Trouble in France

France is the country of lovers, right? Not so. For those of you who thought I was exaggerating about living in the ghetto, let me just fill you in on the recent developments. In last two weeks, a girl was pushed to her death from her window(not my dorm, but another student's residence down the street). She apparently invited a few guys back to her room and for some reason they decided it would be good fun to push her out of her window. At another student's residence, a fire started in the parking lot and damaged the building. As if this wasn't enough fun, riots started in the Paris suburbs a week ago. I LIVE IN A PARIS SUBURB. The police cannot control these riots and they are spreading. My roommate and I thought we were relatively safe in our neck of the woods, but this morning around 5:30 we heard two explosions and then a bunch of noise. It was so loud that it shook the walls. We didn't want to investigate the noise, so we just stayed in our rooms. This morning when we got up, we decided to look around. We went to the emergency exit and saw that two vans in the parking lot had exploded. They were burnt to a crisp and were obviously responsible for the explosion. The parking lot is only about 15 feet away from our rooms. Now we are both a little worried as we do not have a contingency plan for escape if something like this happens again. We have bars on our windows so if a fire spreads to the hallway, we are stuck and will have to die in this horrible, horrible country. It isn't really that bleak, but still cause for a little worry.