Things worth mentioning:

1- Je suis NULLE sur le téléphone en français (I am lousy/horrible on the phone in french). Seriously. If I had to pick the hardest thing about French for me, it would hands down be talking on téléphone. Thankfully, for the most part, the French text message (it's much cheaper). Phone plans are super weird here. Most people only have 2ish (or a small number) of hours of talk time and then unlimited (or very cheap) textos. Furthermore, you only pay for calls that you make. Donc, if anyone calls you, it costs them and not you, which is nice. But I digress. Usually, the only person I talk to on the phone in French here is Mike, so that *for the most part* doesn't cause any problems. Except when he's just woken up and when I say "encore une fois," he only repeats the part about him being sorry and the proceeds to end the conversation. (To this day, I still have no clue what he really said. He mentioned 'Eyrague'—the village where the house he is refurbishing is located—and 'demain'/tomorrow... but that's it. Oh, and I've talked to Farah too. But again, she knows that my French is, well not lousy, but definitely not fluent, and therefore is very patiente and willing to repeat herself. Tonight, I got a call from a French guy I'd met the other night (aka the night from hell where Aurélien got super drunk and we had no idea how to get him home) and I think he may be meeting us at the bar later, but I really have no clue. My modus operandi for phone conversations here pretty much is limited to "encore une fois" (once again), "okay" and silence. So... who knows. Anyways, perhaps those will get better, but really, for the most part, the idea of talking on the phone en français here is almost panic inducing (but not quite).

2- Carte Bleu: French credit cards have a puce (chip) on them as well as a magnetic swipe. This puce-style credit card is apparently known as a "smart card" and also much more secure than the system used in America (insert mild French disdain here... my cousin works for the company that makes the chips). Anyways, they're very cool. But, as an American who doesn't ACTUALLY live here (currently), I don't have one and, therefore, it is impossible for me to use the automatic "guichets" aka ticketbooth things here and I get really odd looks at stores. In fact, when I went to send my DVD at the post office, the woman who helped me actually said that she'd never seen a credit card like mine before... and then it took forever to figure out how to make it work. So there's that.

3- L'esprit de grêve: Here, it's a very interesting place to negotiate on a work-level. Most jobs (I think) are unionized (heck, even the students are sort of a union themselves), and it is incredibly common for someone to be on strike for whatever reason. In fact, Michel's union just finished a 4 week strike this week (he's very happy it's over), we saw a strike by the Gare/Train station our first day here, and apparently, there are a decent number of high school students who are striking due to teacher lay offs as well. And here, c'est normale. Apparently, the first year OU had it's program in Avignon, there was a huge strike at the Fac, and the students literally camped out on the lawn and barricaded the gates so that no one could get in. They don't mess around. In fact, according to Christophe, the French find it very odd that in America no one, especially the students, really strike at all—not for the government's decisions, work conditions, nothing. I guess, when you think about it, we probably should sometimes. Definitely an interesting detail about French society. Our History prof, M. Bourra told us that this probably has it's roots in the French Rev/Storming of the Bastille in 1789, when the French essentially went on strike/rioted and ended up with a new governement. Not that extreme, but you really can see traces of history in the mentality and society in France, definitely much more so than in the States.