The day began with our trip on the Tram to our language school. The Tram is much, much nicer than the Metro, because it is modern, air conditioned, and travels above-ground. Unfortunately it is not quite as fast for most folks, because it has to deal with traffic (although the lights change for it along the way), although for us it is quicker because it is a more direct route. The stations along the line are modern and clean:
We all had good classes today, and the boys found their way home on the Metro by themselves, which must be fun and give them a great sense of freedom and maturity. On my way home, I had a funny experience: I was walking along the street, when a car caught my attention because it seemed enormous, a big blue yacht. I did a double-take when I realized that it was a car almost identical to Sue Gallagher's, a Miata! Most of the cars in the city are so small that even a "normal" sized two-seat convertable looks big.
Suzie had made us a wonderful, just-thrown-together lunch -- potato leak soup, salad, scrumcious delicious baguette from the bakery around the corner, soft cheese (like Camembert, but somewhat milder), cold sausage, and tuna. It is amazing how excellent bread can make a meal seem special.
After that, there was work to do. According to our visas, we are required to report to the Prefecture de Police in Paris to apply for our carte de sejour (which entitles us to stay in France more than 3 months). We decided that this afternoon would be that day. I found the address (fortunately, for residents in the 14th arronddissement, it is in the 14th, relatively close to our apartment), but belatedly realized that we also needed to have four photos of each of us. For our visas, I had just taken the pictures, cropped them to the proper size, and gotten them printed at Longs, and figured it would be an easy task to do the same here, rather than paying someone to do it. So I snapped pictures of us all, and put them on a single photo to print off. The resulting picture I have entitled, "Would you let these people into your country," for obvious reasons:
The next part should have been easy -- transferring the photos onto the compact flash card in my camera, then taking the card to a photo shop and having the prints made. But as it happened, neither of those steps were easy. The camera balked at letting me copy the picture onto its flash drive, for some inexplicable reason, since I've done the same thing a number of times before with the same camera. So after several attempts and more than a little bit of swearing, I gave up, and Suzie agreed to go across the street to the Champion grocery store to look for a CD to copy the pictures on (I thought I'd brought CDs with me, but alas, they hid themselves when we searched for them), which also took some time, and by the time we finally got the pictures onto the CD, we'd spent over an hour on the task.
So off we went to the 14th Arrondissement police station. I was fairly certain that I would find a photo printing place en route, but this assumption proved painfully wrong. There were none, that we could see, in the half-mile or so between our apartment and the police station, and when we stopped into the copy place and asked where one was, we were told (inaccurately, as it happened) that the nearest one was over a half hour's walk away. So now we were at the police station, without one of the things we needed. The police station is not one of the key stops on the tourist circuit in Paris.
We had to go into the building one-by-one, have our bags searched, walk through a metal detector, then take a ticket with a number on it. Ahead of us in a fairly small room were probably 50 people; our number was 197, and the number being served was 152. A friendly American woman informed us that she had also been about 40 numbers behind when she'd come in, and was still waiting two and a half hours later. She also told us, however, that you didn't have to stay there once you had your number, so long as you were there when your number was called. Since it appeared that we had some time to kill, we left and walked toward the Montparnasse area. My job was to find a place to get the pictures printed. Suzie and the boys found a sporting goods store with a cafe nearby, and I told them I would meet them back there in 30 minutes.
Off I went, in search of a photo place. I walked to the Gare Montparnasse. Along the way I looked up each side street, but saw nothing. I turned north and walked all the way around the Montparnasse tower, a not insignificant distance, make more difficult by the crowds, again looking up each side street. Finally, desparate and running out of time, I found another copy store and decided to ask the guys inside if they could help. This was both a good thing and a bad thing. It was a bad thing because I had to communicate with them without Suzie's excellent assistance with French. It was a good thing because it forced me to communicate with them instead of relying on Suzie's excellent assistance with French. So I haltingly tried to explain what I needed. I was successful after a time, and although they told me they did not print photos, I could go to FNAC and get the pictures printed tout suite.
