10 years ago Part 3 (the last and final!)

One of the many churches in Rouen 

I recently had to take a French test in order to prove that I speak and understand the language so that I can apply for citizenship eventually. I was more than slightly terrified, which sounds odd for someone who has been living in a country for 10+ years, but the French are not like us straightforward Anglo-Saxons. We think that if you know your stuff, it'll mostly go alright for you on a test. The French are a whole different breed; they love their trick questions. In order to succeed at a French test, imagine that "the man" is out to get you, will throw everything in his power at you to make you fail, and then do alright in spite of that. In the states we have a minority group of "bad test takers"; in France no one thinks they're safe. Come what may, however, I couldn't help but feel proud of myself for being willing to be sitting in that chair, black pen in hand, and multiple choice answers in front of me. If anyone had told me that all these years later I would be doing that, I think I would have either peed my pants in fear or laughed outright in their face.

Sometimes it's easy now to forget just how hard it was for me in the beginning. When  I  Matt rolled that beast of a suitcase upstairs to his friend Grace's house, I really had no idea of the adventure that was awaiting me. Grace was a lovely hostess and I remember marveling at how at ease she appeared here when I was just starting to have my Dorthy moment. We were definitely not in Kansas anymore. The next couple of days were filled with "sight seeing" amidst drizzly rain although to be honest, since I was getting to hang out with Matt I'm not sure how much of the sights I actually took in, nor how much I actually noticed the rain.


Matt and I trying to not to look awkward as we posed for the picture together 

Ever the gentleman, Matt drove me out to Rouen, the city that I would be staying in for the next school year. Once again, he arranged a place for me to stay for a couple of days before I would meet up with my French contact for the year. Saying goodbye to him felt like I was losing my one lifeline with the familiar. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had signed a year of my life away to this place. Nothing felt like comfortable home. The college aged girls I was staying with sweetly invited me out to a party that they were going to that evening but truth be told, I didn't feel like partying. I felt like the kid who had shown up to summer camp and then realized that she was actually at summer camp. I'm sure if I could have figured out a way to call my mom and have her come pick me up, I would have.

Bravery comes in the morning frequently and the next day I was ready to tackle the adventure awaiting me. Unfortunately, the adventure wasn't quite ready for me. Out of habit, one of the girls double locked the door on her way out to class. Even more unfortunate for me was my complete lack of familiarity with a European door. The thing had probably around 5-6 locks and other such doodads on it that I thought for sure it was just a matter of me not pulling on the right thingamajig. Somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour into a very frustrating process I began to realize that I was missing some important element (like a key) and that I would just have to sit in jail for the rest of the day. Thankfully, one of my hosts came home for lunch and suddenly my prison sentence was commuted to only half a day. I did, however, struggle with locking and unlocking that door for the remainder of my stay there. French lesson number one: Americans are just not used to old, complicated things and such things can only be learned the hard way.


My first day finally successfully exploring the city of Rouen

I eventually met up with my French host Christine. She was one of the English teachers that I'd be working with throughout the year and in charge of helping me find housing. Because I would only be staying a school year, in the end, there were only 3 options available. 1) renting an apartment with some college kids above the landlord's place. 2) renting a room from the same guy in what I would eventually nickname the haunted manor. 3) living with the nuns. You think I'm joking but it turns out that even nuns need money to live on. Options number 3 and number 1 felt off the table to me (the nuns had very tight rules and the place was about as homey as a convent, pun intended...and living above my landlord didn't seem like the wisest idea in the world) so the haunted manor it was.

As it turns out, I probably would have been better off living with the nuns. Oh hindsight. I eventually realized that my landlord was an eccentric control freak which made for a wild ride of a school year. I look back now and laugh (mostly!) but at the time  I wondered what on earth I'd gotten myself into. My first clue was what I have affectionately dubbed the "three scraps scolding" in which I got in trouble because three small bits of paper had been found in the stairwell which indicated that I had not been keeping up on the housecleaning. It was the first of many scoldings. The guy was obsessively controlling--he alone had the only key to the mailbox and would stop by everyday to personally give us our mail.


