It is often hard for me to put into words exactly what separates French culture from American culture. But, a series of events unfolded this week that have given me plenty of words. They are not all nice words, so I should preface this by assuring you that I have truly come to appreciate, possibly understand, and probably love Paris and the French culture in the past three months. But, this week, it has been a labor of appreciation, an understanding, and love.
The First Event:
Last Thursday, I raced to my afternoon class with a baguette sandwich in hand. Most weeks, I race due to a time crunch. This week, I raced with excitement. My art history professor, who at all of 27ish years old has hundreds of years of artists, paintings, sculptures, and dates packed into his head, was holding class at the Musée d’Orsay, my favorite museum in Paris. I ran out of the metro and into the pouring rain, traded my baguette for an umbrella, and ran to the museum. When I arrived, fully prepared to absorb my professor’s every thought on Impressionism, I was greeted by signs in the window that read “grève.” You don’t need to be in France long to learn this word. It means strike. And a strike meant class was cancelled.
The Second Event:
A week after my d’Orsay debacle, I found out that the train that takes me to class each Wednesday and Thursday, the RER A, was on strike. Most people got lucky because it was only on strike between 9:30am and 4:30pm. But, naturally, my class is 11:30am to 2:30pm. Technically, students cannot be penalized for absences due to public transportation strikes. However, I did know of a different train that I could take to class. The question was if all of the other students knew to take this train or would bother to do it if they had an excuse not to go. The overachiever in me took over and I decided to take the other train and go to class, along with about 15 other students out of 40. Wouldn’t it be nice if French universities ran on the brownie points system?
The Third, and most important, Event:
As I type these words, it is 2:15pm on a Friday. If you know my schedule (which you probably don’t because that would be creepy), I teach English classes every Friday from 1pm to 6pm. So, why I am not teaching right now? La grève.
Let me explain.
When I arrived at school around 12:55pm this afternoon, as per usual there was a crowd of about 30 students on the sidewalk outside of the building. Usually, I have to fight my way through them to get inside. But, today, they parted like the Red Sea as I approached. They looked at me silently as I walked by. And a few moments later, I saw why. Where there was normally a door into the school, there was instead a stack of 10-20 garbage cans (the BIG kind) blocking the entrance. I stood there approximately two seconds before I heard a small, French “hi,” following by a flood of “hi” “hi” “hi” “hi”…. I turned around to find all thirty students surrounding me. Immediately, they all began talking at once. I heard “blocus” (clearly we still have work to do) and “new reforms” and “seven this morning” and “no classes!” I was overwhelmed. Finally, I turned my attention to one student and tuned out the others. He explained to me that the French government is implementing new reforms at the high school level and the students were protesting. They had arrived at the school at 7am that morning to stack trash cans in front of the door. No classes today.
I thanked the students and made a mental note to talk about strikes in my future classes because I had never heard them speak so much English in over two months of teaching. Then I continued around to the back of the building to check in with the other teachers and the principal since I had no idea what to do.
I started with the teachers’ lounge. But the only teacher in there told me she couldn’t tell me what to do. I would have to ask the assistant principal.
But the assistant principal was not in his office so I went to ask the secretary. But the secretary was not in her office so I asked “le guardian” who lets people in and out of the building. She told me everyone was at lunch and she did not know when they would be back. Great.
So I went back to the teachers’ lounge and made a lot of photocopies. An hour later, I went back to the secretary, who was sitting in the school lobby on her cell phone.
After she had finished her conversation, I asked her what I should do.
“Do you have classes today?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But I have no students.”
“Well, if you have classes you should stay.”
“Even if there are no students?”
“Yes. That’s my advice.”
I smiled and said thank you and proceeded to throw a tantrum in my mind. So now I will sit in empty classrooms for the rest of the afternoon.
Moral of the story: what is the biggest difference between French and American cultures?
La grève.
