In which we deal with more bureaucratic shenanigans

While my mother was visiting, a few weeks ago, Blaise and I went to the sous-préfecture because our temporary cartes de séjour were about to expire. They provided us with replacement receipts, assured us that we would be contacted about our medical visits soon, and advised that we would be able to pick up our cartes as soon as our medical visits had been completed.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. Blaise met with a woman who works for an organization whose job it is to help foreign researchers navigate the bureaucracy that is France. Originally, he contacted her because he wanted help figuring out how to sign up for a mutuelle. (Basically, that's top up health insurance. For most things, the government insurance pays 70% and you pay 30%. For serious things, they pay 100%. The mutuelle pays for the 30% that you're responsible for.) She was very upset that we (he) hadn't had our medical visits yet, and sent an angry email off to the OFII (Office of French Immigration and Integration), demanding an appointment for him. Three days later, he discovered an email in his spam folder stating that his appointment was the previous day. He phoned the woman back, and received a new appointment for this Wednesday morning at 8:30.

Along with the email, he got two letters. The first listed the documents that they wanted him to provide: passport, copy of the letter, vaccination record, all of his recent chest x-rays, and copies of the bills from his hospitalizations. Fortunately, we were able to provide the first 2. The second explained that in order to get his carte de sejour, he would need to purchase some special stamps, valued at 15€ (9 of these) and 55€ (3 of these) and provide the stamps to the people at the department of foreigners. Evidently they were available at tax offices, and at certain tobacco shops. (They were not available at the Fontenay-sous-Bois town hall. I checked.)

So, at 7:15 yesterday morning, he left on the hourlong trek to the south side of Paris for his check up. He arrived, got checked in, and was called back with the first group of 20 or so people to be seen. He was weighed, measured, and given a chest x-ray. They checked his blood pressure and blood glucose (and we think for malaria). He met briefly with a doctor, who discussed the importance of vaccinations with him. (He does have them. It just didn't occur to me to bring that particular piece of paper with me to Paris. When we get home, I will be scanning each and every piece of paper we own.)

Since he was done by 9:30, he decided that he had time to take the train to the sous-préfecture and walk home afterwards. So, he found the building, and went to the cash desk to buy the stamps. Then he brought them, and the certificate from the visite medicale to the desk of the department of foreigners, where they said, "Oh, we don't need those right now. Now that your file is complete, you can expect a letter in the mail in about a month telling you to come and pick up your carte de séjour."

In which the kids have a day off of school and we celebrate my birthday

Last Friday, Sapphire and Ezio brought home notes in their black notebooks (used for communications between home and school) to the effect that their would be a teacher's strike at their school the following Tuesday. As it turned out, there was a national teachers' strike, but not all of the schools participated, and so Cherry did indeed have school on Tuesday morning.

So, after Sapphire and I had dropped her off (Ezio went for a walk with Blaise) , Sapphire, Ezio and I headed off to the American Library to get some new reading material. W had hoped to get home in time to pick Cherry up from school, but missed the RER that we needed to do so, and arrived home around 12:05, to see a sobbing Cherry. Evidently, she had burst into tears at the sight of Blaise coming to pick her up probably in part because she was expecting me, and in part because she realized that the fact that i wasn't there meant that I had gone somewhere with Sapphire and Ezio and without her. Once she had calmed down and we had eaten lunch, Sapphire, Cherry and I headed over to the Auchan with the goal of purchasing a (small) Christmas tree and trimmings for under 20€.

We got the following:
- one pale blue Christmas tree, 90 cm tall
- two sets of 20 multicolored Christmas lights
- two meters of silver tinsel with stars
- six silver balls
- six blue balls
- six blue balls with silver glitter.
All for the grand total of 16.35€, which I was able to pay for entirely with the credits that I had earned buying Auchan products. (On a return trip to buy groceries later that day, I added 3 Advent calendars.)