My quite possibly old haunted mansion...


We weren't allowed visitors of either sex to step in past the front gate on penalty of violating my rent contract (at least with the nuns it was only the opposite sex!). He couldn't stand for the storm shutters to be left open during a storm and I would come back from a long day of teaching only to discover that he had come into my room without my permission to shut them. One of the highlights however was the day that my housemate and I informed him that the fridge door was somehow damaged. I came home to a full fridge with no door in sight and a note saying that since the fridge was fairly new, the two of us would need to pay for a new one! My favorite moment, however, was the one time Matt broke the rules and came to help me clean the top floor on my last day in that loony bin. Due to my limited French, I hadn't understood some of the typed out and laminated signs in the bathroom. Apparently their was a whole tribute to Louis Pasteur and his contributions to good hygiene. It then went on to ask all gentlemen users of the toilet to pee sitting down as they do in the Netherlands to promote better bathroom hygiene! A guy who will tell you how to pee is clearly not a guy to be trusted.


My bedroom


There were other adventures in that place as well. My bed was a joke from the first time I sat down on it. My lats underneath my mattress were made with flimsy plastic and I broke 2 of them immediately. For once my beast of a suitcase came in handy as it was big enough to support the mattress under the bed. I ended up sleeping on it for the rest of the year. I also very stupidly decided to rent out the balcony bedroom when all my life I have struggled with active (and sometimes violent) night terrors. Thank God he overlooked my stupidity on that one and we had no balcony flinging adventures. I did manage to scare the snot out of my housemate one night with my spine chilling screams (or so I'm told). Which must have been all the more bewildering for her because neither of us could speak the other's language well at all (night terror was somehow not listed in my phrase booklet). I remember that we would sit at the kitchen table, eating our breakfasts with one hand and a French-English dictionary in the other. Our rule was that we were supposed to speak to the other in their language. It made for very loooong drawn out conversations, let me tell you.


My balcony view... 


I think now that I really would have liked her if I actually could have communicated with her. She seemed to me to be a funny, down to earth kind of girl. One day our new washing machine started going bezerk on us--I'm not kidding, it literally felt and sounded like a minor earth quake was happening. We both ran in from our respective rooms only to discover that darn washing machine rocking nearly 2 inches into the air on either side. Cleaning up the pots and pans on top of it (because yes, it was in the kitchen) we shared a good laugh that it was only a possessed machine and not something needing to be measured on the Richter scale.


New York monuments (Twin Towers and the Brooklyn Bridge) made out of tp as a project by some of my students... 


To my surprise, my work as an English assistant in two French middle schools was one of the highlights of my stay in France that year. It was, and probably will be, the one and only time I've worked with middle school students in my life. They had us do everything from correct student's pronunciation, to creating English activity workshops with small groups, to teaching a class about American pep assemblies (I may or may not have led the class in a game of chubby bunny for that one...I plead the fifth to traumatizing French youth...). I had no computer when I came to France (laptops were a rarity then) so I was stuck using the school computers and internet at one of my two schools (for some reason it didn't work at the other). It meant that I had internet connection for about 2 days a week, in between my class schedule. I otherwise needed to buy an international phone card and call my friends and family from an available phone booth when I wanted to get in touch.




 I sometimes wonder now what my experience would have been like, had I moved over here today in our "connected" world. The truth is, who knows? I might not have felt as homesick and alone but then I definitely would have missed out on my trial by fire. In my alone-ness I was forced to learn about the culture around me and highly motivated to finally speak that darn language.  I learned to stop taking small comforts like dishwashers and dryers and readily available music to listen to for granted. But most importantly, I learned what it was like to have my faith refined through fire. France has at times been my cross to bear but without it I would not have been able to savor the victories he has also thrown my way (such as learning this week that I actually passed that test!). With God, for every taking apart there is always an equal and even better building back up. I'm so grateful that he has brought me to this crazy, wonderful, frustrating like heck, delightful country. Here's to whatever the next 10 years bring!

