Faux snow day

Here's a little doozy of a story for you.

France + snow + Americans = catastrophic miscommunication.

It's been snowing in Chambéry since around 5 in the afternoon yesterday. It still hasn't stopped snowing and we now have I'd say at LEAST a foot and a half of snow with no signs of stopping anytime soon. So naturally, post snowman outside (which now looks vaguely like that mountain that Jack Skellington sings his lament on) we naturally began to wonder what the status of our courses would be for today.

I woke up at around 7 and just watched the snow until about 8 this morning. I'd first like to say that I have never seen snow fall like this in my life. I feel like TN gets max 4 inches and it melts away around noon anyway. This is an incredible sight and I am mesmerized by all it's fluffy white goodness. Way to bring in December, for sure. Once the girls woke up we started to actually find out whether or not we had school today. There was an email in our Savoie mailbox saying that the LL(insert two more letters here I can't remember) department was closed today. We are in the ISEFE program though, so we still weren't sure if that meant that we didn't have class or didn't have class. So Madame, our landlady, helped us out and she called the ISEFE building and no one picked up. She called several times and we still had no answer. All of our classes started at 9 and it's not exactly convenient for us to walk to school in a foot and a half of snow, across town, up a hill, for 30 minutes if we're just going to have to turn back around. So when no one answered, we all more or less took that to mean that no one was there and there would be no class.

So at around 10 something, she finally gets an answer and it turns out that mine and Bridget's professors trekked through the snow storm to teach the classes and give the tests that we were not there for.

I'm a little irritated. A lot irritated, actually. There should have been more communication, I think. Call out the every class, close the entire school, save the ISEFE building? They could have mentioned that in the email.

"Annulation des cours aujourd'hui ... except you Americans...you guys still need to show up."

Now I have that sinking feeling of being a terrible student, skipping class, missing a test, and concerned over the fact that I'm going to have to find a way to explain why I didn't show up to the professor I'm most afraid of. I'm hoping that a lot of people didn't show up and I won't be the only one. But they have to understand, right? I live 30 minutes away on a good, sunny, bright morning. Sans snow shoes, it would have taken me a lot longer to scale that mountain that is the hill to school and who wants to do that when odds are (so I thought) that it would be cancelled anyway?

Communication for the foreigners during snow storms. Really not too much to ask. Now I need to find a way to banish this feeling i have of missing class and actually enjoy my faux snow day. At least a foot and a half!

The lesson in all of this is: when in doubt, school's not out. Noted for tomorrow if this snow keeps up.

Told you all I'd be writing more ; )