the french~ We, the students of Rennes II (foreign and French alike) were greeted at 8:15 this morning by locked doors and rigged up fences; yes, I experienced my first "blocage." A small group of students voted yesterday that they would block all of the university entrances today, and given the resulting safety risks, the president closed the university. We shall see if this causes a response from the government (the students are protesting a law that would change the retirement age), but at the very least, I had zero hours of class instead of six. As nice as it was, I hope this movement does not grow much larger, because it could cause some serious academic disturbances, especially for us foreign students.
An unexpected day off always passes too quickly, and before long, we were comfortably seated in the Théâtre National du Bretagne (National Theatre of Britanny), watching quite the European show. A combination of dance, film, lighting, and music, we experienced the humanity of emotions at their rawest: love (above all), fear, sexual tension, death, superficiality disguising more animalistic tendencies, flexibility, and some rather talented tongues, in a show called, "Octopus." It's a bit as if France smacked us Americans in the face today to say, "bonjour! I'm special and different and you better acknowledge it." I think I am falling in love, and at the same time, I want more than just about anything else a spoonful of peanut butter. I'll settle for filling my mind and mouth with a language that tastes almost as good.
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