Last Night I Had A Dream

Last night I dreamed a telephone was ringing. Usually this turns out to be your alarm and you wake up and have this weird sort of urge to answer the phone convinced the president is calling you and oh by the way you're late for school even though you graduated years ago. Gotta love dreams, right? But it wasn't my alarm. It was a Friday night and it was my turn to sleep in the next morning. Matt was mumbling something about letting them leave a message but I still stumbled out of bed, groping for the telephone because it was, after all, midnight, and even the most dedicated of telemarketers in Paris usually give up around 9 pm and turn in.

I didn't even really have time to get worried. It figures that something as horrific as the multiple terrorist attacks last night would have first made it all the way across the big blue expanse and to my parents' tv set before I was even conscious that people were dying so horribly in my city. 2015, it seems, in the most awfully literal way, will have begun and ended with a bang. Last January, as many of you still remember, Paris was touched by terrorism when a couple of men raided the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and executed many of the employees who worked there. I remember feeling conflicted. I was shocked in the face of such violence and horrified that those men lost their lives in the name of God. And yet, I couldn't raise them up as heroes and martyrs as so many of those around me. There is nothing heroic about mocking the sacred. Belittling someone's faith whether Jew, Christian, or Muslim (and they regularly made fun of all three), does not take courage and freedom of speech does not eliminate the necessity of wisdom in our words and actions.

In the days to come the nightmare unfolded in new and scary ways. I remember going shopping the day after during the traditional January sales--normally a zoo of shopping bags, stressed out shoppers, and fought over shoes. In the place of the usual consumerist crazy marched uniform clad soldiers with big guns and a chill trailing behind their clipped steps. Every shop was talking about it. In Gap they were joking that they should probably shave their beards so as not to be confused with terrorists. I saw Je Suis Charlie badges everywhere.  The day after I was at work when my boss informed me of the hostage situation taking place in a Jewish grocery store across the city not far from where good friends of ours live. Without panicking the children we needed to get them inside the school as quickly as possible and stay inside until the hostage situation had been resolved. We took down the sign on the front door indicating that we're a school and the reign of Alerte Vigipirate began. No more parking outside of city halls, schools, prominent churches, or the police station. A heavily armed man was now posted outside of our local synagogue. On Monday we heard that there was another hostage situation, this time only minutes down the road from the school next to a grocery store that we go to weekly. Once again we were tense and on edge; some of our school children live in that neighborhood.

As it turned out, the third attack was mercifully uneventful and not terrorist related but for the first time, my confidence in the stability of my city was shaken. You didn't know where or when the next attack was coming from. The first had been targeted; this, more and more random... It felt as if every troubled and radical Muslim in the city was coming out of the woodwork in angry vengeance. For the first time in a relatively sheltered Western life, I felt truly unsafe.  As a Christian, it was hard to know how to position myself. I knew all the Sunday school answers but deep down in my core I knew I needed more than just a platitude. The truth is, I was scared then and I'm scared now. I won't deny it and hide behind a front of pretending that Christians don't ever feel threatened by the overwhelming presence of evil in this world.

And evil it was. Reports are rolling in revealing the massacre of the night before. Whole cafe terraces shot dead while enjoying an evening drink. Young people murdered as they were shot up and thrown grenades at during a rock concert. Bomb blasts during a French-German soccer game. One of my friends, holed up during bible study and unable to get back to her nursing baby for fear of going out in the streets. A fellow parent from church stuck in the soccer stadium with his two small boys trying to reassure them. My coworker, about a week away from her due date lives in the very neighborhood the hostage situation took place in. Thankfully she was actually sleeping when it all took place but not having heard from her, I and another coworker were concerned.  Another friend had both her brother, sister and their spouses that went out for dinner in the neighborhood that got shot up. They were just 300 meters away from the restaurant shooting when it happened, thanking God that they had changed their mind about having dinner in that very restaurant earlier. They found refuge with a hundred other people hiding in a hotel basement.

