The Bureaucratic Highlights

Here I am in with my friends Sandy (who I know from IUP) and Tati (from Brazil) who I will be going to Switzerland with this weekend!!!
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I am writing another blog entry, so guess where I am? Yes, at the Boudonville residence, doing my laundry. Well, make that, TRYING to do my laundry. It is just after 11am on a rainy Wednesday in October. I have been up since 7 o’clock because I had class at 8. My next class is not until 2:15 so I was hoping to get my laundry and grocery shopping accomplished in between the two classes. Other errands, the less than desirable weather conditions, and the fact that I am still waiting to put my laundry in the washer is making me wonder if even getting one thing accomplished today will be possible! Since I hauled everything three blocks I will stay until it is done, but I may have to forego lunch, etc.

I have been busy in a lackluster way, if such a thing is possible. Most of my time is spent in class or running errands, so although my apartment has been crying out for another good cleaning, it has not happened as of yet. Yesterday, for instance, I had class from 9am to 8pm. There were two breaks in between, so I took my French friend Damien to the bank with me in the late afternoon. We were just there last week and they said that my dossier was not complete (which is the opposite of what they had said on a previous visit.) This time we waited for nearly an hour and they made me sign the same paper I had signed the week before! The assistant, however, was very nice, agreed that six weeks was entirely too long to wait, and said that she would take care of it personally that day! I walked out with my bank card and my checkbook. One thing that is strange is that in order to make a deposit you go to a machine like an ATM and put your money into a receptacle and it puts it into your account. (And apparently most banks here do not do this—it’s strange for French people too!) Now I will finally be able to pay my rent and for my Alice box (internet and phone service.) Hooray for small victories!

In which I explain why France is a country of bureaucrats and decide to run away to Switzerland...

While I’m on the subject of bureaucracy, I want to explain the ongoing process of receiving my residency card. Going to the prefecture was one of the first things I did when I came to Nancy. They gave me an appointment for the next day (I was lucky!) to come back with all of my paperwork. I truly thought that I would get my card that day. Oh silly, naïve me!

Here’s a brief summation of the process, beginning with “Oh, I have decided to go to France. I need a visa! What, therefore, should I do?” (I couldn’t resist a little HC humor):

1. Campus France online application form in which they ask you everything except who sat next to you in the second grade.

2. Scheduling an appointment to take every piece of paper known to man to the French Embassy in Washington D.C.

3. Going to the Embassy ON TIME (if you are not there for your appointment, then you have to reschedule and come back!)

4. Arriving in France, going to the prefecture to schedule an appointment to come back and give them other paperwork! B-u-r-e-a-u-c-r-a-c-y.

5. Waiting for notification of my récepissé(which functions as a residency card when my visa expires in November.)

6. Receiving paperwork to go to two different doctors’ appointments.

I will continue more with the list later on, but I want to elaborate on item #6 because my appointments were this past Monday, October 20. Sandy and I were lucky enough to have the appointments at the same time and place. There were a few other international students who had the same. Where we had to go was about a 15 minutes’ drive. The information enclosed gave us TRAM directions, but since when do I do the usual thing? (Practically never, for those who do not know me well.) Romain, a French friend of Sandy and I who is in our program, said that he would drive us there. He was modest when we thanked him on numerous occasions, saying that he would expect that we would have done the same thing for him if he was in the United States! Our first appointment was at 11am. I was supposed to be in class for six hours this day, but I ended up missing half of the class because this whole little “adventure” (for lack of a better word) took five hours!

The first appointment was for x-rays. We ended up waiting for awhile and I was “people-watching,” for the most part. My dad has always worked in a hospital, so I have been in and out of quite a few, but never experienced one quite like this! I think, in the United States it is only common for patients to be in gurneys in the hallway in the emergency room if it is especially busy. At this hospital, however, there were occupied gurneys in the hall adjacent to the radiology waiting area! There were technicians wearing flip-flops and another employee who walked the length of the room spraying disinfectant in every nook and cranny! When it was finally my turn for x-rays, I had another surprising experience. I had to undress for the chest x-ray, but was given no gown or robe! I guess that you really do just have to grin and “bare” it sometimes. (Sorry, but I couldn’t resist the pun!) We had to wait another half hour to get the copies of our x-rays and then we grabbed a fast lunch at “Quick,” which is a poor imitation of McDonald’s. We all would have preferred something better and more “French,” but that’s what time permitted. Our second appointment was in another building, about five minutes up the road from where the first one had been. The theme of the day was “hurry up and wait” it seemed. We checked in and then were eventually called to have routine things done (height, weight, and a brief eye exam.) An eye exam in French? Yes, a unique experience in and of itself; that’s for sure. Then we had to wait longer so that we could talk to the doctor. Although all of the waiting was tiring and frustrating at times, I have to say that the people we interacted with were extremely friendly and accommodating. I had been nervous about the appointments because I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was quite manageable, despite the long day. After visiting with the doctor we were given a paper to take back to the prefecture, which allows me to return to my list…

7. Buy an ANAEM stamp (and yes, I’m still trying to figure out what this is for!) that costs 55€.

8. Return paperwork to the prefecture.

9. WAIT, WAIT, and, WAIT! Did I mention that I have to wait?

10. Repeat “Patience is a virtue” over and over.

11. Remind myself that although I was not born with this virtue it would be a darn good thing if I could learn it…

So yes, there is a lot of bureaucracy and always a lot of things to do, but there are advantages to being here. For instance, my friends Sandy and Tati and myself will be traveling to Switzerland this weekend (Zurich and Basel.) I am very excited about the trip, although it is going to be a tiring, whirlwind two days! Next time I write, I will be sure to post lots of pictures! SWITZERLAND, HERE I COME!