So, it is already March 1st, and the weather is promising a beautiful spring here in Nantes. It feels rejuvenating to have the sun on my face after a long wet and windy winter. I know there will still be a few chilly days to come, but the winter for the most part is over. So much has taken place over the last few months that it is difficult to know where to begin this blog. I guess I will start by saying that although it is March, I have only had one week of class this semester. And courses started on January 19. On the 26th of January, Sarkozy passed an economic stimulus bill in response to the economic crisis, and included in this bill were many education reforms. To put it lightly, the country was not pleased with the results of the bill. On Thursday, January 29th, the entire country of France went on strike for a day. The city of Nantes was in complete chaos. I had class the next morning (Friday), but after that all of my professors went on strike.
So I will pause that story there to mention that Mark and I traveled to London on January 23rd for a Rotary conference. It was a very successful trip, and I felt like the conference was worth our time. The scholars were able to talk about the positive and negative aspects of our scholarship period in Europe, and then the London Harrow club submits the info. and the results of the conference to Rotary headquarters in Evanston. We also took a tour of London with the Rotary group. We were extremely lucky because the weather was perfectly sunny and fairly warm that day. We saw Green Park, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, the Parliament buildings, Westminster Abbey, the London Bridges, Big Ben and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, to name a few stops. Mark and I also visited Greenwich and Kensington Palace on Friday before the conference. Sunday the weather was cold and rainy, so we were glad to be inside for the conference that day. Then afterwards, we headed back to Westminster Abbey to try and visit inside, because the tour only stopped outside. Unfortunately it was closed on Sundays (worship services only, which was completely understandable), so we thought we were out of luck. However, Mark noticed a guard standing in front of a side gate so we walked around to discover that the glass doors were open. We tried to look inside, and Mark explained to the guard that we were disappointed because we would be leaving the next day and would not be able to tour the church. The guard said “Well there is a private organ concert going on right now; I can allow you to step inside and have a listen if you like, as long as you don’t take any photos” (you must read that last part with a British accent in order to get the full effect). We were ecstatic!! So we got to sit and listen to a private organ concert, inside Westminster Abbey, on my birthday, for free! Other than that, we rode the London Eye, which offered a spectacular view of the city. The rest of the London stories will have to wait.
So, back to the strikes. The professors remained on strike until February 11th. The reasons for their discontentment are complicated, but I will try to explain briefly. Basically, the reforms for education in the bill take all of the choice for professors to create their schedule and choose their classes out of their hands and places it in the hands of the university president (there is no board really). There are two methods of being a professor here. You can either be a full-time professor, or you can be something called an enseigneur-chercher, which means you teach half the time and do research the other half. The reforms would abolish this choice—anyone who had produced successful results of research would only be funded to research and no longer paid to teach, and anyone who does not produce many research results would not be funded to research and paid only to teach. There are other issues besides these, but those are the main reasons. These policies would also mean that the professors are evaluated on a much more regular basis, and there is a lot of worry that the university president will pick favorites, etc. Now, aside from that, after the professors put their strike on hold, the STUDENTS voted a blocus of the campus for completely separate reasons. This means that all classroom doors are locked and no professors can have classes whether they want to or not. This was voted in on February 9th or so. So, when the teachers voted to pause the strikes on Feb. 11, classes still did not start because they decided to respect the blocus voted by the student union. Then there was a week of vacation from Feb. 14-21. The blocus continued after that week, and there is another meeting on Monday, so we’ll see if I have class this next week. I have been put into several uncomfortable positions by professors, along with the French students, in several instances, but I will not recount them here. If anyone has any questions regarding grades, course validation, or these uncomfortable instances, etc. as far as the strikes go, you can e-mail me or post a comment and I will respond. This blog is getting ridiculously long so I won’t post anymore here. It’s pretty crazy stuff!
We also helped a Rotary Club in Ancenis sell brioche to raise money in order to buy 2 heart machines—the word in French is defibrillateurs. Try saying that to customers from 8:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night!! Whew; even the French natives had trouble saying it. It was a blast, but exhausting. Mark and I were in charge of our own table; he was pretty funny trying to convince people to stop and buy with his French—his knowledge of the language has progressed impressively, but it’s still pretty funny to hear him use his limited vocabulary and his thick American accent! The other Rotarians loved him; he was by far a favorite with the Ancenis club.
Aside from that, we had the opportunity to visit Epernay in the Champagne region for 3 days. We toured the champagne caves, saw the Moet & Chandon, Dom Perignon, etc. maisons, and drank our fill of grand cru champagne. We started drinking champagne at 11 a.m. on Saturday, and didn’t stop until 1 a.m., and I have to admit, I was sick of it by the end of that day. I never thought I would see the day when good champagne didn’t sound appealing. We also went to Reims and toured the cathedral—amazing church. And on the way back to Nantes our train stopped off in Mezidon, so we wandered around the village for about an hour. Such a tranquil and beautiful little town!
Mark finally got his carte de sejour—that’s another one of those stories where if you are interested, message me and I’ll go into detail. Gotta love the Prefecture and French bureaucracy!! We also got to visit my French family from 2006 in Caen and tour the D-Day beaches (Mark hadn’t seen them, and we saw some other ones from the tour I took). We had amazing food; Martine is still the gourmet French cuisinere I remember all too well. We spent two long evenings at their house; the meals still last 4 hours minimum, with 4 courses minimum. Oh yeah, and we ate snails and frog legs the second night. Not too bad!! Caen is a much prettier city than Nantes; Nantes is really too industrialized to be as pretty as most French cities are. But, it has its picturesque places as well.
Okay, I have to stop here—most of you probably stopped reading 3 paragraphs ago!! We did visit Saumur yesterday with Autour du Monde—we toured the city (it was the first Protestant settlement in France), picnic-ed on the terrace of the castle grounds overlooking the river (perfect spring day for it, too!) and toured the wine caves and saw the troglydyte houses. Also toured a mushroom and escargot cave. Had a tasting of wine and mushrooms afterwards. Glad I had eaten the snails the week before, otherwise I probably couldn’t have done it. Such weird little creatures! I will try and post as many pics. as I can, and we’ll see if I have class next week. Just so you all know, I am still reading ahead and trying to do research for papers because I have chosen topics for 2 of my classes. Of course, it is hard to concentrate when the weather is so nice and I know I’m going to be leaving too soon!!
