Uncomfortably French

As Matt mentioned in the last post, we're both shaking off the remnants of whatever it is that we caught. One of the less-fun parts of expatriating is that we can probably expect to catch every bug that goes around town, simply because it's completely unrelated to anything our immune systems have seen before.

Sometimes over the few weeks, I've been surprised at how the small things often make me feel the most foreign. Last week, it was the discovery that virtually every medication the pharmacist suggested was in an effervescent form. At home, I would have just swallowed a pill or two. I had the same trouble when I ran out of multivitamins -- almost everything I found was in a powdered form, meant to be taken in a glass of water. When I finally tracked down a capsule form, the checkout woman was so surprised that she asked if I knew what I was buying -- after all, "most people find it easier to take the powder." We've made lots of small changes to the way we might do things at home (e.g., transforming my grandmother's chicken noodle soup recipe into one for duck noodle soup, to save more than 50% on the meat!) but I somehow can't get used to the idea of dissolving and drinking my vitamins each morning.

Foreign or no, I am now a legal resident of France for the year -- I had my official medical appointment this morning, and received my carte de sejour. The process wasn't too tedious -- I arrived at 8:45 and was done by 10:15. Like all things French and govermental, though, it was thoroughly bureaucratic -- I was seen by three different medical technicians. The first checked my height, weight, and corrected vision, then sent me back to the waiting room. Then, I was sent for the chest x-ray (testing for tuberculosis): I was ushered into a small changing room, told to remove everything from the waist up, and left to wait until the technicians were ready for me. (There were actually three changing rooms, which each had one door to the hallway and one door into the radiography suite -- I presume that the techs could just go from one to the next, taking one film after another.) After spending yet more time in the waiting room, I met with a doctor who read my x-ray, listened to my lungs and heart, took my blood pressure, and asked me if I had any communicable diseases. Then, she signed and stamped a form certifying that I was adequately healthy to be admitted into the country.

The last step in acquiring my carte was to submit that health certification and 55 euro tax (payable only by stamp, which may only be purchased at convenience stores -- seriously). And after all that, I received a 3"x5" laminated card which documents my right to reside in France for the year.