This attack hits even closer to home than last January. The multiple shootings occurred in our old neighborhood, just a couple of blocks away from our former apartment. I can picture the concert hall that was shot up. I can imagine the cafe and bar nightlife well, having walked those streets many a time while living over there. The truth is, I am scared. I live in a city where I might be blown up just taking the subway or having a drink in a restaurant. I knew that before and I am reminded in the most horrific way possible that my physical safety can crumble at any second. But if I stay focused on this chapter in history then I will lose sight of the big picture. God's bigger picture. You see, I believe in a big God. A God who is writing a large narrative; one in which there is heartbreaking conflict but overwhelming resolution. The most joyful of happy endings. I am as baffled as the next person by the ways God moves and the tragedies he allows to occur. The Bible, however, promises a time coming when there will be no more tears. No more suffering. Evil completely weeded out and eradicated. A God who is waiting for the maximum number of souls to find their freedom, peace, and joy in him. So yes, I'm scared. But I also know where to tell my emotions to get off at when they threaten to consume me. Because this isn't the end of the story.

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

              It's so hard to know how to get something like this started. Thank you just falls short. Having started on the parental journey myself I'm just now getting a taste for what you and Mom did and continue to do for me (And I don't just mean that infamous blueberry filled diaper that you had to change). You have taught me, in few words, the value of hard work and becoming someone that people can count on. You're probably one of the most humble people I know. It was you who jogged alongside of me while I chugged and puffed and sputtered along, all with high hopes of not making a fool of myself on the cross country team. And it was still you, who got up at the crack of dawn to ferry me to those ridiculously early morning Friday runs. I'm sure I gave you way too much lip and attitude in those days and yet somehow we made it through without you disowning me ;)
                                                                                                                                                                                       
 I still have the letters you wrote me and the memories of father-daughter dates that only become more special with time. Your steadiness and commitment to be there for the people you care about during good times and bad never ceases to amaze me.  I can't count the number of times that you have selflessly sacrificed time to help others with IT problems. You are a man of deep integrity and loyalty to which I aspire to be like (well, the female version, that is!). You have practiced what you preach and it has not fallen on deaf ears. So thank you. Thank you for all that and a million other things, big and small. Even though it falls short, know that you have a daughter who is grateful for all that you are.
                                                          Happy Father's Day

                                                                                         Tal

                                                                                                                                                                                      

Bonne Année

Think about this for a second: Y2K was 15 years ago. That legitimately blows my mind. Let's all just take a moment to ponder that.

Anyways, moving on, it's 2015 and the start of a new year! As the French would say Bonne Année! (All January long, I might add...) We rang in the new year at our church with animations, lots of food and some bubbly. (Not very unique but definitely a tried and true formula...) 

Since January is the month for retrospection, I thought it very fitting to do a little reflection myself about what I want out of the next year of my life. And yes, I even decided to hop onto the bandwagon of--dare I say it--goal setting. Yep, you heard it--I am embracing being one of 'them' this January. So without further ado, here are my three goals for 2015:

1. More, more, mooore life in my life. Sound redundant? What I mean is I want more God, more skype chats, more happy living, more rolling on the floor with Livia, more blessing others, more laughs, more date nights, more moments that count and less computer, less zoning, less TV, less complaining, less go-it-ing on my own, less waiting until I'm running on empty to refill my tank. 

2. Giving up a perfect standard that is always just on the horizon and embracing all encompassing, all-powerful, grace. Grace for me, grace for others.  

3. Getting fitter than I was pre-baby. Call me crazy, but I think it would just be the bees' knees to be in better shape after having a baby than I was in the first place. Currently I am only 2-3 kilos (about 5 pounds) away from my pre-baby weight so I consider this completely legit. I'm on the high end of the BMI healthy range index and I'd love it if I could slip on down to the mid-range. (Don't worry, I'd stop there as my body frame won't permit me to go much lower than that) 

           And what better way to do just that than with gambling? Just kidding--but there is betting involved. Betting on myself that is! Starting January 5th I'm going to be joining the DietBet 4 week challenge. The way it works is you put 30 dollars into the pot and have 4 weeks to lose 4% of your body weight. Ambitious, but still within a healthy weight-loss range. At the end, whoever manages to successfully lose the 4% splits the money in the pot with the others. Not too shabby, huh? If everyone succeeds then all you lose are a few pounds, not the money you put in originally. Okay, now who's with me? You know you want to... 