Wednesday was my birthday. I am once again a square, and the ages of all three of my children evenly divide mine. Blaise had his visite medicale (finally. More about that in a subsequent post.) While he was gone, the kids and I spent a little bit of time tidying the living room, and then set up the Christmas tree on a small table (think TV tray table) in front of the patio doors. Evidently, if you buy the Christmas ornaments that come 6 for 0.80€ you are expected to put the strings in yourself. Sapphire folded an origami star for the top of the tree out of yellow paper, and we commenced the job of asking Cherry to please leave the tree alone every 10 minutes. On the plus side, the au rabais (French for "el cheapo") Christmas ornaments are also made of plastic, so it's not like their likely to break.

After an early dinner, we headed into Paris to look at the lights and window displays at the Grands Magasins (big department stores) along Boulevard Haussman. They were very beautiful, with lots of animated marionettes and sparkles. The animated windows had little boardwalks set up in front of them to allow even the smallest children to see. Afterward, we headed up to the toy department at Galleries Lafayette, and looked at Legos and stuffed animals and Polly Pockets.

In which we attempt to go to the Parc Floral

Last Sunday when we got home from the Cité des Sciences, I had an email from Caroline, suggesting that as we had been unable to spend any time together at the Cité des Enfants, we get together this weekend at a playground. I had mentioned the playground at the Parc Floral as being a particularly nice one, (certainly, it's a particularly large one) and so we agreed to meet there this Sunday afternoon around 1:30. Blaise decided that he wanted to walk it (about 3 miles from our house) and then take the train home, but the kids and I decided to take the train both ways, since I wanted them to have energy left for playing when we got to the park.

So, Blaise set off shortly before 1:00, and we agreed to meet inside the park at the playground, since he was fairly sure that he wouldn't actually make it there by 1:30. The kids and I got a few things together and then headed over to the RER station. Now, the best RER exit for the Parc Floral is at Vincennes, which is actually a zone 2 stop. (Paris is zone 1, and the zones increase in concentric circles as you get further from the city. Fontenay-sous-Bois is zone 3. Charles de Gaulle airport and Disneyland Paris are both zone 5, though in different directions. The cost of the ticket depends on how many zones you have to cross through on your journey, so a Val de Fontenay to Vincennes ticket is about 30% cheaper than a Val de Fontenay to Paris ticket. Clear as mud? Good.) Since Vincennes is a zone 2 stop, I wanted to buy the less expensive tickets for Sapphire and Ezio (I had some left from a trip to the doctor).

So, when we got to the RER station I glanced at the schedule board and noticed that we had about 3 minutes till the next train heading for Paris on the A line. Not a problem, buying tickets is a relatively quick process, and there was only one person in front of me at the ticket machines. Unfortunately, she didn't exactly seem to know what she was doing, because it took her a very long time to finish her ticket purchase. A glance at the schedule board suggested that I was down to about a minute and a half. I quickly selected a carnet (book of 10 tickets, about 20% cheaper than buying them individually) within the Ile de France (Paris region), scrolled through a shockingly large list of V stations to find Vincennes, selected tarif reduit (half price for the kids) tickets and realized that I had actually chosen to buy individual tickets. Cancelled the order. Start over, get to the payment screen and realize that I'm buying full price tickets. Nothing to do about that now as the board says that the train is approaching. Stick in my debit card. Punch in the pin. The machine prints the tickets with agonizing slowness. I grab them and we rush through the turnstyles and down the stairs to the track. As we run up to the train the horn sounds, the doors close, and the train pulls away. Eleven minutes to the next train.

We make the next train and ride it to Vincennes. We get off and go up the stairs (What? No escalator?) to the entrance, only to discover that our tickets won't work to get us out of the station. Though I try sending them through several times, they keep coming back as invalid. (Apparently this happened to Blaise last week as well. It would have been nice had he let me know.) Eventually we get out through the handicapped/stroller entrance when someone comes in through it. By this point it's well past 1:30, and we definitely need to hurry.

