The Greve, The Greve!

                                               City Center of Privas

I'm happy to report that I'm feeling much better now! I usually take a ton of over-the-counter medication when I'm sick, and while it makes me feel temporarily better, it often prolongs my cold. This time, I took nothing, and it was terrible for two days, but after that, I was practically back to normal. Maybe that holistic method of letting your sickness pass as it should has a point.

This week was actually a short one at school. I had 8 hours less of school than I usually do because of teacher absences and strikes. It was quite nice. Apparently, the public-school teachers have strikes here in France often. (Although if you read the news, I suppose you already knew that.) They believe that the classroom ratio of students to teachers is much to high, and are therefore striking so that France hires more teachers. Everyone was all worked up, talking about the "greve" happening Tuesday. I found it kind of amusing. Maybe it's the fact that I'm reading Harry Potter right now, but with everyone going around saying "the greve, the greve," I couldn't help but to think of the Professor Trelawny from Harry Potter going on and on about "the grim." Hahaha :)

Now that I mentioned Harry Potter, let me just say that it is taking me absolutely forever to read book #7. I've been reading it for ages, and I've only just started chapter 9. I think by the end of the year, I may get halfway through the book. Maybe. Reading it is also a tad bit strange because a lot of the characters and places have different names in the French version. For example, Snape is "Rouge" and Hogwarts is "Poudlard." However, I think it's kind of interesting, and by reading two different copies on the same time, I pick up on a lot more details and clues.

I'm glad that today is a slow, relaxed day at home. Yesterday evening, I went out to a pub with Charlotte and her friends, and I was really tired coming home. I slept in late and spent most of the morning with Marie, my oldest (24) sister who is home for the weekend. We went into Privas, had a cafe at the brasserie, and met with a few of her friends. At the market, I saw a couple from the Rotary club who invited me to go to Lyon next weekend. They've got a 20 year-old daughter, so I'm pretty excited to go. I also got invited to go on a week-long trip to Frankfurt, Germany the week right before Christmas with Mathilde, my second host sister, and her class in school. Yay!!!

On a completely different note, I don't know what my problem is because I can not stop eating here. No matter how much I eat, I'm always hungry. I've eaten so much chocolate this week, that my trash can is full of wrappers. I always finish my plate clean at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I've got my secret stash in my room at the house. Maybe this is my subconscious dealing with culture shock or something, because I've never been this hungry before, and I've never had this much of a craving for chocolate. I have a feeling that by the end of the year, I will come back as a chubbier version of myself. Oh well - good thing I brought stretchy pants!