Well there you have them! I hope you all had a fantabulous (but safe!) New Years! Happy 2015! 

Mary

Dear Mary,
They say that writing can help you process your grief. Have you ever really wondered who the 'they' is anyway? And yet we all do what 'they' say. But I think it might help in this case, because despite knowing that you were a big fan of not holding back your emotions, I'm not so good at it. The whole wear-those-emotions-on-your-sleeve bit has just never been my thing.  So where were we? Grieving, ah yes, grieving. One word that sums up a world of emotions. Sometimes I miss you and I start to cry at weird moments like when washing the dishes and remembering how you had Kelsey and I wash our dishes with just a trickle of water to save energy. In a weird way those moments reassure me that I'm normal and it's normal to be sad and this is the way death works.

But mostly I'm just numb. Unable to comprehend, really, how in one single afternoon you could have been ripped from the fabric of our lives. Gone, just like that. Are we all just one car accident away from life forever changed? I play a game of maybe's in my mind. Maybe if you'd have lived closer to me I'd be able to wrap my mind better around the fact that you won't be coming back. Maybe if you'd just have waited to take off your coat or had your seat belt on, things would be different. Maybe you stopped being angry at God. Maybe your last few moments were peaceful and not fear-filled.

But the maybe game takes me around in circles so to stop my dizzying spiral I focus on what I do know: how you used to get down on all fours and pretend to eat my toes when I was small. I thought it was the best thing ever. You actually did manage to eat my daughter's toes this last Christmas! (Don't worry, she's got about a 2 second attention span so I'm sure she wasn't traumatized) Christmases long ago and the little stocking that you sometimes opened with us. Your deep soul laugh and rumor has it that it got you kicked out of a restaurant a long time ago. European reminiscing for you and dreaming for me. My first pair of 'real' chopsticks from Chinatown in Seattle. Your beautiful garden on that corner city plot. The way you said Beetle Bomb and teaching me how to play 10 High. Your insistence on 'real' hugs. Your talent for making beaded jewelry. Living downstairs for a summer in your basement apartment. My tour of the city that you took me on when I first moved to Seattle for school. Hearing that you had gotten into a food fight with your sister at Christmas. These are what I'll set my mind to dwell on and these are some of the things I'll remember. Happy things and gratitude for those times spent with you. So thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to eat with chopsticks and how to slough cards and taking a bit of time to get down on your hands and knees to play in my 5 year old world. My life would not have been what it was if you hadn't.

                                                                      Your Grateful Niece

A little drama for your life

I'm back! Happy 2013 everyone! If the beginning of the new calendar year is a time for reflection, then how much more so maternity leave. Heck that's just about all you're authorized to do really. I, for one, have learned a few things about myself. For instance, I am way too addicted to Pinterest. I'm sure that psychologists will come up with a name for the condition one of these days. I also now understand why house arrest really is a sucky punishment (don't kill me but I used to think "That's not so bad"...not sure Paul, Queen Liliuokalani, or Aung San Suu Kyi would agree with me...). But my crowning self insight is the realization that I apparently must have a deep seeded desire to create havoc and mayhem in my life when I feel it is slightly lacking in outside input. 

Take today's lunch for example. All is going well; I've got soup heating on the stove when I smell something funny. This is not such a rare occurrence in my kitchen so it takes me awhile to investigate. There is a fire under my big soup pot. My first thought is literally, "How in the world does a stainless steel pot catch on fire?" 

It takes a bit for my genius IQ to kick in but I do realize that there is something under my big pot and on top of the hot gas burner. It's a cork hot pad. Under my soup. You see, apparently last night when I had set the freshly made soup on the counter (on top of a cork trivet of course) the cork decided to stick to the underside of the pot while being transferred to the fridge. The mooch that it is clung on for another free ride right onto my burner... 

