Almost Exciting as a Snow Day ... Another Teacher's Strike

Today there was another teacher/student strike – I think the 3^rd or 4^th one that we’ve had this year. This time it was to protest a new proposal that would reduce the number of people employed in public education next year. We always receive notification in our mailboxes a few weeks before a strike, but this time I also received a flier that students were handing out on the way into the school. However, not all professors always participate in the strikes, and technically as assistants we don’t have the right to strike since we are part-time employees … so I never really know in advance if it will affect me or not. Anyway, today I only had one regularly scheduled course to go to, and I wasn’t really looking forward to it since sometimes it’s a bit annoying to just have on course to go to, right in the middle of the day. But I received a call at 8:30 this morning from my professor, telling me that she would be striking today so there would be no students there. So I went back to sleep for a few hours … and the only thing I can equate this feeling with is to that of a kid who wakes up, turns on the news, and finds out that it’s a snow day – NO SCHOOL, woohoo!! So what did I do with my free day?? Well, I wasn’t as productive as you might have hoped. I spent about 4 hours online in the teacher’s lounge … nice and empty on a strike day. But I did get tickets booked for our flights to Athens! Tina is flying into Paris in mid February to join me for a vacation, and we decided to spend a week of it in Greece! After a week or two of messing around with different options through Easyjet (Paris to Milan to Athens, or Athens to Berlin to Paris, and ultimately just getting burned by price changes) we finally decided that the easiest option would be the direct flight from Paris to Athens. So Tina gets to Paris on Friday afternoon, and our only option is to leave for Athens at 6am on Saturday. We’ll be able to spend the afternoon and evening in the city, but we’ll have to take the last train Friday night to the airport and camp-out there until our 6am flight. At least we don’t have to pay for a night of lodging this way … that’s a bright spot, right??