We walk along the outside edge of the Chateau de Vincennes (at one point the tallest castle in Europe, it was built in the 14th century by Charles V), and then up to the gate of the Parc Floral, where we are stopped by a guard informing us that the park is closed because of approaching storms. We wait, and the Gelmans come out, and a few minutes later Blaise walks up. Since the park is closed, and we've all come out here, we want something to do. It isn't supposed to rain for another three hours, so the park closure seems a bit premature. Andrew agrees to ride to the Monoprix with his two boys and see if he can find a ball so that we can play soccer in the field alongside the chateau. We agree to meet him there. Five minutes later it's raining hard, and the wind is whipping the rain into our faces. We take shelter in the shadow of the gates and wait for them to get back. By this time we've decided that when they come we're all just going to head to our respective apartments and put on dry clothing. In the meantime, we discuss the differences in attitudes toward school lunches between France and the US. (My kids were served fish with a sauce of mussels and shrimp for lunch today. And they ate all of it. Happily. Friday they had mussels in the shell to celebrate the convention on the rights of the child.)

Eventually Andrew and the boys returned, and we all headed back to the train station. This time we barely made the train back to Fontenay. We arrived back just in time to see the sun come out.

In which we go to the Festival des droits de l'enfant

Twenty years ago, the United Nations adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it was ratified by most of the world. (I shall remain mum on which two have failed to ratify it.) To celebrate, the city of Fontenay-sous-Bois (and the rest of France) has been having child centered activities for the last fifteen days. There have been concerts, special movie showings, discussion groups, and other numerous other things going on. (Here I would link to the program if I could find it online. Evidently it was either never available online, or perhaps it's already been taken down.)

Thursday Sapphire and Ezio went with their class, as well as lots of other classes from lots of other schools, to the Salle Jacques Brel, which is basically a big multipurpose room. They use it for concerts and conventiony stuff, and probably some other things as well. In any case, the students were counted off into groups and sent off to various centers to explore, and to learn a little bit about what the UN Convention says. Ezio made a very cool mask (think masquerade ball shape) with lots of glittery stickers and feathers as part of the Right to Travel/Vacation station. He also got to do some painting on fabric, though I'm not entirely clear as to what that was about. Sapphire got to make a flag as part of the Right to National Identity station. She also got to help design a city as part of the Right to Adequate Housing station.

After school, they very excitedly informed me that the activities would be available all day on Saturday as well, and could we please go to them because Sapphire had really wanted to make a mask because that would have been much cooler, and Ezio would really have rather made a flag and Cherry would have loved playing in the house set up, and. . .. (They did breathe eventually.) So after lunch today we set out for the Salle Jacques Brel, where each child was given a map to guide them through the activies. We started out at the Right to Travel, where Sapphire made a lei (a Hawaiian necklace, she called it), and Cherry and Ezio were mostly bored. (Unfortunately, Ezio is not very interested in crafty stuff, and Cherry does not yet have the dexterity to do things with pointy needles.) Then we headed over to the play house/store area for the Right to Play. Sapphire wanted to do another craft, and I had noticed a station (Right to an Identity) where they were making dolls out of empty water bottles, newspapers, and scraps of cloth. So we headed over there. Sapphire ended up making a really pretty cool doll, though it took her forever to do it. Meanwhile, Cherry and Ezio colored self portraits onto stick figures. I was impressed to see that Cherry actually mostly colored in the lines for the eyes, and Ezio is beginning to draw very nicely, even if he doesn't like doing it very much. Afterwards we spent a little more time in the playhouse, and then headed home.

In which Sapphire and Ezio write my blog post for me.

Sapphire:

Today we, as in my class, went to the rights of children* festival! We got to make flags!
My class even rode a BUS to the festival! We had so much FUN!!!

Me and another girl got interviewed by an adult. And filmed. And also in my flag group there were kids from all different countries: Russia, France, Turkey, Portugal, Pakistan, and others. We got to paint on a big piece of cloth. We painted a city. We also got to design our own city. It was so, so, so much fun!

Ezio:

today our class even rode a bus

I wrote a lot. In French. I went to a really fun thing. What we did before we went to school. Le chat. la maison. l'école. le papa. le garçon. la maman.

Those are all words in French. À la maison, la petite fille joue avec le chat.

Le petit garçon, la petite fille.

Other than spelling, those are completely unedited. Evidently, it is really fun to ride a bus.