So off through the crowds again, to FNAC. About this time my feet, which, you recall, were hurting yesterday, started complaining again, but I fared onward. FNAC is a wonderful store, a combination of a Best Buy (beaucoup de electroniques) and a Barnes and Noble (beaucoup de livres). I asked the young woman behind the information booth where I could get a photo printed, and she said at the end of the store, so I marched through and found just what I was looking for, a self-serve photo printing station. Hooray!
Well, not quite. There were two machines, one occupied. I went to the other one and inserted my CD, but was told (I understood the second time) that the machine would not read CDs. So I had to wait for the other to come free. This involved waiting for a fairly elderly woman to carefully review 500 pictures of her grandson to determine the precise 15 that were the best and thus deserving of being printed. All this time I'm thinking, I've been gone 45 minutes, and said I'd be back in 30, and have a 15 minute walk back to Suzie, and haven't yet gotten the pictures. Grandmere is still selecting the perfect pictures of her young grandson. I call Suzie, but her cellphone is not in service. I'm sweating, hot, nervous, uncomfortable. Arrrggghhh.
Finally the lady is finished. I put my CD in, call up the picture, try to guess the appropriate size in centimeters to make the small squares the right size for the carte de sejour, validate my choice, and finish the transaction. Three euros for 6 copies, not bad, and the pictures will be done, the lady says, in 10 minutes. Things are looking up. So I kill time around the store for 10 minutes, then return for my pictures. No, no, says the lady, first you have to pay, then come back and get the pictures. I look at the packed lines for the cashier. Oh well, I might as well buy something I've been needing (a mouse for my laptop). So I do that, then head for the cashier, and realize that I think I've lost the slip saying how much my pictures are. So I go back to the lady in photo printing department, and tell her I've lost the ticket I need for the cashier, and she says, no, no, its there, pointing to another slip that I still have, which doesn't have the price on it, but does have a bar code, who the hell would know that? Still, I'm feeling completely incompetent at this point, and am fearing the cashier, although it should be a relatively easy task to hand them the items, pay with my Carte Blue, and leave. Of course, the first line I get in gets completely stalled when someone with a Saudi Arabian passport tries to pay with an out-of-town check; once I see the checker pick up her phone, I'm out of that line. Finally, finally, I get through the cashier, get my pictures, and am out again on the crowded streets.
My feet hurt (I said that, but its even more true now) and I'm rushing to get back to Suzie. Finally I find her and the boys, and we head back to the police station. By this time it is 3:45. When we get back inside the building again, we look up at the sign -- they are serving number 212, and our number was 197. Not good. But wait. Miraculously, the entire room, packed before, has cleared. We take another number, and it's 215, which immediately comes up on the board. Whoo-eeee, here we go. We get lucky again -- the woman facing us is young and seems (contrary to the stories you here) to go out of her way to accommodate us. At the end of the meeting, we've given her every document she needs save one -- the most recent gas bill for our apartment. Unknown to us, that had been waiting for us in our mailbox, which we'd never checked (but did once we got back). That oversight will mean another trip to the police station, and another wait, but absent something going haywire, we would get our carte de sejour and avoid illegal alien status.
After that experience, we were much happier. The boys have made friends with a boy in their class from Spain, and they invited him to see the movie Hancock with them.
;The movie was playing near where we were, so we decided to have a light early dinner and wait for the movie to start. They arranged pretty much on their own for their friend to meet them at the theater, which he did, and we bought them tickets and saw them off into the theater. Again, they'd get back on their own; the theater http://ssshupe.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=218was on the same Metro line as our apartment, which made it easy.
Suzie and I, childless, came back to our neighborhood and did some shopping, I bought some stylish, European-looking shoes (for those that remember this post, the total shoe-power is now doubled), we brought some vegetables and fruit at an open air market, and came home, feeling we'd accomplished something.
Even though we've been here less than a week, we are feeling settled, falling into a routine. I look out my window now at the stylish Hausmannian building next door, look down at the hustle and bustle on the street, and am amazed that we are actually here, that my kids are running around Paris on their own, that they are, in fact, apparently going to let us stay in their country.
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