The Strike (la grève) continues!

The strike (la grève) continues to interrupt my classes. Yesterday and today some of my classes were canceled because of the strike, where the instructors and many of the students don't show up for class. It is very frustrating, especially for exchange students and Study Abroad students who are paying for these classes. The French students are given a free college education, so they don't seem care whether the classes meet or not. Apparently the strike is a demand for more free higer-education related benefits, which I am trying to understand. French students don't want to work while attending the University, so they want the government to pay for all of their living expenses and school-related expenses while attending University full-time. At the same time, new residence halls are under construction to house 300 or more students near Lakanal residence hall where I live. The government seems to already provide a lot of funding for free higer education to high school graduates here. On the other hand, high school graduates in America must find a way to fund their own education. The French young people don't realize how lucky they are to have their national government support their University education. "School-spirit" seems very poor here as well. There is graffiti written on the campus buildings and cracked glass doors that are not being repaired. I can't understand how University students can go on strike when they are not working or contibuting financially. The young people seem to abuse the priviledge of a free education and seem to take advantage of the situation. They blame everything on Sarcozy.

In the mean time, as my courses continue to not meet, due to the strike, I am still not able to readily access my First Class connections with the University of Maine. The computers here at the University library keep giving me a lot of problems. On some days, I cannot make any connections that I need or want to make. It is very bizarre. Just as my class meetings are unpredictable, so are my connections on the computer. Today, for example, I am not able to access my e-mail messages through my Angers University account. When I first arrived in Angers, I was not even able to access my blog site.

Two days ago I awoke to a small amount of snow on the ground; yesterday morning there was frost on the ground and cars, and today I awoke to rain, plus found myself walking to class as it snowed. The weather here changes very quickly. Then the sun came out this afternoon and then disappeared again. Here, we are about six hours ahead of Maine.

I still have one more class that is scheduled at 5:00pm, but I don't know wether or not it will meet, because of the strike.

Yesterday I walked to a mall which took me about 15 minutes. There I found a large supermarket similar to the Super-Wal-Mart in Brewer, where both food, clothes, and other household items are sold. I bought some postcards of Angers at this mall, and there was a post office nearby, where I purchased the stamps. The stamps cost .85 euros for both postcards and letters. That translates to around a dollar to mail a postcard to the U.S. from France. Plus, the regular size post card cost me .50 euros, which might be about .75 cents in American money. As I mentioned before, the cost of living is higher here, especially for Americans and Australians.