*This year marks the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and there have been celebrations going on most of the month in Fontenay-sous-Bois.

In which we spend Sunday at the Cité

For the last several weeks, Sapphire has been begging me to set up an outing with the Avigads. Busy schedules on both of our parts, as well as illness, intervened, and so it wasn't until this weekend that we were actually able to get together. Elinor asked if I minded if we invited the Gelmans (another American family that is here for the year, with sons the same ages as Ezio and Cherry), and so they joined us.

The original plan was to meet at the Jardin des dunes et des vents (garden of dunes and winds), an (evidently) very cool playground at the Parc de la Villette. When we arrived, however, we discovered that the playground was closed because of technical difficulties. Apparently there are a bunch of inflatable toys there, and they couldn't get the inflater to work, so they didn't open the playground. This was a problem, because while there are lots of other playgrounds in the Parc de la Villette, none of them (at least of those that we've found) is particularly large or cool, and we had eight kids to keep happy.

Since the weather forecast for Sunday was a bit iffy, I had packed our passes for the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie. As it turned out, the Gelmans also had passes for the Cité, and the Avigads had been contemplating buying them, but had never gotten around to it. So we headed over to the museum, and I put reservations for the two parts of the children's museum (depending on the ages of the kids) on our passes and the Gelmans passes. (They had ridden their bikes, and so had to deal with locking those up.) Meanwhile, the Avigads bought their passes and made reservations for themselves at the children's museum.

Our reservations were for 4:30 (I won't do that again. Everyone (my kids, and all the other kids) was cranky by the end. Tired and hungry does not make for good sharing.) and so we had about an hour and a half to spend before going to the children's section. The Gelmans and Avigads took their kids and Sapphire and Ezio to see a 3D movie, while Blaise and I took Cherry (and the Avigads middle daughter) upstairs to the science museum. We had agreed to meet them in the mathematics section, so we spent the next hour exploring that part of the museum. (It's very nicely done. Some calculus, statistics, differential geometry, topology, etc.)

Then we headed down to the children's museum. Most people headed for the big kids' (five and up) section of the children's museum. Cherry and I, together with Caroline and their younger son, headed for the little kids' section. The idea was that we would spend time together in the museum, and I think that was true for the group at the older kid's section. Cherry, however, decided that she must start in the water section. Caroline's son decided that he must start in the building section. After 20 minutes, they simultaneously switched rooms. And so it continued through our 90 minutes in the museum. We rolled balls down ramps, tried to identify smells, and waited a long time (by three year old standards) to use the lightwriters.

We finally made it home around 7:15, absolutely starved and completely worn out.

In which we get wet

Saturday morning dawned dampish. Not exactly raining, but not not raining either. It was sort of a light mist, the kind that results in permanently foggy glasses. So on the way home from the bakery, I zipped the baguettes inside my jacket (and was awarded with some very odd looks, perhaps I should have brought an umbrella instead). In any case, it meant that we spent the morning inside, for the most part.

Around 11:00 the sun came out, and Cherry and I headed over to get groceries. In true Cherry fashion, she checked to make sure that I had a one euro coin to use in the shopping carts, and then insisted that we go get a cart from the basement.

A note of explanation: In Europe it's quite common to have to use a coin to unlock your shopping cart from the one in front of it. The coin is then held in a little box until you lock your cart back up again to the one in front of it, when you can retrieve your money. As a method of preventing cart theft it's probably useless. As a method of preventing parking lots from being overrun with stray shopping carts, it's brilliant.

A second note: The Auchan has 3 parking areas. The first is at ground level in front of the mall complex. Given my preference, this is where I would pick up my shopping cart. The second is underground, and requires riding a moving sidewalk down to pick up a shopping cart, and then back up. This is Cherry's preferred place to pick up a shopping cart. The third parking area is on the roof. Please don't tell Cherry about it.

