La grève et les pantalons

This Thursday (January 29), French [public] workers held a nationwide strike (or, as the French say, une greve). It was the biggest strike since Nicholas Sarkozy took office in 2007. Basically, the majority of the French population (nearly 70% supported the strike) wants their president to do more about the economic crisis. As a result, dozens of trains and planes were canceled and public transportation was severely delayed. Here in Montpellier the tramway comes about ever 3-5 minutes on weekdays - this Thursday it was running about every half and hour and the service completely stopped by seven o'clock. Also, a lot of professors were on strike which meant few to none classes for students of all ages.

I decided to make it a day of shopping and ended up buying a pair of flats and skinny, black pants. After searching for a few hours and many failed attempts at trying them on, I finally found a pair that fits perfectly! And they were only 7Euros - I love sales! Too bad January is coming to an end...I'm going to miss those cheap prices.
One thing that bothers me though are the sizes in France. While I'm considered a petite, thin person in the US, here in France apparently I'm a complete fatass. Women (and men!) here have the skinniest legs, calves and hips I have ever seen. This made my life severely more depressing while pants shopping because the number on the tag was way higher then I'm used too.

For dinner I had my first taste of French McDonalds. In France it's called Macdo. The menu is exactly the same, except with higher prices. I also treated myself to a McFlurry for dessert and was shocked to discover that it contained peanut butter M&Ms! The one thing in the whole world that I am missing right now is peanut butter. I looked for it in the grocery store last week and found it in the international/exotique food aisle, next to the Mexican and Chinese food. It was 6,20euros for a jar...A MINI-jar, about half the size of what you'd find in the US. And it was Skippy extra-crunch...No creamy JIF in sight. Ridicule!

After a day of shopping I decided to go see Les Noces Rebelles (Revolutionary Road) with a friend. We had originally wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire but were told the wrong time...Anyway, it was an incredibly intense movie. While the actual plot of the film was OK, the performances by Kate and Leo were amazing!