When in Rome...

As many of you know, my beloved sister Keziah is in France for the year on exchange. She writes...
Last week we got the results of the first round of presidental elections: the finalists were Chirac (the present president) and Le Pen, an extremist. All his ideas involve extermination of foreigners in France, especially the Arabs. He plans new work and retirement laws favoring the French only, reconstruction of French nuclear weapons and extra security on the borders. For years he's been known as France's Hitler, the racist of france. So when a crowd of several hundred students from the neighboring public school arrived at ours asking us to come out and protest, we joined in. We marched thru the streets of Arras, over 500 kids, visiting all the schools until our number had reached over 1000. At certain points we sat down in the large traffic circles, entirely stopping the circulation; we surrounded the city hall; and we gave speeches in front of the train station. The incredible thing is that there was no violence at all. We sang the national anthemn, chanted "Down with Le PEN" and "No racism in France".