Sunday, November 17, 2013

My Week in Review

   As we all know, the French love to express their displeasure with governmental choices through strikes and demonstrations. My children have already experienced with great joy, the teacher strikes and last week, they gotten another round of those.
  They already have a 4 day school week, Monday was a holiday and Wednesday was put on the schedule as to not loose too many days on the school calendar, but Thursday was a planned teacher strike so we are back to only 3 days last week. Then, unknown to me, there was a parental boycott of school on Wednesday- yes, with only 3 days of school planned, another was scrapped for the same issue the teachers were striking for. I won't go into the reasons for the strike.
   As I am the American in the dark, I sent my kids to school on that Wednesday and they were the only children in the class that day. They and I were more than happy as they got a 3 hour tutoring session with their teacher! Yes, I picked them up half day. I did not want them to be all alone in the cafeteria, too.
   Thankfully we haven't had do endure an air traffic control strike or train blockade, but this weekend, on our way to the Camargue for Clay's birthday, we were stuck in the middle of a major demonstration by farmers and truck drivers opposed to a bio-tax. Traffic was at a stand still on a 4 lane highway, the sides of the highway had been lit on fire by the protesters, firetrucks were desperately trying to get though the millions of cars blocking the interstate. An easy 2 hour drive ended up taking us well over 6 hours, and a royal headache trying to navigate a detour through the city of Arles. It was quite an experience that I really do not want to do again.
   More on our weekend in the Camargue later -hint- there are wild, white horses, black bulls and pink flamingos. And it is on the coast- a favorite place to be for us.
I think all the white trucks were riot control-there was about 20 of them that sped by.

Protesters had set fires along the highway.

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