First off, to answer your question Madame S., I personally was not affected by the strike. I did see plenty of it though. They had their "manifestations" in the street during the day, but since don't use public transportation or anything on a daily basis, it did not affect my day. I was hoping my teachers would participate though so I wouldn't have to go to class, but I didn't get so lucky. Haha. For anyone who doesn't know, Thursday was a nationwide strike in France. My professor said that it was because the price of everyday life is growing and the paychecks aren't (pretty typical) and basically what it boils down to is that they have the right. The French can go on strike whenever they want, with no risk to lose their jobs. An interesting fact that my teacher told me is that the people who have jobs which don't allow them to go on strike (such as doctors and firefighters who are completely necessary all the time) still "strike" but the style is modified. They still work, but all the money that they make on that day they give away to an organization or charity of some sort.

As far as my life goes, everything keeps getting better! We've been making more friends at school, and having more things to do and people to see. Bowling, ice skating, movies . . . . all the things like that. Also, we discovered some fabulous deals on Ryan Air and have some awesome trips planned to other European countries, that we got for ridiculously low prices. Haha, that was a very exciting night! Literally, 6 tickets total (Tours to London, London to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Dublin, Dublin to Paris, and roundtrip Paris to Milan) for under 175 dollars!!!! And yes, that's even dollars, not euros! Also, we've registered for a couple trips with the school, so I'll be going lots of places on the weekends and should have plenty to update you about.

Last weekend, we went to Paris! Our train left at 5:30 Saturday morning, and our return train came back into Tours at 12:52 Monday morning. Between that, we packed in as much as we could and a WHOLE lot of walking. Since Robynne had never been to Paris before (and it'd been a while for me) we did most of the general tourist things. First off Saturday morning we visited Notre Dame, complete with climbing up to the top of the tower. I thoroughly enjoyed it at the top, but the stairs nearly killed me. Then there was Robynne who's scared of heights so we helped each other to survive everything and overcome our fears. Haha.

After that we made quite a long trek to the catacombs. They were really fascinating (lots of bones!) but I have few good pictures because you couldn't use a flash and it was really dark.

You probably can't read the sign over the door because the picture is little but it translates to "Stop! This is the empire of the dead."

This was one of the better pictures I got of the bones. It gives you the gist of the catacombs. There were also signs of where the bones had come from and then lots of quotes or Bible verses about death. It's interesting because there are some famous people and some really wealthy people who ended up here, their bones mixed with all sorts of other people. Also, a lot of the quotes had to do with the inevitability of death and such. It was thought provoking.

Then we did the inevitable Eiffel Tower visit. Mounted it all the way to the top, and Robynne did great . . . she just kept her eyes shut the whole time on the elevator. Haha. By the time we got to the top it was dark already so we got to see Paris at night which was beautiful . . . but pictures didn't turn out. They can't adequately represent the sight anyway though. I got lots of aerial views of Paris from Notre Dame too though. Actually all of our timing worked out pretty amazingly, we really didn't have to wait very long for anything, and it seemed like whenever we'd finish there'd be a realllllllly long line. Lucky us! Anyway, here is Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower.

The first Sunday of every month all the museums in Paris are free, so Sunday we profited from that and visited the Louvre and the Pompidou Center (Museum of Modern Art). Also in between the two we walked down the Champs-Elysees and saw the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe. I think I'm going to wait to post pictures from Sunday though, because they are very time consuming to post and it's getting late.

All in all, we saw a lot in two days and were extremely tired and sore when we got back to Tours! It was an excellent weekend though, definitely.