Monoprix Street Fighting

Yesterday's final went decently. We received an article in French about the Paris metro and how so many people are starting to actually read things besides newspapers and free gazettes, and the underlying reasons. We then had to answer free-response to about ten questions, and complete an essay. There were two options; one was a standard essay about whether or not reading has become less appreciated due to the progressing forms of technology, and the other was a friendly letter about the ubiquity of advertisements in French life. Frankly, the idea would have been the reading question in a friendly letter, but I really didn't want to write about the numerous ads around here (it would get boring if I kept saying how nude they were).

Montpellier weather is just crazy. In the last three days it's gone from crazy tempest to nice fall breezes to freaky cold.

Oh! I saw the best fight yesterday! I apologize in advance for not getting a video but a) I had no time to rummage around and didn't want to miss a second of the action and b) I didn't want to get hit by an irate member of the rowdiness.

It started when Tracey and I were walking into the Monoprix. There was this group of guys standing outside and I thought they were just having a spirited discussion when Tracey said something like, "ooh, fight!" That sent me right back outside to blatently watch them from the entrance. It was even better than I had thought at first, because two of the gang were Monoprix security guys shouting at an apparent ruffian. The normal (well, he wasn't really, but the not-rentacop guy) was getting all up in Security's grill about something (sorry for not giving dialogue, but it's hard to understand garbled street French that was probably peppered with many profanities). He was waving his hand near Security's face, and all of a sudden Security smacked that guy's hand back into his own face! It was totally on! BAM! Why you hitting yourself, hooligan?

And, as a witness, the Security guys totally hit first. Too bad I didn't have my camera on, really.

So that regular guy FREAKS out and starts whaling on Security, who in turn gets a few nasty punches in himself. By this point I had dragged Tracey back out of the store because I knew she would only regret missing it later. So Security 2 is dragging the first guy back to store (probably to avoid a lawsuit), while the regular guy is being held back by this strange woman who I think was homeless. It was still SO on, because they kept shouting things at each other.

Then Tracey and I went to get our Diet Cokes and bread.

I continued packing last night, and became utterly dishearted at the amount of stuff I have to lug all the way downtown. I think I'm just going to take it in shifts over the next three days. Hopefully I can find times where the family isn't home since it's kind of awkward to move out while they're still around.