) While I don’t agree with all the points made in the article I do think the concept of English being tripped up in it’s global spread by a business-pidgin version is quite interesting.

Anyway one final link for today! While the weather here in Amiens finally seems to have calmed down, the south west of France and north of Spain are bearing the brunt of a rather more severe battering, with devastating consequences; European Storm Death Toll Mounts

Late to lectures… January 22, 2009

However it wasn’t me who was late to my lectures – it was the lecturer! It is getting a bit ridiculous really. I’d noticed it before now but this week especially seems to have been a bumper week for late lecturers. About half of the ones I’ve had so far turned up 5 minutes late but the winner by far was today’s Litterature Comparée lecturer, who arrived FIFTEEN minutes late for the lecture! In the UK the students would have left by then, but no one really seemed to take much notice of his lateness. In contrast, incidentally, if a student walks in that late they are usually greeted by a snide remark and a pointed silence while they take their seat before the lecturer continues. This lecturer didn’t even offer an apology or explanation as to why he turned up so late, and then proceeded to ask me and two other girls seated near the back to move further down so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. He wouldn’t have had to anyway, given that this was a small lecture hall. To cap things off he rounded up the lecture half an hour before the end, because he thought it was only an hour long. It was only when he saw our collective confusion that he realised it wasn’t time to end, and carried on. I do wonder how anyone gets a degree around here. Oh yes, and the teachers as well as most of the rest of the country are on strike next Thursday. More about that when it happens.

Apart from that most of my lectures have run fairly smoothly so far this week. There is an American girl in my Litterature: Theatre class who I have yet to talk to properly, but I intend to next week. I’m not sure if she’s part of the same group that I ran into before or not. The lecturer for the Theatre course is interesting; he’s obviously very passionate about his subject. Both the lecture and the TD we had this week got quite philosophical at times and he kept returning to a point he holds emphatically; that studying theatre as literature is a paradox because theatre is an active concept; you can study the text but you can’t study theatre, because theatre is an in-the-moment, temporary representation of a text. Indeed. He also made a very big point of naming us the future teachers, practitioners and safeguarders of French culture. He listed the top ten plays of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and asked who had read them; most people had read half or less. He asked about Harold Pinter and the fact that he was met with mostly blank stares nicely illustrated his point that if we, literature and theatre students, don’t know the name and who he was, how is the wider world supposed to remember his contribution? He asked us to guess the percentage of the population who had been to see a play at least once in the year 2008; most guessed around 20%, but it was actually 3%, down from 6% the previous year. He was also very interested to see how many of us were active practitioners of theatre at any level. It was clear that he was trying to stir up some cultural pride as well as intellectual interest, and in general in the Lettres courses it is implicit that the students have chosen those courses because they have a personal interest in becoming scholars in the literary and cultural fields, not just because they need a degree in order to go and get a job. It’s been a while since I’ve studied equivalent courses in England but I would be surprised if the same emphasis is put on learning cultural heritage and safeguarding it’s future as it is here, rather than on learning in order to pass exams.

Back to routine January 20, 2009

I have managed to put a timetable together over the last two days with relative ease. This semester I’ll be doing 8 modules and 20.5 hours a week instead of the 6 modules and 16.5 hours of last semester. I’ve picked 5 from a mainly french degree of Lettres modernes, I’m continuing with the same two Spanish modules I took last semester and I’m only doing one small science module which requires just one trip to town for a 2 hour lecture each week, and there’s no lab time. I’m much happier with this set up as I really struggled with the science last year and felt very out of depth in the lab sessions. There are no stupid days on my timetable either; although most of it is towards the end of the week; only 2 hours each on Monday and Tuesday, 7.5 hours on Wednesday and then 3.5 and 5.5 on Thursday and Friday, I do have time for lunch between lectures every day except Friday, which will be a snack on the bus back from town in the morning and then a late lunch at 2.30. Monday and Tuesday afternoons are also free to do laundry or other things which don’t get done at the weekends.

I have managed to keep most of my Spanish groups the same as well, because while the rest of my timetable changed that one didn’t, so there was a risk my new modules would not fit with my old groups. I am still in the same translation groups as Marion, which is good, and I’ve also managed to keep my comprehension group the same which is useful because I’d already put down a date and subject for an oral presentation which may otherwise have had to change. The only one I couldn’t avoid changing was the grammar TD group, which is tomorrow at 2 instead of at 4, but hopefully this won’t cause too much of a problem. I hope not anyway because I can’t make any of the other groups and otherwise I won’t be able to take the module.

