Honey Drops

Or: Rachel Has A Cold And Every Time She Coughs Host Mummy Requests That She Eat Sugar-Coated Honey Drops From Fauchon, Something Rachel Is Sure She Can Handle

Or: Rachel Has Four Papers Due Very Shortly, Three Of Which Must Be Handwritten, And Only Two Of Which Are Near Completion

Or: Rachel Was Forced To Get Half-Naked At The Immigration Office Today And Has Only Had Four Hours Of Sleep Due To Screeching/Whining French Brat Downstairs

Allow me to explain myself. It seems all of my professors have gotten together and decided to assign all their homework for before spring break in April, and thus I have become rather weighted down with work even though Paris is beckoning me outside (it hit 60 today!). In two of my classes at Paris 3, I have midterms that are actually finals because there's no final exam and all assignments will be handed in by that point. There will also be so many jours fériés on Mondays and Tuesdays after spring break that it's very likely I will be practically done with classes after break. I will try to suffer through this terrible ordeal. But in the meantime, it's a whole lot of work (and handwritten nonsense) crammed in to a short amount of time! I'm a wee bit sick (waa waa, does this mean I get to eat more pastries?), so I finished up one of my essays today - including a versification analysis, aka wtf-is-a-French-rhyme - got my sweat pants on, my jar of honey drops, and have climbed into bed ready to finally update y'all about Paris life. Currently also making eyes at the evil French fly chilling on my ceiling right now. It's kind of weird because he showed up right as I killed another fly, like a ninja, with my homework book (putting it to good use!). I hope he has not returned from the dead to enact his revenge whilst I sleep. Anyway!

To split up all this text, here are some photos Hope sent me from my birthday adventures. They're sort-of repeats, but they're cute anyway so deal with it:

Rut ro, somebody didn't get the jump memo...

Alright. So I should probably just skip to recounting my Immigration Office experience today since people are definitely curious concerned. Basically, to backtrack a bit, for unknown reasons (that still remain unknown), some of the Midd Kidz's visas were normal and some, uh, weren't? And so mine fell into the not-normal category (even though friends on the program who went to the same New York consulate as I did around the same time got the 'normal' visas) which somehow meant that even though I have a student visa, I had to make an appointment with OFII, the French Immigration Office, in order to get a residency permit to 'legalize' my student visa. (Heh, French bureaucracy.) Getting the appointment in and of itself was a whole ordeal that I can't remember if I mentioned or not on here (basically involving visits to multiple locations that were always out of the way and where each person said a different thing) but when I finally did get one, it was for 8.30 this morning. I had to bring tons of papers with me to prove that I live with Brigitte, and that Brigitte actually lives here too (also an issue since she goes by her maiden name and some of her documents are still under her married name and there are also two addresses for the house since it's technically two entrances on two separate streets and oy vey), and then I had to buy a "stamp" for 55 euro, which turned out was the wrong fee even though it was the fee the OFII office said I needed to buy in the letter, but luckily a friend on the program warned me and I was able to buy the 3 extra euro "stamps" before I got there. So. I showed up at around 8am and the line was already down the block. When the office opened at 8:30 we were herded into the first waiting room. We waited there for a woman to check that we were at the right appointment. Wait #1 lasted approximately one hour. We then went to room #2, where we waited for our x-ray appointment (supposedly to check for tuberculosis... nevermind the fact that I've been here over two months and could have possibly infected the entire Île-de-France by now). This wait lasted a little over an hour and a half (during which one employee came in the room, said "Wow! There are so many people today!", laughed, and went outside to smoke). Then we were called individually into the back room, where there were these little cubicles. We were told to take off all our clothes from the waist up (shirt, bra, jewelery) and to tie our hair with a rubber band (note: don't tie your hair with a rubber band. You will take it and half your hair out as well when you're done). When I asked the nurse why I had to take everything off, since it is an x-ray, and can thus see through things, I was told that even a cotton bra is too much of an obstruction for a chest x-ray. I can't figure out if French doctors don't know how to read an x-ray unless it's ridiculously clear, or if American doctors don't care and are guessing what they can see when we take x-rays fully clothed. Either way, I wasn't really happy about leaving nothing to the imagination, especially since they left me in the cubicle for a good fifteen minutes, and it was freezing! I figured giant hive/half-naked/passed-out Rachel wasn't the way to go so I wrapped myself in my giant scarf while I waited. Then, out of nowhere, two nurses come in the cubicle, and without a word push me into the next room, where I was prodded up against a mat, got my scarf ripped off, my arms pulled out, and my head pulled back, all unceremoniously and rather frighteningly rough. I figured out the x-ray was done when they ignored me for several minutes and so I collected my scarf and skedaddled... so that I could wait in lines #3 and #4 for my check-up and document collection. All in all, I spent about five hours at OFII and missed a class in the process. Oh well. It was quite an experience, one that I don't really wish to repeat, but in the grand scheme of things it was definitely not awful. I do understand the whole frustration with the French government now, though. On the bright side, I'm officially a legal non-resident foreign student(?) and have a shiny new stamp in my passport to show for it.

Okay, enough of that. Let's have some pictures of my weekend with Mel in Paris as well as a petite reunion with some high school friends!

Maman française !!!

Brigitte got me baby viennoiseries as encouragement for finishing one of my many papers. :)

Teaching Mel about France can only be achieved through eating pastries.

L'AS DU FALLAFAL BRB DEAD

Back of Notre Dame. Such a pretty day!

Alright y'all. Bedtime. I'm sure there are tons of other things I keep forgetting to post on here, which is counterproductive since the whole point of this blog is to remember as much as possible about everything that happens here. I passed the two month mark yesterday and nearly had a panic attack about how fast this semester is going and how I will not be anywhere close to ready to leave by the time it does end. But I am here now and right in the middle of everything and even though I am drowning in papers and endured the OFII trial this morning, I still can't seem to stop loving Paris.

x R.