Friday, March 07, 2008

Good News

I'm feeling marginally better than the Mrs. Grumpy Buns I've been for the past few days. My MIL very kindly got up at an ungodly hour and watched the babe for me while I returned to the prefecture. The good news is that I managed to see someone at the Information Desk and she was very nice. I only had to wait for 3 hours, even managing to actually sit down in a chair for a whole 15 minutes of that wait, and only a relatively short time of it was spent outside freezing my rear end off. During the cold portion of the wait I decided to work on my positive attitude and find things I was grateful for instead of being miserable about the temperature. The first thing I decided I was grateful for was the fact that at least it wasn't raining, and after that it was a piece of cake to come up with the others.

The other good news is that I am apparently eligible for my 10 year resident card, although some of the hoops I have to jump through are pretty funny. I'm asked to provide any documentation as proof of my integration into French society. Any posts where I refer to my living room as "Little Virginia" probably won't count, eh? I've been thinking about carrying around a form where local businesspeople can testify to my always saying, "Bonjour" and "Au revoir," just like a French person would. Well, maybe not *just* like a French person would because sometimes I still get tricked into saying Bonsoir when the other person says Bonjour and vice versa, but clearly I'm making the effort. Otherwise, the fact that I curse almost entirely in French now should count for something, but I'm going to guess that this kind of thing isn't exactly what they are looking for.

The bad news is that the sore throat that I had been ignoring for a while has turned into some kind of nasty strep-like infection, which I will promptly blame on all the waiting in the cold because I'm still just a little bit grouchy about that. In all fairness, though, I will say that I ended up visiting a very nice doctor who prescribed medicine that I didn't have to pay one single centime for. The office visit cost me 22 euros and all of that will be reimbursed either by social security or by our health insurance. These kinds of things really help put the visit to the prefecture into perspective: I've said this at least 10 times but the French medical system really is as good as they say. People are right to try to protect it.

1 comment:

Kathy said...

Wonderful news! Glad your long wait was worth it. Although selfishly, I would rather they tell you that you must go home to be with me. But so sorry to hear you don't feel well. Hopefully both good weather and better health will be with you soon!