La Grève

The metro strike has become the bane of my existence. Yesterday morning I woke up late, forgot my umbrella and planned to take the metro to class. Well after waiting for 10 minutes and unable to get on any of the three trains that came my roommate and I decided to take another line to school. We had to go through this huge crowd of people but after walking through the metro station for a few minutes we realized the crowd was not moving. Seeing as we were a good distance from the platform and unable to tell what was going on we decided to walk to class. Bad day to decide to wear my cute heeled boots!! We walked for a good 25 minutes and randomly came to a metro line that went to a stop close to our school. We decided to attempt to take it and fortunately it had just arrived at the station when we got to the platform! We jumped on the overcrowded train - nearly dying because we couldn't hold on. The metro drivers are terrible during the strike - stopping for extra time at each stop, braking quickly and going unnecessarily slow. We reached our stop, hopped off and walked the rest of the way to class only to find out our fashion class was meeting onsite on the Champs-Elysees. Luckily our teacher got held up and couldn't make it to the visit. I would have died if I didn't get credit after the hellish commute. I can't wait to go home tonight! NOT. Luckily, Paris is wonderful in so many other ways that I see the strike as an interesting experience and am not too annoyed by it. I just hope the negotiations happen soon!