take a walk

When I came up with this title, I was thinking of this song

Since SOME people have filed some complaints about the length of my posts so I’ll keep this one short. You can’t please them all.

So something big that’s going on in France right now is strikes (grèves) over Macron’s decisions over the country’s pension system. It started Thursday and is ongoing (with not really an end in sight I believe). Thursday was really bad with most transport completely shut down. The only metro lines running regularly were these two that are condcutorless. I anticipated not being able to take it, but I tried anyways… The line I take most often was actually running but with a lot of disruptions. So I ended up walking quite a bit and I’ve been having to do that since. I still had to go to work, but my classes were cancelled Thursday and Friday. I guess this is France’s version of snow days.

I thought it would be irritating to have to walk everywhere, especially since it’s getting colder and colder here. But in fact, I’ve had a generally good experience! It helps that I already live centrally (some of my friends have to walk 2 hours just to get to class) but it all really depends. Like for my babysitting it’s 30-40 minutes. I like it because I feel like I’m seeing more of the city than ever before. It’s also nice because I don’t get bored because there’s always something to look at. Even though it's cold, a lot of areas are really doing it with the Christmas lights and decorations and the department store window displays are quite entertaining. Even when the transport starts running normally again (whenever that may be….), I hope I’ll continue taking the time to walk here and there. It’s also funny because for some distances, walking takes the same time as the metro. But like Gudetama, I’m a lazy egg most days.

It’s wild to think that the semester is nearly finished. I’m also definitely feeling more stress than I’ve probably felt this whole semester. Granted, relatively, it’s not much compared to Smith. But everything is relative ya know? Wish me luck on my exams! By this time next week I should pretty much be in the clear and packing my bags for Italy!