Ce qu'on aime est toujours belle

Oh Martinique.

My blogs have fallen few and far between. Like I've said before, it's an odd thing to know that your life is anything but normal-- the oddities have become a daily standard. But needless to say there are still plenty of interesting things to discuss : )

Martiniqueeeeee!!!!!!!!

True to French fashion, the people here love to strike. One day while I was t work in FDF I saw a huge, potentially 1000 person strong, march in the center town. The signs were in creole (sweet) so I wasn't sure what it was about, but I eventually came to find it was the postal service. The strike grew and grew, others began, others ended, more businesses and business people got involved. A few weeks later there was a gas strike. There were lines 50 or more cars long, reports of people waiting upwards of 12 hours long for gas at the petrol stations. There was a strike at the port leaving grocery stores BARE. And eventually, about 2 or 3 weeks ago, the strikes reached the power services which meant BLACK OUTS!

AWESOME.

When the power goes out at home there are still street lights and back ups and so on so forth. Here-- nothing. The entire town of Schoelcher, the university and dorms were completely out of power. It was so amazing. We were on campus the first time, and everyone decided to go down byt he sea. The town Schoelcher, where I spend most of my time, had never looked so beautiful (probably because you couldn't see it). But standing on the beach, in the Caribbean, with all my friends around, silenced by the beauty of the stars and quieted by the hush of the ocean. Man, it was awesome-- in the proper sense. Incredible. Inspiring. We saw night how it was really supposed to look. Perfect!

chatting in the dark!

In other news-- a couple of my closest friends Max and Isabelle have left. They are 2 quebecois who were not students here, but backpackers who were close friends to some of the quebecois exchangers. Max and Isa are two of my favorite people in the world, traveling bad asses is what they are. They were so patient, so kind and giving with me and my shit French. Any progress I've made I owe to them, the other Quebecois and a few other little gems. We had so much fun with them, exploring the island, going out and crossing language barriers. Those two are a huge reason why this experience has been so monumental.

Love them.

However, their going away party was not as sentimental and adorable.
The Shoelcher plage has a few negative aspects. Besides it being the central meeting point for every foreigner ever, it is also a lions den of crack heads and feral cats. At Max and Isa's going away party, two of the aforementioned crack heads went AT IT. Alex, a toothless what-looks-like-100-but-is-probably-40 year old crack king who always plays shitty "Drums" he made from garbage and who speaks some melange of creole, french and gibberish, and Elliot, a more coherent more aggressive, younger version of Alex got into a serious brawl. Elliot at one point was stomping on Alex's chest, spewing an incomprehensible arsenal of what was surely obscenities. The origins of the fight are unclear and probably unjustified. But that's life here for them.

However, after the fight someone whipped out a guitar and we had a serious jam session. Jonas took over laying down some blues choruses and I sang words I was making up in English (good thing no one knew what the fuck I was saying it was surely nonsense).

Alex and I. OOps : /

So, all in all it was a good night, and I miss my friends dearly. They have returned safely to Quebec and plans to meet again are in the mix : ) That there is the best part of study abroad. : )

Not our boat.

What Else?!?!?!?!
Well, as I am sure I have mentioned before, the transport system here is virtually non-existent. The buses come and go as they please, and if it's past 7 or a Sunday-- good luck. That's for traveling around town, FDF and to University and back. If you want to get to another part of the island, its even harder. Ines and I went to St. Anne, a beautiful white sand beach to the south. We took a taxi navette, basically a shared van. The cost is 6.50 euro each way-- rip off-- and they are meant to just do tours back and forth. We went on a Sunday when the last taxi was meant to leave st anne for FDF at 3. We started waiting at 230 and, as I should have guessed, the taxi never came back. FML. 

We are stuck in the south.



This is the same day, no less, mama is meant to arrive.


So? We have to hitch hike. After walking for about an hour in the direction we hope is towards FDF we get picked up. The man takes us north east , unfortunately, that is one direction more than we were meant to go. Now we are north--good-- and east-- bad. We wait in this town by a gas station for 2 hours, looking for a ride. It's starting to get dark, we're scared, it's late, and mama is coming in. Finally, we get someone to drop us off at the airport. It's about 6 hours before my mom gets in-- what to do? We took a taxi back to school, we made it about an hour and a half closer than where we started, so why not? However, the 15 min taxi ride costs 50 euro. And I had to take it back to the airport that night, for the same cost, to meet mama. 


So many stories like that. Nothing here is efficient or dependable. If you want to go to the store to buy a toothbrush, be prepared to be in the store for at least 30 min. The lines are long and unorganized, stores are packed, things are hard to find. Everything shouts UNORGANIZED.

Life here is impossible with out a car and a proper house. But we're getting along.