You don't feel like going to work, either? Let's strike!

For a blog that has a French title, it is utterly appalling that I've yet to cover any French news. I shall now rectify that situation (and hopefully get back to updating regularly now that I've mostly unpacked from my latest move).

The French love to strike. No, seriously, they LOVE it. If even a little bit dissatisfied with the taste of their bread, they will take to the streets for a protest (a 'manif'). I once was waiting for a train in Antibes, and they announced that the train would be about four minutes late. I am a girl who took public transportation (in the States) to get high school for four years, so I've dealt with a lot worse than a four minute delay. Clearly the French didn't have my jaded opinion of public transit, because upon hearing this announcement, I heard sighs and grumbles and saw people shaking their heads. One woman started ranting to me about how this was intolerable. I managed to keep from laughing. Barely.

Thankfully, the train wasn't any later than the anticipated four minutes, or I'm pretty sure there would've been a manif on the spot. I don't even want to know what would've happened if any French had been stuck on the Amtrak train I was on that was delayed four hours. They would've stormed the conductor's office without a second thought (we Americans, however, simply stayed seated, whined, and only began to panic when the snack bar ran out of food).

Despite their distaste for inefficient transit, the French have no qualms about going on strike every day (or every other day, should they get rather tired of doing it every day) and making sure to take to the streets for every strike. These strikes will almost always shut down roads, so driving isn't an option (try to plan moving days for when there isn't a strike--trust me, I know). And it seems that anyone in the transportation sector will join anyone else on strike. In fact, the biggest problem with strikes in France is that they're never limited to just one sector. When the teachers go on strike, the students protest with them, and then their parents decide that a strike and a manif sound like way more fun than going to work that day, so they jump on the strike bandwagon.

As a result, I wasn't even a little bit shocked to read that a good percentage of France is on strike over the retirement age. It appears that Sarkozy (henceforth referred to as Sarko, since an eight-year old French child I met when abroad called him that, and I decided to pick it up) is discussing raising the retirement age to 61 or 62.

I know, I know. They killed off the 35-hour work week in France, they have between five and eight weeks of vacation a year, and now this?! Appalling, really.

So naturally, everyone has gone on strike. Government workers, oil workers, hospital workers, teachers, and, of course, transport workers (because the transportation sector will never, never, miss out on a strike). Even Nestle is joining in, which is reason enough to panic in my book (there's no chocolate being made! CRISIS! Just give them all anything they ask for! Hell, make the retirement age 49!). Because, really, a retirement age of anything above 60 is just inhumane.

Oh, France. Just when I start to worry that the world has gone complacent, you remind me that I have nothing to worry about. It's such a relief to know that while all sorts of crazy things are going on around the world, I can always count on France to be blessedly consistent. Once I move to France in September, I will be greve-ing to my heart's delight!

An Ode to the Good Skating Student

In honor of my last week as a figure skating coach at my current rink, I am going to take this opportunity to wax rhapsodic about The Good Skating Student. I considered whining and ranting about The Bad Skating Student, but that seemed to lack a little taste.

The Good Skating Student, first and foremost, loves to skate. This may seem like a silly thing to say, but when you consider the number of students who have to be cajoled, teased, bribed, or just plain dragged on to the ice (either by me or their parents), anyone who is delighted to step on the ice is automatically awesome. They don’t necessarily have to be naturally talented at skating, but they have to want to do it.

The Good Skating Student, in fact, loves skating so much that he or she will come in and practice on their own in between lessons. Frequently this student will be dragging the parents to the ice rink instead of the other way around (I was this type of student. My poor parents will never get back the years of their life they spent carting me too and from the rink until I got my license), and the parents are usually all too happy to complain to me that they can’t get their kid off this ice. In fact, a sure sign of a Good Skating Student can be found by looking at the student’s parents. Do they have bags and dark shadows under their eyes? If they do, it is a good sign that you have a Good Skating Student on your hands and that you should celebrate, no matter how sleep deprived the parents get (I sincerely hope that if I have children, they do not turn out to be Good Skating Students, because I want to sleep more than I let my parents sleep).

As a result of this incessant practicing, the Good Skating Student will tend to pick things up very quickly. This isn’t a necessary part of being the Good Skating Student, but it is a nice little bonus. However, this doesn’t guarantee that the Good Skating Student will master everything immediately. One of my Good Skating Students this session is struggling mightily with her scratch spin. And pretty much every Good Skating Student around will run into a bit of trouble with the axel. But let us not ruin this happy discussion of Good Skating Students with a subject as fraught with devastation as the axel.

The Good Skating Student also is capable of listening. The student’s ability to stand still for 1.8 seconds while the coach offers up a quick tip is especially appreciated. Even better, the Good Skating Student can actually apply the quick tip the coach has just offered! This makes the coach feel like they are actually, well, coaching, rather than standing around giving Shakespearean soliloquies on skating, only without an audience (and the audience is essential to the Shakespearean soliloquy, because anyone else who wandered around debating whether or not to run away for one’s master, à la Lancelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, would be considered insane).