Matt and I then followed our family emergency fire plan to the T: 

1. Get Matt's attention with lots of "hmm....oh shoot. Oh man. Oh shoooot!" 
2. Throw dish towel onto flaming stove while convincing Matt that dowsing it with water is not the solution. (before you judge, know that yours truly did that a couple of years ago, thus how I "found out" that it's not the world's greatest idea...)
3. Matt runs in with giant beach towel which helps quell majority of flames.
4. Take picture of burning stove for the blog. 

5.   Peek under towel only to discover stove is still on fire. 

6.   More frantic snuffing.

7.   Take a pic of the ensuing mess. 

8.  Eat slightly charcoally soup and think about alternate vacation destination plans for this summer :)

Why I hate living in Paris...Part One

 

For all the times I've ever gotten, "What, you're kidding! You live in Paris! How can you have problems??", I refer you to what has been dubbed the Paris Syndrome. Yes, apparently there is a phenomenon among Japanese tourists that might make you think twice the next time you're hesitating between travel plans to the city of lights or a beach in Tahiti (regardless of what you look like in your bikini this year). Looking for paradise on earth and all that jazz, these tourists infiltrate Paris every year only to be shocked by the reality that awaits them. Forced to return home in a disillusioned stupor, they are then diagnosed with clinical depression. And that's how the sad little story ends--don't believe me, check it out on Wikipedia here. 

So I apologize in advance if I give some of you who have never been to the Frenchy capitol a small case of the Paris syndrome, but there are some misplaced happy bubbles that need to be popped today. Of course, some of these stress factors might not be applicable to those visiting and might be exclusively reserved for those living here. You might have a grand ol' time, completely unaware of what the reality of staying a bit longer than your week long stint entails. 

1. The prefecture. This topic deserves a whole post so I gave it one here. 
2. It's a big big city with lots of people. And with any big city, you'll find busy, stressed, I don't give a crap about you people as soon as you step out your front door. Be prepared for some rudeness. 
3. But do you wanna know what my biggest cultural shock was when it came to moving to France? Grocery stores! Who would have thought right? Living in Paris proper it's rare to own a car and even if you do, you're certainly not going to face the definite probability of a silly traffic jam just to go to the grocery store. No--you're going to buy a granny cart! (true confessions--this took me a year to realize and another to find one and buy it...before I was trudging all those plastic bags by hand!) 

Ain't she a beaut? 

Now imagine that you roll that thing to your local grocery store. You can try to shop for the week, and maybe if you're an Italian supermodel, you'll actually manage to get everything that you plan on eating into that ever so fashionable granny cart. That is of course, if they have everything in the store.  A few things that stores haven't had in stock while I've been grocery shopping: eggs (that lasted a month!), flour, paper towels, toilet paper, skim milk, and  specialty items (at least in France you can always count on them having wine, cheese and yogurt in stock!). 

Heaven forbid you hit the cheaper grocery stores where they make up for the discount in lack of customer service. You quickly learn to never ask a salesperson where a food item is. I've also been followed around the store (because I look so suspicious you know!) then chastised at the counter by the guy because the cashier forgot to ask to take a look in my granny cart before checking out (as if that was my responsibility). Let's not forget the time where the store alarm had been tripped and remained blaring my entire half hour shopping experience (it would suddenly stop, everyone in the store would start clapping, then it would start up again...). Once an entire aisle was flooded with water and I don't know how many times I've seen the staff at various stores decide to do their food stocking or floor polishing right during rush hour (they even sometimes get mad at you, the customer, who's in their way!).  

