As you read yesterday (you did read yesterday, right? If you didn't, you should read the post underneath this one before you read this), I had quite a struggle finding someone who would be able to pick Cherry up from school for me. I was able to avoid finding someone to take her to school only because one of the speakers at Blaise's workshop backed out at the last moment, and so he was able to rearrange the talk schedule so that it didn't begin until 11:00. This was fortunate, because I needed to be in Créteil at 9:00 for the beginning of my class.
On the day of my visite médicale, the woman who scheduled me for the class spent probably half the time I was talking to her emphasizing how very, very, very important it was that I be on time. Very important. So, I spent 20 minutes Monday morning figuring out when exactly I needed to leave in order to ensure that I would be there on time. I was faced with a dilemma: there was a bus which would get me to the building at 8:54, assuming that it was running on time, and that I didn't get lost trying to find the building afterwards. Alternately, I could take a bus that would get me there at 8:29, but of course that would me leaving a half hour earlier. Taking a risk, a chose the later of the two busses. Then, of course, I had to figure out which trains to take. The 8:01 from Val de Fontenay would get me to Vincennes with 8 minutes to catch the 8:16 to Sucy (or 1 minute to catch the 8:07, though that seemed unlikely). Then I would have 5 minutes to get through the (annoyingly large) station at Sucy and catch the bus.
Tuesday morning I left with plenty of time to catch my train, even given that I would need to stop on the way and purchase a daily pass. I made it to Vincennes without incident, and watched the 8:07 pull away just as I made it down the stairs. Of course, that wasn't a problem because I could easily make the bus if I caught the 8:16. Then I looked at the departure moniters. It was now an 8:18. Well, I'd have to hurry at the other end, but I could do it. A few minutes later, it was an 8:19, then an 8:20. At 8:21, the train pulled into the station and I climbed aboard, hoping that I could (somehow) will the train to make up time as we went. I didn't dare check my watch to see how late we were. When we (at last) arrived at my stop, I was out the door before the train had come to a complete stop, and sprinting down the platform toward the exit. (Annoyingly, I had guessed wrong about which end of the platform the exit was on at Sucy, and so I had to run the length of the platform in addition to all the rest of it.) Down a set of stairs, through some hallways, up another set of stairs, put the ticket through the turnstile, and out the door, only to watch the back of bus 393 turning the corner not 10 yards in front of me. Perhaps the bus driver would see me if I chased the bus and tried to flag him down? At least in Fontenay, they will sometimes stop, and the catching the next bus would me that I would be LATE FOR MY CLASS. And then they would probably make me take it a different time, and I would have to go through the whole rigamarole of finding child care for Cherry, and . . . up a block, around one corner, another block, around another corner, and at last the bus slowed to a stop and the driver waved me on, where I collapsed panting into the nearest seat.
As it turned out, when I arrived there were only 7 other people there, and the instructor was allowing people who showed up as late as 9:55 into the room. (In fact, it was at that point that we finally actually got started.) The two people who showed up at 10:20 and 10:43 were turned away, however.
For the first couple of hours, we learned about French history. (The course was taught in French, and there was someone translating in back for those of us who spoke more English than we did French. I was the only native English speaker.) Then, we talked about the symbols of the French Republic: the flag, the national anthem, Bastille Day (which is not what they call it here), and Marianne. After lunch (when I sent my pizza sliding across the table and onto someone's plate, knocking over her water), we returned to the classroom. Then it was on to the French government. Finally, we talked about freedom and equality and secularity (not so much about fraternity and solidarity). In particular, this ended up being about the rights of women as equals to men. For many of the men in the class, the news that their wives could get jobs and birth control without their permission was evidently unwelcome. They were also not very happy to discover that in France, beating one's spouse carries a far greater punishment than beating some random person on the street.
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