Due to the Good Skating Student’s excellent listening skills, said student is very on top of skating terminology. The Good Skating Student will never look at me like I’m a madwoman when I ask to see a right outside three turn. And after I ask to see that, the Good Skating Student will not promptly show me a left inside three turn. Or a right inside three turn. Or a mohawk. Or a pivot. I reiterate once more, I do not care if the student fails to complete a successful right outside three turn, but if they are on the right foot and the correct edge going into it, then I am a happy happy coach! Any extra awesome Good Skating Student will in fact remember the name of almost everything, and thus not require that the aging coach (with arthritis in several joints and really numb feet because the coach is too poor to buy a properly fitted pair of skates) demonstrate the same thing every single week. This is most likely the best thing about the Good Skating Student.

Finally, Good Skating Students makes sure that their skate laces are tied well and are not about to snap prior to competing so that they do have to stop halfway through and weep to get the pity of the judges. This is in poor form. They also do not get involved with significant others who will hire people to whack the knees of their competition. That is especially poor form.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler OR How It's Done

I’m sure there were some of you who were disappointed that my review of Things You Either Hate or Love wasn't exactly overwhelmingly positive. Never fear! Those of you who wanted to read a book about an overweight girl named after a state that seceded from the union with family issues who likes to make lists whose best friend has geographically departed for a period of time, I have found another option for you! (Oh, and it’s the girl who has family issues, not the state that seceded from the union. This is an excellent example of ambiguity in language. Please take notes.)

This time our protagonist is Virginia, not Georgia. Virginia comes from a more or less perfect family, wherein she sees herself as the only blemish. Her older sister, Anaïs, is smart and athletic, and currently is off with the Peace Corps in Africa. Her brother, Byron, goes to Columbia and is handsome, popular, a star debater, and a straight-A student. Their mom, who is from Arkansas, has a Ph.D. in adolescent psychology. She used to be overweight, but now just works out obsessively and eats lettuce at every meal. Their dad is a software executive who “is the first to admit that he likes women skinny” (18). Oh, and the whole family can speak French fluently and they love artsy things. Virginia is pretty sure that she was a mistake. And probably was switched at birth, too.

Virginia is overweight, loves to read magazines and spend time online, obsessively follows pop culture, hates working out, and is not good at French. And, to top it all off, her best friend has moved to Seattle for the year for her parents’ work. She has a weekly makeout session (for more on the oddness of that term, see Karisa Tells All) with a boy named Froggy, but she doesn’t even consider him a friend. After all, according to the Fat Girl Code of Conduct (written by her), no fat girl should ever push a relationship with a guy, and she should overcompensate for her looks by going further than skinny girls. Virginia’s so convinced of her own inferiority that she’s sure everyone else sees it the same way. She doesn’t give people the chance to get to know her because she assumes they don’t want to.

Things start to fall apart when her old brother gets in some serious trouble, gets suspended from Columbia, and moves back home. Virginia struggles with readjusting her view of Byron, and she withdraws even further from her life. She deals with her emotions by eating, whether it's refusing to eat anything or eating everything she can find. She’s on the verge of self-harm, burning her finger on purpose and breaking her toe when she kicks a wall. But when her parents refuse to let her spend Thanksgiving with her best friend in Seattle, Virginia finally starts to take things into her own hands. She uses her own money to buy the plane tickets out there, and she finally starts to feel again.

She gets an eyebrow ring, and the most popular girl in school (who pukes her guts out between every meal) admires it, which is a bit of a wakeup call to Virginia. Her doctor, instead of telling her to worry about her weight, says that she might want to start kickboxing to get out her anger. She buys a dress she likes, and when her mom says it’s the wrong color for her hair, she dyes her hair the same color as the dress—purple. She starts a webzine at her school where students can vent about their lives, and invites Froggy (who had stopped speaking to her because she kept ignoring him) to join. She even faces the person whose life should’ve been ruined by Byron, and learns a thing or two about moving on. She writes a letter to her older sister telling her everything that’s gone wrong, even though her mother wants her to keep it all quiet. And finally, she tells her dad that her weight is none of his business.

After all of this, things with Froggy finally work out, but he insists on having a public relationship.

This, my friends. This is how it is done. You do not give your main character mono so that she can lose weight. You have her face her feelings, you have her face her problems, you have her start to work through things. Then, once she’s done that, she gets a boy. That’s fine. But her problems don’t magically go away, as they did for Georgia in Things You Either Hate Or Love. Instead, Virginia has to work through them. She has to tell people what’s bothering her. She has to stand up for herself. She has to do things on her own, break a few rules, break out of the box that she put herself into.

Oh, and if she references Ani DiFranco lyrics a few times along the way, that works, too.

Skating Student Quote of the Day: On Specificity

Student: Are those things on the things for the thingy?

The sad part is that I knew almost exactly what the student wanted to know. He was asking about the purpose of hard skate guards.