this is france

well, i promised harrison if i didn't have school i would make a true statements update, so here i am. the reason i don't have school today is because this happend yesterday on my campus.
for a little background: this past summer in france a law passed called "Loi relative aux Libertés et Responsibilités des Universités" which essentially gives universities and not the government its own decision making, which would likely result in having tuitions (unlike our lovely state government system, education for the french up until this point was free), will allow for private interests to invest in university programs, and thus the diminishing of funding for liberal arts programs. the french students from all over the country started striking a little less than a month ago, and many campuses, like mine at Univ. Paul Valéry (Montpellier III) are blockaded by the organizers. this is the official blog of the bloquers. the campus (la fac) was shut down for 3 weeks after students blocked all the entrances with a barricade of desks, chairs, and doors and graffitied the hell out of it. then reopened it for week, where the only students capable of attending class were those in my institute (read: foreigners). and now it's once again closed, just in time to complicate finals. not that the french students should care... the president of the university officially declared that the students have lost their semester.

in other news, i will be home the 20th of december and i look forward to seeing as many of you folks as possible as soon as possible.