Crunch crunch crunch

I have to preface this entry with the fact that my cat just captured and ate two flies in the span of about ten minutes. The crunchy sound of their deaths will haunt me for life.

Anywhoozle. Yesterday I wanted to get proactive about the strike and work around it. Unfortunately, line 7 turned from 1 train every 45 minutes to quasi-nul while I was waiting. So I tried the bus, but it didn't come. I walked down to the nearest Velib' station to test my bravery. Broken ticket machine. So I walked down to Censier and tried that one. Unfortunately, I haven't received my October paycheck so my French bank account doesn't quite have the 150 euro deposit for the Velib'. I thought about walking to the gym, which is feasible, but by then I would've been running late after walking there, working out, and walking back. So instead I wasted some time at Monoprix looking for tights. And sadly they had some that I really liked but only in bigger sizes.

At 6 my Franco-American relations class attempted to happen at MICEFA. I bundled up like never before in my life and walked. Class was held in the tiny upstairs office and was just comical. A bunch of chairs jammed into a teeny room with the professor right in our faces, writing on a pathetic little white board. But whatever, we worked through it I guess. Bless his heart, that man needs a shower or some deodorant or something. Luckily it was so stuffy in there that it didn't seem strange when we kept opening the window for air. Class was semi-interesting, although it gets kind of funny because Americans know nothing about history. So he's asking us about WWI and we're like, "durhhhh." I managed to pull Franz Ferdinand's assassination out of my ass from 10th grade world history. Thanks Mr. Lockhart. The professor is always very careful to make sure we don't get too full of ourselves after he concedes that America saved France's ass twice. He's like, "well the war would have ended differently if American hadn't shown up, but they were very late and France did most of the fighting." I'm just sitting there like chill out, we are college students studying in France and attempting to master the French language -- we don't think America the world's savior.
Another fun fact. The French government subsidizes French cinema and television. True story. They take the proceeds from American movie ticket sales and allocate a part to French production companies using French crews and actors. Same with ad revenue from American TV shows. The thought of that is kind of creepy. I know the French are all about preserving their culture, but the government here just knows no bounds. Maybe they'd be able to get social security out of debt if they weren't giving money to make French movies and TV shows that no one watches because they still suck, no matter how much funding they get (okay not all of them, but most French people prefer American TV shows, and French movies never get as much box office as American ones).
After class everyone was trying to figure out their ways home -- some people had walked 2 hours to get to class. Crazy people. Nicolas (the professor) offered to drive some people to the right bank to catch some working metros over there. Luckily I live a 20 minute walk from MICEFA, so Melissa, Taylor, Susie and I just hoofed it up St. Michel.

I'm going to make another valiant effort to work out, and maybe shop a little. Tomorrow we're going to the Normandy Beaches and it might be muddy. I don't have shoes for mud. I left my rubber rain boots at home! Fack.