Volcano smoke disrupts European air travel

Ok, so how happy am I that I didn't get stuck in another country with no way of getting back home. Very happy! I know several people whose parents were visiting and are now either stuck in France or couldn't even come to visit in the first place. I could only imagine how upset and disappointed you would be in both cases. Luckily I was too poor to go anywhere for April vacation. And to make matters worse, the SNCF is still on strike so there are only a certain number of trains running. I don't think anything worse could happen, unless this volcano erupts for weeks on end. That's going to mess up many people's plans. I hope that it clears up soon. I've never seen anything like this!

Last week, my Australian friend finally made it to Besançon on Sunday and had to leave on Tuesday morning because I had to work all day on Tuesday. It was so great seeing her, especially after 4 years! It seemed like no time had gone by. Everything was still the same. We had a lot of great laughs remembering our time as students in France and the stupid things we did. It was really great seeing her. I tried to convince her to come back to France to be an assistant and she seemed pretty keen on the idea. So let's hope she'll do it! If not, I hope the next time I see her will be in Australia! I would absolutely LOVE to visit the country but there's always the small problem of finances. I've gotta start saving now, which will take a looong time since I don't even have enough money for a plane ticket home yet and it's already April! Thankfully I'm slowly getting some hours at work. Hopefully a few months I'll have enough money put away for some traveling expenses.

the SNCF once again ruins my plans

I am finally on "congé" or holiday officially from work. Unfortunately for Christophe and I, our plans in Annecy have been canceled because of his work-load. That sucks because I was really looking forward to going but I guess it just wouldn't have been possible for him. But all is not lost because one of my friends from Australia, who I met while studying abroad in Besançon, is coming to visit this weekend! But unfortunately for us, the SNCF is once again, on strike. She was supposed to arrive today, but apparently there are no trains running to Besançon from Paris. So we have to put off our visit until tomorrow. Hopefully, she'll be arriving tomorrow and staying until Tuesday morning. What sucks again is that I leave at 6:30am Tuesday morning to go to work all day so we can't even have a goodbye breakfast in the morning.
Ok so here goes my rant...I'm all for people expressing their rights to strike in order to secure their jobs or to get what they think they deserve, but when you abuse that right by striking all the time! (this is the 3rd strike this year alone!) and when you directly fuck everyone over for their vacation plans, I'm sorry but maybe find a different way of expressing your anger instead of canceling trains!!! I don't know how many thousands of people are inconvenienced by these strikes but if this happened to me all the time I think I would go mad. So everyone cross your fingers that all goes smoothly for tomorrow. I'll be so disappointed if I don't get to see my friend after 4 years of not seeing each other and getting to have a long conversation about our semester abroad. So cross your fingers everyone that the SNCF will "sortir les doigts du cul" and get back to work!