They really don't. As you will learn from an upcoming post about this past weekend, the strikes tried as hard as they could to keep me from getting to Amsterdam (and back), but they did not succeed.
The strike originally started last Tuesday (just about a week ago) and are still continuing. There were more manifestations planned for this past Saturday and more strikes will be going on tomorrow and this upcoming Saturday. The law for the new retirement age passes Wednesday though, so I don't know how much striking is going to help after that (aka please stop).
My uni (université) is cracking down on students who will be on campus this week and checking everyone's IDs to make sure no "hooligans" are screwing around trying to start huge protests on campus.
The high schoolers are the ones that we should be worried about. A lot of the grevistes (strikers) go to the lycée (high school) to round up all the young impressionable kids and get them to barricade the tram lines and whatnot. Although it's pretty useless for them to be involved in this at such a young age, because as my host mother put it, they don't even know what they're going to be doing in 40 years when they hit retirement age. Completely new laws could be in place that declare something else entirely different.
Although, I guess if I were in high school in France at this time it would be kind of interesting to be involved in something like this that the entire country is pushing for. But, since I am not I feel pretty detached from the whole situation except for when my trains get canceled.
So let's just hope that it isn't too intense at the end of this week so that I can make it to Paris to meet mis padres and my bro bro!
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