Drama and Perturbance

This morning at the nursery school there was an extensive drama that developed after the 'closing' of the school gates.

A parent rang the school bell at 9:17 to drop her two boys off.

The day at the nursery school starts at 9:00. The director greets students until 9:15 as 'a favour' (her words) to the parents. Anyone arriving after that time is a huge inconvenience to director, the teachers, and the other students, and shouldn't be let in. And apparently at regular French schools, the gates are literally locked (like ours was) and no one will let you in after the designated time. This is normal procedure.

Initially, I really didn't understand what the fuss was about. Any public school in Canada (I'm assuming..) would allow any student into class at any time, although a late slip might be required after the bell. But I can't imagine a school locking it's doors an not allowing any one in after a certain time (although the whole locked gate thing would likely eliminate all of the strangers that seem to make it into schools these days...).

On the other hand, I kind of understand where they are coming from. Many of the kids arrive before 9:oo and are ready to go. It's not fair to them if kids are arriving at any time, and it disrupts lessons, which is going to happen with any child under the age of 5 who can barely remove his coat by himself. Plus, a parent is never going to learn if they are allowed to drop their kids off whenever they want. But I'm not a parent, so what do I know.

Any thoughts? The situation was only resolved because the lunch lady arrived, and the mother was still there, and the director had to let the lunch lady in, and thus the kids as well.

On an unrelated note, this has been a week of perturbance for me on the trains.

On Wednesday there was a strike by the SNCF workers, which made my usual 45minute commute to St Cloud into a 1.5 hour commute from hell.

Then tonight, on my way to tutoring, also in St Cloud, I discover that there has been a fire at some power station, and so my train is basically taking a huge roundabout that added an extra 45 minutes onto my regular 20 minute ride. I should be happy that the trains were running at all, but it's still frustrating.

And we still don't know what the strike was about.

What's the point of a strike if no one knows what you're striking about?

We're clearly not French enough yet!

And on that note, I got my note today for my carte de sejour medical, which is scheduled on a bad day for me. I called a couple of times today to try and reschedule, and no one answered the phone. No message or anything. Erik later told me that when he went for his, one of the two receptionists had just returned from grocery shopping, and the other was on a personal phone call.

Sigh.

It's almost hard to imagine things being any other way...