Then there's the vegetables--sometimes it's up to you to weigh and label them (you'll get angry stares from everyone in line while at checkout for that one bag of tomatoes that you forgot) while other times the cashier does it for you and still other times there's actually a vegetable guy who does it for you (and no signs indicating which one it is!). And then if you actually survive making it to checkout the battle's not over yet: first you'll wait in line from anywhere from 3 minutes on an amazing day to 20 on a more typical that you'd think day. Once you finally see the end of the tunnel, have you decided how you're going to pay? Every store (even those belonging to the same chain) will have different requirements. Some allow you to use your credit/debit card from 1 euro onward, some it's 8, some it's 10 or even 15. Checks are accepted in some stores, not in others. Forget the cash back bit. You'd think cash would be accepted everywhere but be careful--I've had a one euro coin refused because it was too dirty (I promptly went home and cleaned it and didn't have a problem the next time), and I've gotten glared at because I paid for a minor things with a 20 or I didn't have the right amount of cents to go along with it (I now apologize right from the start if I know I'm paying for something with a larger bill!).  

And to top it all off, you get the privilege of frantically bagging your own stuff so as not to hold up the line and lugging that stuff up the x amount of flights of stairs to your awaiting mini fridge. Lucky are those in Paris who scored an elevator as part of the deal. 

 We'll just have to save the rest of the list for another time! 

Almost Halloween...

In the spirit of all things spooky and evil (yes it is October) I thought I should start out today's post with my visit to the préfecture this past week. If you're an expat living in France (or French, for that matter) you know that the word préfecture should probably be officially moved to the four letter word dictionary and in reality, never seen nor pronounced again. Here is the Préfecture de Nanterre, probably the world's ugliest building--please don't be taken in by the photo-shopped artificially blue sky... Imagine a thunderstorm just above and a building 5 times uglier than this in person and you've got the right idea. 

A préfecture in France is a regional building designed to handle the come and go of a lot of official documents. And France likes official documents. Very. Much. There's a reason why the word bureaucracy originally comes from the French language. If you're a foreigner living in France, you will get to know the préfecture very well. 

In my early years I was absolutely terrified of the préfecture. I spoke little to no French, was all alone, and even the simplest exchange caused confusion and shaky legs. You're given a date and a time to be there or else (although no one ever tells you what will happen if you are late--of course no one ever dares to find out) and the worst of it all is that the minute you step onto their hallowed ground, your life is in their hands. As in, you can wait. for. hours. They don't care. I've sat waiting for what seemed like an eternity watching the "working" personnel in the booth chat about what they did over the weekend or how lame the job is, etc. I've been given an appointment time on what turned out to be an official French holiday and then subsequently blamed for it. I've had to go in person to the préfecture to make an appointment because they don't allow you to do that by phone or email...the wait was four hours. Over the years, I learned some very important prefecture rules:

1. Bring good reading material...try to relax. 
2. It's over when it's over.
3. A no is not always a no...lots of sweet smiling and insistence can accomplish a lot. 
4. Your file will be wrong no matter what you do--even if you have everything perfectly in order, they will find something "lacking/incorrect" at the last second.
5. Every single personnel will tell you something different, therefore:
6. Bring your entire portable filing folder with you to have on hand for when they dislike the papers in your file.
7. Never, ever, throw any "official" french paper away no matter how old it is.
8. Eat a croissant when your done and remember why you're here. 

Thankfully, over the years my French has gotten better and with the addition of Matt it's been an easier  experience (I'd hope so, with the around 20 trips I/we've had to make there!). This last trip, however was in some ways a special one (special in both senses of the word!). When you marry a French person, it suddenly becomes very easy to live and work in France. You just have to put up with the prefecture crud a few times a year and you're good to go (trust me--that's actually way easier than what my unmarried non-EUer friends have to go through). For three years, you have a temporary residency card that you renew every year. And on your fourth year, you can request a 10 year card. On your fifth, you can request citizenship. Five years ago I naively decided to teach English to middle schoolers in France. I came here knowing hardly any French, one person through email, and no clue about the wild ride I was in for. This last week I requested my 10 year card and next year I'll request citizenship (yes, I can still keep my American nationality). For me, this is a huge milestone in my life here and it's gotten me thinking about living in France, what I like, dislike, what I want to accomplish here, etc...so don't be surprised if my next few entries take up where my thoughts here today have left off...

Happy almost Friday :)