Metro and Les Bisous

Well the strike is supposed to stop today. Also my school will probably reopen monday, though we have to wait until the official General Assembly to meet once again monday at noon. But unfortunatly I don't think the students can hold out that long. So I probably will have class next week. Which means the arrival of my Woody Allen midterm. I'm going to attempt to study for this, even though the subject is more painful to study than the time we had to read 5 books on the life of the editor of the Oxford English dictionary. Looking back that actually seemed enjoyable. At least that man was pretty awesome- woody allen, not so awesome. And his movies- well.. they're not the oxford english dictionary. I don't know what i meant by that. I guess I maybe would have thought his movies were ok before attempting to study him. Actually I probably would never have watched them.. moving on.

I've been walking a lot, with all the chaos that i encounter each time i try to enter a metro station. Yesterday this man got onto our already packed train by standing in the doorway and letting the force of the door just sort of fold him into the crowd as it shut. My friend Lauren said it was so tight in her train once that she could feel the heartbeat of the man pressed up against her. Sometimes people will Q up in the hallways that lead to the platforms that let you onto the trains- I once encountered such a line and just turned around and walked back to whence i came. So like I said i've been walking a lot. Which means to get home I've managed to cover the entire length of the Champs Elysees- as well as find many amusing side streets. I found where Christie's (the auctioneer) is located- surrounded by the most expensive looking stores imaginable. I really thought i had found the heart of expensive shopping near the middlebury center- where all the gucci and hermes shops seem to be, but I think it hit a whole new tier when i saw these art deco shops.

I'm about to pack up my things and take the metro across town to a library, where theoretically i will brilliantly outline and find amazing sources for my oral on "what languages should be taught at school?" French schools that is. Apparenlty the current opinion is people worried about the "oppressing influence" of the English language. And then i will study many a things that i'm constantly reminded by the middlebury center that i should be just making up work for myself to do since our proffesors never tell us what to do. I despise making up work for myself- and I can only really accomplish this if I have an upcoming test that i know will cover certain material and therefore can create ways to learn that material- but here it's more like just guess what you think might be good to know and learn that. As the french would say I never "arrive" at that.

Also a dream I had last night in which I returned to the states and tried to greet someone by kissing them on the cheek, only to their great confusion, reminded me that I had never discussed this phenomenon before. I guess I was aware that the French participated in this greeting/farewell ritual before arriving- I just didn't realize to what extent it could become complicated. First of all, as we discussed in my language and society class one day, the French are very bad at shaking hands. This is apparenlty the reason why Americans don't respect the French, according to my professor. Some American students said they tried to shake hands with people that they met here in the begining - but this was laughed at and then kisses were immediatly exchanged instead. But the number of kisses can also be varied depending on where you orignate from. In Paris you're supposed to give two (i.e. one on each cheek). But then there are some people from the suburbs who always give four- This i find to be very excessive and just generally time consuming. I also sometimes become dissoriented when i have to do this because your head is just going back and forth so many times you feel sort of like a chicken bopping it's head about. To make it even more complicated apparently some people do 3- I haven't met these people yet. And i still don't understand what happens when someone who does 2 meets someone who does 4- to whose will must you bend?

The other greeting custom we discussed in my class was hugs- Apparently the french never hug. Someone in my class pointed out that there is a FREE HUGS campaign in Paris though, but of course it originates from the american group. But apparently in general grown ups never "hug" lovers are of course constantly "embrassing" here- but this is not considered the same thing as embrassing generally lasts for extensive periods of time, usually right beside me on the metro it seems, and I will agree has almost nothing to do with a hug. This french high schooler that I started tutoring in English was telling me about his Canadian summer camp he went to and how crazy it was that everyone hugged everyone there- but he seemed really excited about it and thought this was great. So maybe future generations can give it a shot- but maybe he'll just have to move to Canada.