Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Eh ben voilà
Well another day where I risked my life while walking out the door. You heard right, I’m talking about ice-covered sidewalks making even my shortest walk treacherous. Despite everyone telling me that it doesn’t snow much here, and that even if it did, the roads/sidewalks in city would be quickly cleared, it has been snowing off and on for the past week (yes that’s right, as in starting in November!), with easily over a foot of snow at the ground at one point. Apparently this amount of snow is exceptional for this time of year, or ever even, so I hope we’re done, because it has only made my life more difficult. Not to mention Geneva airport was closed last week, as well as several airports around London. Ok snow, you had your fun, but when my flight takes off in 11 days (!!) I do not want to be stuck at an airport because of delay or worse have it be canceled entirely. Let’s not go there, positive thoughts..
Anyway, despite the snow, there seems to be no real school cancellation policy. No website/TV/radio/phone call updates.. There are on a more of “show up and see who’s around” system, which is completely inconvenient and annoying, to say the least. Since there are no school buses (kids take public transit to school), if the city buses are cancelled, that to me that means a huge portion of the student population will not be there, so neither should I. That’s how I got out of my last class last Friday afternoon. Before you think that I’m just looking for an excuse to get out of classes (because really that’s only part of it), let me just explain to you the disaster that are the current roadways and walkways in this city. I mean, if the buses can’t even drive on the roads, how can I be expected to walk on them even?!
Basically, no one here has ever heard of a shovel. I don’t know if everyone just assumes it is someone else’s responsibility, but the bottom on the line is, that it is not happening. I saw ONE plow as it was coming down fiercely, so I guess they aren’t really on top of that either. Weird to me since I was thinking the other day, the people I have seen consistently working the most are the landscaping people that work for the city. Not anyone in an office or store, mind you, they’ve got Sundays, Mondays, two hour lunch breaks and whenever else they feel like it off. Somehow the city employees who are supposed to be plowing just aren’t around, though. Back to the sidewalks, so no shoveling leads to packed-down snow that overnight turns into ice. No salt, no kitty litter, no gravel, no nothing. Sidewalks have thus been made into little ice skating rinks; too bad I didn’t bring my skates.
I suppose I figured once the snow stopped, once the buses started running and it was sure that people were in school again, some sort of effort, at least on school grounds, would be made to clear the walkways, but my 5 minute walk (turned into 10 this morning) on a path that leads directly towards my middle school, was as if no one had ever touched it. Even with warmer temps (40s) and pouring down rain to melt the snow around, there were several inches of icy, snowy, slush mix on that path that I slipped on (but did not fall!) many a time. It seems that they rely on people wearing through the snow by walking on it repeatedly. Well I wore my non-waterproof boots with one pair of socks today assuming things would be different, and boy was I disappointed.
Today I found out why they don’t put anything down, though. Apparently salt is bad for the environment, because it runs off into water and kills fish. Due to this, the French government apparently stated a couple of years ago that they were no longer going to purchase or put down salt (which conveniently means they don’t have to spend the money on it). I found this out from Claire, the woman whose house I live in. I started telling her how I just thought that the condition of the sidewalks was horrible (sorry to keep harping on it, but I am so sick of cold wet feet), and that if it was like that in the US, we would not being going to school, mainly because if a student were to get hurt, it could be considered the schools fault. Claire said something about how that just isn’t they way they think here, and I know, this whole “let’s sue everyone” mentality is apparently quite American. Still, I thought, it’s dangerous. Should we really want to put people in danger, regardless of whose fault it is?
Anyway, on my slippery walk home, I started thinking more about this, and it seems that I have found une petite faute in the manière de penser française, mes amis. A mistake, but no! French people don’t make those! Well that is namely the point. French people do not like to take the blame for anything, and in fact will instead actively look for ways to place it onto other people. And while the school doesn’t want to take blame is a student is “clumsy” or whatever while traversing their ice rink of a parking lot, then fine, but why, my French friends, are you not the first to protest (manifestez!!) that someone didn’t do their job who should of? How ironic, n’est-ce pas? For a country that seeks to push blame to anything other that themselves, the Americans who seek to take action in those situations are deemed crazy. A student can slip and break his or her neck on the way to school because no one bothered to shovel and even if they did, the run off and resulting black ice made for a dangerous journey, but said student nor his or her family seek to blame someone about it? This just seems a little off to me, my French friends.