I got chatting to a group of American students today in the Lettres faculty building; I went to see what I could juggle around in my timetable and they were putting theirs together. I overheard them talking, trying to figure it out and went to see if they needed help because I remember I found it very confusing at first! It’s amazing the difference a few months makes actually; the first time I was searching out timetables I didn’t know where to go or where to look, I couldn’t figure out which semester board I was meant to be looking at and then the timetables made no sense. For a start half the course titles were different to what I thought I was looking for, then I didn’t know what CM and TD meant, and which of various possible groups I was meant to attend……in all it was very confusing! Not surprising really that I ended up missing out some lectures. Anyway I cleared some things up for them, but it sounds like they’ll get it figured out. Most of them are living either in Bailly like me or in Thil down the road, and since they’re taking classes from the same faculty as me it’s quite likely we’ll run into each other again.

The rest of this week is just back to routine really; lectures are back in full swing with the exception of some of the short modules which get started in February. I need to do a normal week with this timetable to make sure no problems crop up, get a couple of queries resolved and then I can send my revised paperwork to Keele so they know what I’m up to. Technically they could not approve it and tell me to do something different, like more science, but in reality if they want me to get near 60 credits for the year that isn’t possible. Ceri seemed to OK the idea of doing mostly French when she came to visit last year anyway so I’m certainly not expecting them to object. I will probably try and go skating at the weekend since I managed to bring my skates back from home, and hopefully catch up with the Cardiff lot who I haven’t seen since a week before the Christmas break, which makes about a month now. Then next week will tick around and we’ll be well into the lecture routine, followed by a super weekend in Paris for my birthday! Can’t wait!

New Year, New Outlook January 18, 2009

Well, another week rolls around and I’ve switched countries again! Last week’s jump back home to Cornwall went smoothly, and I really enjoyed having that extra time. The Christmas holidays went far too quickly and when I came back for exams I really didn’t feel ready to leave.  Now I feel better and am looking forward and up towards the months ahead.

I’m even getting used to the travelling! It doesn’t seem like so much of a journey any more, and I don’t end up so tired at the end of it. I noticed a big difference getting the TGV to the airport rather than the normal system; it seemed much quicker even with the bus transfer from Amiens taken into consideration. You don’t notice the speed of the train while you’re on it, but while I was waiting in the station a few others passed through without stopping and that was impressive! It made me jump the first time, because I heard a low rumbling but didn’t know what it was, then suddenly there was a WOOSH and this train was screaming through the station, literally screaming from the noise of the wind and the tracks. Three seconds of blur later, and it’s gone. In future I will look at getting the TGV first when I book flights, but they aren’t as frequent as the normal trains so sometimes I will be back to the slow system, just so I get to the airport when I want to rather than waiting around for hours, which is boring. On the way back to Amiens yesterday I was on the normal train, because I hadn’t booked a return TGV and it was a choice of waiting at the airport until the 11.37 TGV or slowly making my way to Paris Nord for an 11.37 train.

As my post title suggests, my outlook has changed and is brighter than before Christmas. This time I haven’t felt the same depression that previous returns to Amiens have brought, and instead I am looking forward to the months ahead. I’m sure that in part this is due to the fact I know I only have a few weeks between “home” events; the first being my 21st birthday weekend in a fortnight, when Dad, Mum and Alan will be flying over and we’re spending the weekend in Paris. Then after that it’s only three weeks until the February half-term holiday, for which I am likely to go to Keele as I did for Toussaint. After that there will be a 6 or 7-week stretch to the Easter holidays. Technically it’s 7 weeks, but the week before the holidays there is a 4-day weekend due to Easter weekend jour fériés falling on the Friday and Monday, resulting in only a 4-day week until the holiday. Combined with the fact that most courses finished their lectures early before the Christmas holidays, I think this makes it likely that in practice the Easter holidays will start a week earlier than scheduled. Then I’ll have about a month at home before returning for a few weeks of final assessment.

So suddenly it doesn’t seem so long until the year is over! There are other factors that are helping to make me feel more confident than before; my money is holding out well and having lived here for a semester I have a better idea of how far it stretches, so I know now that I can afford to take a weekend break or two between February half term and Easter if necessary. Also I am feeling more settled here in general; it still doesn’t feel like home, or even like being at Keele, but it doesn’t feel so alien as it did at first. And I have a new laptop! This is because I spilt coffee on my old one and the keyboard stopped working. A home repair attempt didn’t appear to work so on Friday (my last day in the UK) I hopped the train to Plymouth to go and buy a new one. It’s fortunate that we now have an Apple retailer within striking distance otherwise I would have had to buy online and wait! As it turned out, when I got home and started transferring files the keyboard on my old laptop appeared to be coming back to life. In the process of drying it the day before we’d melted some of the key tops, but if I can find replacements and it turns out it is working again I will either sell it or keep it as a spare. Anyway, having a new machine has given me peace of mind because I can be more confident than I was with the old one (especially after its November tantrum) that it won’t give out on me while I’m here.

