Canard!

Life in France can be described in many ways, but I will definitely say that I find things much more laid-back here than in the US.  For example, last Wednesday on my day off, I joined a group of 4 professors (along with the 4 ½ year old son of one of the profs- adorable!) for lunch at noon.  The French tradition is the inverse of American tradition- rather than eating a substantial breakfast (pancakes, eggs, sausage, etc) and a sandwich for the lunch, as we might do in the states, they have a very small breakfast (maybe just a morceau de pain avec du beurre/piece of bread with butter) paired with a lunch that may consist of as many as 5 courses.  This meant that our lunch gathering lasted from 12:00… to 4:00!  The funny thing is that I didn’t realize that so much time was passing when we were sitting there and talking.  The teaching team has been incredibly nice and welcoming, which is refreshing.  I was a little bit worried about the stereotype Americans have of French people- that they’re snobby and elitist.  However, that’s not what I’ve found! 

I definitely had more of a chance to experience some of the stranger sides of French culture last week… Laura, Caitlin, Bessie, and I headed to Caitlin and Laura’s place in Orange on Thursday after our formation because we had to be back in Avignon on Friday for our medical visits and visa validation.  (It’s theoretically much easier to commute to/from Avignon from Orange than Aix-en-Provence or Carpentras, which is where Bessie and I are from, respectively.  This wasn’t necessarily true, as the normally super-to-easy use train system was… you guessed it… on grève.) Anyway, Caitlin and Laura live in a BEAUTIFUL apartment that is attached the house of a super cute, adorable French lady named Claire who is probably in her mid-70s.  Claire recently changed her name and was worried that the paperwork wouldn’t be right for the visa appointment, since her electric and phone bills and driver’s license have different names on them, so she wanted to drive us to Avignon.  This sounded great- especially since the train wasn’t operating and rather than a 15-minute train ride, we would have had an hour-long bus ride- but turned into a bit of a train wreck.  (Pun intended ;) ha)  Claire had called someone at the visa office, who told her that we needed to go there at 9.  However, we knew that we had to go to the medical visit first, since we had to have a verification of health in order to be verified.  Gotta love the paperwork!  Claire was a hoot and a holler in the car… passing others and muttering things like canard! (literally ‘duck’ but with the intention of ‘ass’) and avancez, avancez! (go, go!) to other cars around us.  She wouldn’t listen to our attempts to convince her that we needed to go to the medical visit first, and pulled over to ask for directions to the visa office.  She found the street without much of a problem after getting directions, but accidentally ended up on the wrong way of a one way.  What do you think is the best way to deal with such a problem?  Turn around 180 degrees and back down the road, of course!  (sarcasm sarcasm…)  We hit several things (curbs, fences, etc) as she backed down the itty-bitty-little-road but narrowly avoided 3 cars.  Say what you will, but I remain convinced that one-way streets care about what direction your car is going, not which direction it is facing. 

Anyway, when we arrived after that fun and excitement, we confirmed what we’d known all along: that we needed to go to the visite medicale first.  The lady at the visa office gave us directions for how to get there… and somehow between the lady giving the four of us directions, us understanding the directions, and then telling them to Claire, something must have been lost in translation and we ended up getting lost on the way to the clinic.  Keep in mind that we were supposed to be at the clinic at 8h30 for visits starting at 9h00, and it was around 9h45 at this point.  Luckily, I had looked up the directions on my iTouch before leaving the house (since I thought we had to walk between the two) and also had a paper map that I’d picked up from the post office of Avignon.  Between the two, I was able to figure out approximately where we needed to be and convey that to Claire.  We ended up near the clinic, but didn’t know where it actually was… and turned around several times to investigate roads without any luck.  We asked Claire if we should stop to ask someone for directions (If I haven’t mentioned this before, Claire speaks zero English and doesn’t hear well, which added to the excitement!) and she told us several times, “He won’t know.  He’s Arab.”  and seemed very sure of herself- which we thought was an interesting assessment.  We convinced her we should try, and Caitlin got out to ask.  Another man who was at the same bus station was able to tell us exactly where to do and Claire explained things as, “Of course he knew where to go!  He’s black!  A black!  He knows where the immigration office is, of course!”  (again, fascinating to see her view of things!)  Anyway, after all of that excitement, we ended up at the clinic. 