In conclusion, someone DO SOMETHING about the state of roads/sidewalks here.. or I may just stop showing up to work entirely (not that you would notice..).
Anyway, despite the snow, there seems to be no real school cancellation policy. No website/TV/radio/phone call updates.. There are on a more of “show up and see who’s around” system, which is completely inconvenient and annoying, to say the least. Since there are no school buses (kids take public transit to school), if the city buses are cancelled, that to me that means a huge portion of the student population will not be there, so neither should I. That’s how I got out of my last class last Friday afternoon. Before you think that I’m just looking for an excuse to get out of classes (because really that’s only part of it), let me just explain to you the disaster that are the current roadways and walkways in this city. I mean, if the buses can’t even drive on the roads, how can I be expected to walk on them even?!
Basically, no one here has ever heard of a shovel. I don’t know if everyone just assumes it is someone else’s responsibility, but the bottom on the line is, that it is not happening. I saw ONE plow as it was coming down fiercely, so I guess they aren’t really on top of that either. Weird to me since I was thinking the other day, the people I have seen consistently working the most are the landscaping people that work for the city. Not anyone in an office or store, mind you, they’ve got Sundays, Mondays, two hour lunch breaks and whenever else they feel like it off. Somehow the city employees who are supposed to be plowing just aren’t around, though. Back to the sidewalks, so no shoveling leads to packed-down snow that overnight turns into ice. No salt, no kitty litter, no gravel, no nothing. Sidewalks have thus been made into little ice skating rinks; too bad I didn’t bring my skates.
I suppose I figured once the snow stopped, once the buses started running and it was sure that people were in school again, some sort of effort, at least on school grounds, would be made to clear the walkways, but my 5 minute walk (turned into 10 this morning) on a path that leads directly towards my middle school, was as if no one had ever touched it. Even with warmer temps (40s) and pouring down rain to melt the snow around, there were several inches of icy, snowy, slush mix on that path that I slipped on (but did not fall!) many a time. It seems that they rely on people wearing through the snow by walking on it repeatedly. Well I wore my non-waterproof boots with one pair of socks today assuming things would be different, and boy was I disappointed.
Today I found out why they don’t put anything down, though. Apparently salt is bad for the environment, because it runs off into water and kills fish. Due to this, the French government apparently stated a couple of years ago that they were no longer going to purchase or put down salt (which conveniently means they don’t have to spend the money on it). I found this out from Claire, the woman whose house I live in. I started telling her how I just thought that the condition of the sidewalks was horrible (sorry to keep harping on it, but I am so sick of cold wet feet), and that if it was like that in the US, we would not being going to school, mainly because if a student were to get hurt, it could be considered the schools fault. Claire said something about how that just isn’t they way they think here, and I know, this whole “let’s sue everyone” mentality is apparently quite American. Still, I thought, it’s dangerous. Should we really want to put people in danger, regardless of whose fault it is?
Anyway, on my slippery walk home, I started thinking more about this, and it seems that I have found une petite faute in the manière de penser française, mes amis. A mistake, but no! French people don’t make those! Well that is namely the point. French people do not like to take the blame for anything, and in fact will instead actively look for ways to place it onto other people. And while the school doesn’t want to take blame is a student is “clumsy” or whatever while traversing their ice rink of a parking lot, then fine, but why, my French friends, are you not the first to protest (manifestez!!) that someone didn’t do their job who should of? How ironic, n’est-ce pas? For a country that seeks to push blame to anything other that themselves, the Americans who seek to take action in those situations are deemed crazy. A student can slip and break his or her neck on the way to school because no one bothered to shovel and even if they did, the run off and resulting black ice made for a dangerous journey, but said student nor his or her family seek to blame someone about it? This just seems a little off to me, my French friends.
In conclusion, someone DO SOMETHING about the state of roads/sidewalks here.. or I may just stop showing up to work entirely (not that you would notice..).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)