The weather here has changed from cold and snowy to wet and windy; the wind has been howling round the shutter since yesterday and the rain is forecast all week. I appreciate the rise in temperature but I’m not impressed with all the rain! Tomorrow I have to go round and collect up my various bits of timetable and then try to create something that gives me sufficient ECTS credits and is actually possible to attend. This semester it’s likely I’m going to be taking mostly modules from the licence Lettres Modernes, which is mainly French language and literature. Hopefully I can also continue with the Spanish modules I took last semester and I won’t have to change groups. If there’s any space left in the timetable after that I will see if I can get some token science modules to fit, but it’s a problem because of factoring in travel to and from town. Once that’s done it’s back to normal routine of lectures for a few weeks!

La Neige! January 8, 2009

Well this week has seen the first proper snow in Amiens. This picture was taken on Monday morning when it had just started falling; in the end we had about four times this much snow on the ground and despite sunny days it’s still there and only just starting to melt away, thanks to low temperatures. The lowest was about -11 C but we’re now creeping back up to the plus figures, if only just! The sunshine during the day and people walking on it turned the snow on paths and streets into slush, then the night time lows froze it again so the general effect was a skating rink! Some grit has been thrown down but not enough, and it made walking through town lots of fun, especially on the normally-already-slippy smooth paved streets.

This week has been a non-stop whirlwind of exams; I started revising on Sunday and had 5 exams (totalling 12 hours) over the course of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On the whole I feel they went quite well despite limited revision, one advantage was that usually I had all the material fresh in my mind when I went to the exam. I was particularly pleased with the Techniques d’analyses biochimiques exam because I expected that to be a total disaster, and in fact felt I could answer most of it ok. I hope to have passed them all, I would be surprised if I failed the french or spanish papers because I thought they were quite good. I have not sat my organic chemistry exam because that clashed with a french exam and the tutor for the course hasn’t got back to me about rearranging it yet. To be honest it’s no great loss because I would categorically fail it anyway and I’m unlikely to total 60 credits for the year at any rate, just because there aren’t enough hours in the timetable.

So having finished with exams, and with the timetables for semester two not yet published (and aren’t likely to be until Monday 19th knowing this system as I now do!) I’m off back home tomorrow evening for an extra week of holiday. I have booked a TGV ticket for the first time, so instead of taking the slow train from Amiens to Paris Nord and then the RER to Charles de Gaulle airport, I will be getting a shuttle bus from Amiens to TGV Haute Picardie station, then the TGV which goes directly to the airport. I then just have to switch terminals on the airport shuttle tube. In total the cost is about the same, but rather than taking me 2- 2.5 hours, it will take me 1 hour, and should be more straightforward. So barring snow delays (which look unlikely – touch wood!), I won’t be blogging again for another week.

Bienvenue à 2009…… January 3, 2009

Well I had a good holiday, as I hope everyone else did. I managed to catch up with some friends and get some last-minute shopping in Plymouth before mum and I went up to the midlands to spend christmas with nan & grandad and Alex, then we were back in Cornwall shortly after boxing day and I caught up with dad & Gail, and saw the New Year in at the Heron Inn, Malpas with a live band who did some good covers and got people dancing.

The only gripe I have is that the holiday went too quickly! It may have been the extra travelling in the middle of the holiday but I felt like I’d barely got home and it was time to go again! The 6.30am departure from Exeter was a bit horrendous; it was cold and we all had to get up at about 3am to get there in time. It was even colder when the flight landed in Paris; there was snow on the ground although it was not deep and only in shaded places. I was annoyed when my suitcase came round the baggage carousel because the stupid handlers had broken the last decent handle on it, so now it’s really difficult to carry with one hand when you can’t wheel it – like when you’re going up steps. Also the luggage label had been on that handle and that had got lost. I just missed a direct train to Amiens by 10minutes and had to wait lhr30 for the next, which was slow so I didn’t get back until lunchtime in the end.

I had some lunch, fired up the internet and my radiator, plugged things back in and wrote a shopping list, which I then went and ticked off so I don’t have to go again over the next few days and I can just get on with revision and the exams. I have unpacked too which I always find a bit sad; putting my suitcase(s) away on the shelf above the kitchen cupboard is like closing the door on home for another period of time. This time it may actually only be a week; all my exams are this coming week and then all I have to do is create my timetable for semester two. With a bit of luck I will have Saturday 10th – Saturday 17th free, and with no one else around, or those who are busy with exams, I am very tempted to hop back home for an extra week. As mum rightly pointed out, that’s what the extra student money is for this year.

I have one less thing to think about while living here anyway; mental calculations from euro to pound in order to gauge the value of something. With the two currencies hitting parity at the moment (current rate from www.xe.com is £1 = €1.04), I can pretty much treat them as equal, and no longer have to convert. It also means I’m not “saving” any money anymore, but I do hope the pound doesn’t become worth less than the euro otherwise my finances are going to suffer! When things change gradually it’s easy to forget what things used to be like, but I looked at my travel diary and saw that in July 2008, when mum and I went to Corfu, the exchange rate was £1 = €1.21!