Le Grève

That's basically a general protest. The government is cutting back on the amount of teachers and salaries for a lot of professions in general suck, I guess, so that leaves a lot of unhappy people. Those people, then, protest by not doing their job and as a result, a lot of people couldn't get to school. The trains were limited and a lot of the busses weren't running. The cantine wasn't open for lunch and the CDI (library) was also closed. Some teachers, although none of mine, participated in the protest, too, and didn't show up.

My bus was running, though, so I took that to school. For lunch I brought with me a loaf of bread, peanut butter, nutella, a bottle of water, and a knife. I had history/geography for the first two hours today, and there were only about 15 people in class. We did some geography today and discussed the layout of Arras. It was pretty interesting, actually! I wish we had geography like that in Fargo! It would help me find my way around and I'd actually know where things were! lol!

Next, I had French. Only about 8 people came to that class. People kind of got bored and left school or skipped classes they didn't want to attend. We didn't do a whole lot in class, just looked over some papers. There was a protest on the road and I watched the entire thing out the window. Sabrina was right next to the window, so she took some photos for me :)! Hah, quick story for you all. I said "beaucoup" with some bad pernounciation today, so what I actually ended up saying was "beau cul" aka: nice ass! hahaha! Woops! Sabrina got a good laugh out of that one.

After French was math. This time we gained a few people and had a total of 12. Sabrina was chosen to teach the lesson (basically go over the homework), and I UNDERSTOOD! After she explained everything, I was able to see where everything was coming from! I volunteered an answer and got a "plus" for the day! Actually, everyone who showed up got a "plus," haha. I think math is my highest grade, though! I got a 15 on that homework from over the break (thanks to Sabrina), then today I got my plus! I dunno exactly what that means, but it's good. haha. If you're bad or disruptive, you can get minuses as well, which aren't good.

After math, I had anglais complementiare. There were only 5 other people with me! Today wasn't so bad, because I got to go with Sarah, the Canadian assistant, and we just talked and then played a game. I noticed it's starting to get harder for me to speak in English, though. Sarah would ask me to rephrase something or explain something, and it took me a while to formulate a sentence or come up with another way to say it! I kept wanting to talk in French!!! It was like when I came back from Peru and I spoke Spanish for the next few months! ..except my French vocabulary is a little more extensive than that. haha. By the end of class, I was doing pretty good, though. I met Sabrina in the hallway and started blabbing away in English. It took me a little while before I realized what I was doing. She just stared at me with this blank look on her face. haha. I do not transition very well.

After that, I didn't have another class until French again at 4. We had three hours to do whatever. Sabrina, Marion, and I left school and ate lunch by the fountain in front of the old church/cathedral. They both tried my peanut butter (and liked it :P) Afterwards, we just kind of hung out. We went to the librairie and I got a couple things I needed. We also ran into a couple other people; Florian and his friend. They hung out with us for the rest of the afternoon, since they were just killing time, too. We didn't really do much other than talk and walk around, but it was fun!

We returned to school for two hours of French. It was basically just a work time for our themes, since hardly anyone was there. I read through a couple of the texts and underlined the words I didn't know. Sabrina then explained, acted, or drew out explainations for them to help me understand! Haha. The rest I'm going to look up in my dictionary this weekend. haha, during our break, I went to the bathroom, and MY BELT BROKE! No lie, it just tore in half!!! That really pisses me off, but it kind of made me laugh at the same time. I didn't see that one coming! At least it was at the end of the day, so I only had to sit through one hour of French with my pants falling down. Hah.

After school, I came home and had a snack with Pierre. Not much news there. I'll talk to you again tomorrow!
<3Miranda