After lunch, Blaise suggested that we walk to the local market, since I hadn't been there before. (This is not the one that I went to with my mom.) Although it was sunny when we left, at least sort of, by the time we'd gone half a kilometer it was raining hard. Since we had only one umbrella, we sought refuge under a tree (no thunder) and waited for it to let up. Then we continued on to the market, which was nice, but not overwhelming. There wasn't much there that I would be unable to find at the grocery store, unfortunately. (The market in Nogent-sur-Marne had more things, but it's also twice as far away.) We did find a needlework store (mostly embroidery and needlepoint, but some yarn, I think), though it was closed for lunch so we couldn't go in. On the way home, it poured again.

In which we deal with things medical, part II

Thursday morning, Blaise went off before breakfast to have blood drawn, in the hopes that that would answer questions about what is going on. He came back just in time to take Sapphire and Ezio to school, and so we didn't get a chance to talk about how things had gone until after we had dropped all 3 kids off at school.

At that point, I looked at his reimbursement receipt (thus far, our healthcare experiences in France have required that we submit receipts for reimbursement to the French health insurance system, which we can't do until after we have our Carte Vitale), and realized that they had used his (dummy) Social Security number to bill the French health insurance system for their part of the payment. (A note of explanation: For most things medical, the French health system pays 70%, and the user pays 30%. That increases to 100% paid by the health system for serious or long term things (cancer, pregnancy, etc) or if you're sufficiently low income. Top up private insurance is available and widely used to cover the 30% the health system doesn't pay.) On the plus side, that meant that we didn't (yet) have to pay the full cost of the labs. (I suspect that there is a very good chance that we will have to cover the extra 70% and wait to be reimbursed by the health system once we finally have our Cartes Vitale.) On the minus side, we realized that our 30% is going to add up to a whole lot of money very quickly if we have very many more of these.

So, we decided that we needed to get the supplemental insurance, and quickly, since Blaise has another test lined up for Monday morning. Also, we needed to figure out, hopefully, some way that we wouldn't have to pay the entire cost of the test up front. (Particularly as we have absolutely no clue how much the entire cost of the test will be. It's hard to be wise consumers when you don't know the costs up front.) So Blaise started sending out emails, and looking online. I started looking online. (Unlike him, I don't have the right kinds of contacts here for dealing with this stuff.) As far as I could tell, everything required that you have a social security number. Blaise's contact suggested that we use our American social security to pay for the test. (Umm, no. That's not going to work.)

Finally I suggested that Blaise contact a woman in Nancy (Ann) who had been extremely helpful with getting things lined up before we got here, but had told him that he should work with her colleagues here in Paris once we arrived. (He hadn't contacted them because he didn't think they were very helpful when he tried to contact them when we were here two years ago. Basically it's a foundation that's set up to help foreign researchers navigate here in France.) He emailed Ann, and phoned the group here in Paris to see if there was anything they could do to help.

Friday morning, after he had dropped Sapphire and Ezio off at school, he headed into the city to meet with one of the people at this group. Together, they filled out the enrollment forms for the supplemental insurance. She sent an email to the OFII (the immigration office) to try to figure out why we have not yet gotten our medical exams. And she told us that we should go to the social security office to apply for our social security numbers, despite the fact that we don't yet have our actual Cartes de Séjour. In fact, she typed up most of the forms that we need to have filled out.

So, immediately after Blaise got home we ate sandwiches, and headed off for the local social security (CPAM) office. Where we successfully applied for Blaise's social security number. Mine was held up because we didn't have a copy of my translated birth certificate. (I think it got mixed in with my dossier at the sous-préfecture.) Sapphire's and Ezio's got held up because we needed a letter from their headmistress certifying that they were enrolled in and attending school. Cherry's didn't need to be held up (she isn't required to go to school), but it seemed easier to process it along with the other kids'.

We got home, and Blaise had a confusing email from Ann. After a phone call to her, he discovered that we are supposed to be covered, not under CPAM, but under MGEN, the branch of the health insurance system that deals with public employees in education, among other fields. Furthermore, we should have gotten paperwork from them back in July, and didn't. So he called the MGEN office (which is, unfortunately, located several suburbs and multiple train transfers away) and they agreed to mail us the paperwork that we need to fill out.

