En grève

Strike!

As you may know, France is quite known for its strikes, and this is a big one. Strike in Paris mostly means: big rallies (one on Tuesday, one on Saturday) and less transport. Transport is cut by about a half, so if you need a train in the morning, you will participate in the attempt to break the world record, how many people can one train hold? Announced trains will sometimes just not come or people are not allowed to get in the train because it's too full. Overall I was quite lucky this week, minus Thursday when they cancelled the two announced trains of 9h, so I had to wait over an hour to finally get into a train. As a result, I took the train an hour early on Friday, but of course this time there was no problem at all. Strike is still on for Monday, Tuesday another big rally, so it could still last for a couple of days.

But had a really good week! Last Saturday there was a big birthday-party in a apartment, a lot of Latino music ;-) but a really good atmosphere. Left too late to get back home in a normal way, so a classmate offered to put us up for the night, which was really nice =) Worked through quite a lot of study-material on Sunday and Monday-morning.

Monday evening the introduction for foreign students by the uni. After more than a month, it was about time. But the buffet they offered was really good. And met a lot of nice people there! Such a shame they didn't do this event in September! Once the whole buffet was eaten, we left the caves, to do just one last picknick (it was kind of cold) on the banks of the Seine. Below a, really bad, picture of a bunch of erasmus-students on their way to the Carrefour Market.

Tuesday just another day on campus, "trying" to finish that stupid homework of the French class (finished it in the end) and French lesson in the evening. This time we had to describe an object we had invented with "street-inspiration". And that was the whole lesson. Grabbed a thing to eat afterwards.

On Wednesday was the first 'TD' here. Which by all means is not the same TD as in Belgium. t's quite the opposite: where in Belgium you'll name your student-party a TD, here it is a 'werkzitting' or an class with exercises.Laughed quite a lot with the other 'sediments' (too much?) during those 3 hours about the significance on iron in the oceans. Normally there would have been a lecture afterwards in the oceanographic institute, but it was cancelled.. But we still went for our after-lecture Belgian beer =D  

Missed the first course of Thursday because no train showed up... Not much for the rest, caught up with a lot of people on MSN that evening which was really good! Left the house an hour early on Friday, to be sure to be on time for the first class, arrived an hour early, and did some work in the library. Tried to find an interest in the physics-course. Luckily this course was in between two descriptive courses of specific oceans.. And finally to celebrate the beginning of the weekend, rue mouftard.. Yesterday an evening in a pancake/karaoke bar to celebrate the birthday of my aunt, which was really fun and the food was really good! Stopped my night-bus on a roundabout and the driver let me in (phiew, otherwise it would have been a long 50 min wait..)

And for the next week, statistics test on Monday with afterwards a new buffet for foreign students, Tuesday Disney!!! with Dimitri, Victor and Fred, and work, work, work to