Une Seulle Solution, La Revolution!

Well since my last blog it has snowed so much it's not funny, and the french blood has been boiling.

From Left to Right the photos: President Marchello adresses her troops. Michelle's Car. The dumpsters blocking the entrance and two of the banners. The chants and people shouting on top of the dumpsters in the snow. The table outside, it had no snow on it the night before.

First to the snow. Monday night, I went to Remi, you know, I reckon it'll snow Thursday night. Thursday night we got over 60 cms of snow. It just came down in 2x 2 hour blocks and it was huge. This morning I walked to the bus in the snow and i fell down the steps outside the house because i couldn't see where they where, but because there was so much snow it didn't matter it just ended up like a slide. The table at the moment has about 80 cms-1m of snow on it as it's built up over the past week. We still have another week until the ski season opens and at the moment I'm worried about there being so much snow that we just sink into it and can't ski. I can't wait, so excited.

Now to the French blood. Every Frenchman believes Revolutions are in there blood. the french have a nasty habit of beheading their kings and queens and starting a revolution every decade. i guess us Aussie had the whole convict thing in our blood, so we honoured that with our Bush Rangers. Back in those days the french where pillaging towns and burning castles and beheading various nobles, these days they put dustbins in front of every entrance to the school and declare another revolution. At the moment the French government are trying to change their 'Bac' (same as our VCE, or final two years of school). However the kids at the school all over the country aren't to happy about that. Yesterday there were a few whispering about a student strike today, of course I just thought it'd be 20 kids outside the school not going in because they felt they had a cause, then the principal would come out, shout at them and that'd be that. I was planning on joining in just for the sake of it. This morning I packed my bag ready for school expecting to be already in by 2nd period. When the bus dropped us off we all walked up the hill, slowly the news trickled down, the school had been blocked. Sure i thought and few kids won't let anyone in the gate, then I heard the shouting and cheering and chants. I was still about 300-400ms away. We turned the corner and saw the cause of all the commotion, the school really was blocked. The boarders Had woken up at 6.30 that morning, waiting untill all the teachers were in the school and then proceeded to block every possible entrance using dumpsters. When Marie and I arrived there people were standing on top of the dustbins leading chants, shouting random things. We had banners up and like all true protesters we were ready to resort to violence when necessary, armed with snowballs. Whenever a teach showed their head at a window 4 or 5 snowballs would go barrelling into the window. Finally at 10am (we'd started around 7.30am) the government phoned with 3 different deals which we could choose to except or not. Lead by our president Eliza Marchello, she outlined the deals, of which we agreed to one of them , this was a meeting of 8 or 9 different school's student Presidents and the Minister of Education in Paris. To really force our point home for the next two weeks every kid will receive absences from every class so the government believes we're still striking however we will go to school. We got the rest of today off while the teachers moved our dustbins etc and I now have a long weekend :). It was a very odd scene, it reminded me slightly of some sort of industrial revolutions where the proles rise up against the upper class. We had our head (Marchello) who was locked in the Principal's office refuses almost all the offers placed on the table untill she got a free trip to Paris and we got the day off school. So the Revolution has started and apparently we expect to strike again in January after the Xmas holidays if nothing is done and that time we're going down to Marseille to join 2 other schools to really make a point.

Anywayz that was my best day I've had here so far.

Now I'm off to do nothing when I expected to be working, how good is that.

Ciao to all

Cal