Going to a match has been one of my year-long goals, so I was super excited to go. Thanks to a delay in the métro, we arrived at the game about 10 minutes late -- late enough to miss the one and only goal scored in the match. I was too tired to be upset about it, and the rest of the game was pretty fun to watch anyway. I'm a big sports fan, so being in a stadium with 30,000 other screaming fans was definitely an experience to remember.
My host brother and 12 year old host sister who came along argued pretty much throughout the entire match, which I was expecting because they don't get along all too well. It did get pretty annoying at a certain point though - with my host brother overreacting to my host sister's innocent questions and my host sister constantly complaining about not being able to see anything and asking to move further down, closer to the field. Once we had done that, though, she could see even less. Oh, to be young again.
Probably the most eventful thing to happen on my end was having a cigarette thrown into the hood of my coat. The man behind me was nice enough to alert me to the fact that I was on fire, picking the butt out of the folds of my hood. I was kind of in shock and obscenely embarrassed, and could think of nothing else to say aside from a meek 'Merci'. My host brother and sister reacted more appropriately though, verifying to make sure that my hood wasn't still burning -- which, of course, it was because of some left over ashes. They brushed them out, and I sat in my bleacher seat, cool as a clam. Yes, I was so exhausted I didn't even care I was in the process of catching on fire.
As for today, the big headline is the national grève, France's reaction to the economic crisis. Coming back from class today, I told my host mom that I had seen the huge crowd gathered in Place Bellecour, and she told me "But of course! The demonstration! We're really good at that!". Crossing over the Rhône, I kept wishing I had my camera to take photos - a long caravan of police vans were inching their way through a sea of people, many of whom carried banners and waved signs calling for a change in economic policy from President Sarkozy. Unfortunately, by the time I had recharged my battery and went back outside, the mass of angry protesters had dispersed. But I did get to snap this photo of a banner taped to Louis XIV:
Now just imagine a lot of people marching and chanting in this general area. If I was more technologically savvy, I would photo shop them in -- but I guess that would be cheating.
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