However, that’s not the end of the adventure!  It was now after 10:00, meaning we were running an hour and a half late.  In typical French fashion, they seemed to not even notice and took our documents and sent us to the waiting room.  I was called first, and a French man in his 30s ushered me into an examination room where he told me in a combination of rapid French and body language that I needed to take off all of the clothes on my upper body and that he’d be back in a minute.  OK?  Zero mention of anything resembling an examination gown.  So there I am, sitting topless just waiting for this man to come back… when he opened the door again (very wide, so I’m glad there weren’t people out and about in the hallway) he brought me over to a white screen and had me put my arms by my side and get friendly with the screen.  Again, lack of anything resembling a lead screen for my lady parts- hopefully the single xray exposure won’t affect my ability to have children somewhere down the road.  A friend told me that it’s fine, “you’ll just have mutant babies!”  which wasn’t exactly reassuring.  J  I thought I was done, but the man told me he needed to make sure it was OK and not to get dressed again until he came back.  I got out a Sudoku to make the fact that I was hanging out topless less awkward, but he returned quickly and told me that everything was A-OK.  After re-dressing, I was then shuttled up to a different area, where a nurse took my weight and height and had me cover one eye, then the other, and read one letter on the eye chart.  I’m pretty sure it was an M and I said N with my left eye, but she didn’t seem too concerned and maybe just thought I couldn’t speak French.  I then met with an actual doc who asked me a wide range of seemingly  random questions:  “Have you had a recent TB test?  Have you had a tetanus shot?  When was your Measles/Mumps/Rubella shot?  Do you need dental surgery?  Have you had malaria?  You don’t smoke, right?”  He was nice enough to switch to English for part, because when he started talking about yellow fever, the look in my face must have told him that he’d lost me.  He had me take off my shirt to take my blood pressure and listen to my hearbeat, which seemed unnecessary, but whatevs.  He looked at my lung xray, gave my paperwork a stamp, and sent me on my merry way.  I have the impression that I could be dying of many sorts of illnesses or have several broken bones, or be blind, and that I still would have been given the go-ahead, since there wasn’t anything obvious wrong with my lungs.  There must have been some sort of TB outbreak at some point for all of the abnormal attention focused on my lungs! 

Visa validation was easy and simple for me, and we didn’t get lost on the way there since Claire had already driven there 45 minutes earlier.  Unfortunately for Caitlin, here vignette (the thing that gets added to the visa so that you know it’s been validated) had been sent to Marseille by accident, so she had to go back to Avignon to get it.  I’m beyond pleased that I was able to get my visa validated in one day because I was worried that I wouldn’t be let back in the country after the Toussaint vacation, where I’m returning to the states for a whirlwind medical school interview marathon!  I’d also like to add that Claire was incredibly sweet and it was wonderful of her to drive us to and from Avignon, and I don’t mean to portray her in a negative light in the least J 

As far as other French traditions… la grève is full in force.  On Monday, the students did something I’ve never seen or would even have believed existed, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.  They voted on whether or not to block the school.  Wait, what?  Yup.  You read that correctly.  Turns out that 92% of the students voted for the blocus, which meant that starting on Tuesday (and continuing indefinitely?) they are blockading the school, so only the students that live in the boarding school and the professors (and me, the people that use a back entrance) are in class.  I’d be really curious to talk to more students about it… one of my classes and I chatted about it briefly, and one of the girls told me that she wanted to vote ‘no’ but knew that it would be pointless.   Some other students voted ‘oui’ but then just stayed at home and didn’t participate in the demonstration.  The result?  I didn’t improve on my attendance from last week… ZERO of the students I’m supposed to teach were in class on Tuesday.  I ended up joining three other classes that I won’t typically see, so the time wasn’t a loss, but I’m still frustrated to not have the opportunity to make a lot of progress.  Regardless of what happens with the retirement decision, I hope that the blocus period is finished when I return to the France so that I can actually teach some students something! 

This post has gotten much too long already, so I’ll wrap it up here and finish up my updates when I’m back in the United States!  Hope you’re doing well J  Bisous!