I'm still not exactly sure where this leaves us as far as medical expenses go. We know that we have coverage, but it isn't clear how long we might have to wait for reimbursement, or whether we'll have to pay the entire cost of Blaise's test Monday up front. I'm assured, however, that we'll love the insurance system once we manage to actually get through all the bureaucracy.

In which we deal with things medical

It's been a rather dull yet stressful week thus far. On Tuesday, Blaise decided that he had not yet fully recovered from what was bothering him last week, or perhaps that something else was going on. Since he's under a lot of stress with dealing with tenure and all that good stuff, he's been obsessing about what could be causing his symptoms, and noticing each and every twinge. In the hopes of giving him some peace of mind, we headed off to the doctor on Tuesday morning, first contacting some of the people he knew in the hopes of finding a doctor who spoke more English than did the one last week.

Fortunately, the doctor who was recommended to us spoke relatively good English, so there were no concerns that perhaps key issues were being lost in translation. Also, the acuteness of the situation had changed, and so it seemed clear to us (as well as to the doctor) that the solution did not lie in antibiotics. Unfortunately, that meant testing to see what was going on, which, of course, costs money.

Now, here is the complicating factor. We're covered under the French healthcare system. But in order to prove that we're covered, we have to have this lovely piece of ID called a Carte Vitale. Which we don't have yet, because I was under the impression that we couldn't actually get it until after we had our Carte de Séjour which we can't get until after we have our Visite Médicale. My understanding, and Blaise's, is that we will get reimbursed by the healthcare system once we can get our Carte Vitale, but that until then, we may need to pay out of pocket.

At this point, we're hoping that perhaps we can use the receipts for our Carte de Séjour to enable us to at least begin the paperwork for the Carte Vitale, but we still need copies of our rent receipts for the last 3 months. (Evidently this is to prove our residency in France.) Since our rent payments have been directly deposited into our landlady's bank account, we don't have any proof of payment. So now I'm waiting to hear back from our landlady, in the hopes that we will be able to begin the Carte Vitale process tomorrow, or perhaps even this afternoon.

In which we buy Kleenex

Saturday was my mom's last day in Paris, and we were hoping to do something special. Although rain was forecast, we thought that if it looked like it was going to be spotty, we might head out to Disneyland Paris anyway. Otherwise, we would go to the Cité de Science and the Cité des Enfants. In any case, we were not going to spend another day hanging around the apartment.

And then Sapphire and Ezio woke up with coughs and stuffy noses and low grade fevers. Disney was out. The science and children's museums were out. We thought about taking a boat trip down the Canal St. Martin, but decided that we didn't want to risk exposing the kids to any other bugs when they were already fighting colds. So we stayed in the apartment for the most part.

In the early afternoon, Mom and I took Cherry (by far the healthiest of the three) to the Auchan to buy groceries. We picked up 2 big boxes of tissues, and a package of a dozen packets. By dinner, the kids had finished the first box of tissues (and the half box left over from before) plus 5 of the packets. Sapphire was complaining that her nose hurt and was red and she looked like Rudolph. So, after the kids were in bed my mom and I walked back over to the Auchan to pick up two more boxes of tissues and some chapstick to put on Sapphire's nose. (We went through both of those boxes yesterday. I should have bought stock in Kleenex.)

In which we walk from Cluny to the Musée des Arts et Métiers

I had great plans for my mother's visit. We were going to go to Disney, and a bunch of great museums, and parks, and show her how wonderful Paris is. And then everyone got sick. (She was here for 12.5 days. Of those 12.5 days, at least one person was ill enough to stay home for 9.5 of them, and the kids were in school for 2 of the remaining 3.) There were, however, two things that she really, really wanted to see (other than her lovely grandchildren of course): the tapestries of the lady and the unicorn at Cluny, and the jacquard looms and the musée des arts and métiers.

Friday morning we convinced Blaise to pick Cherry up from school, and my mom and I dropped her off and headed into the city. Our first stop was the Museum of the Middle Ages (Cluny). Although we had visited the museum on Sunday, my mom really wanted to buy a book about the tapestries, and hadn't gotten to because Cherry was in the process of melting down and Blaise looked like he was about to collapse. (Note: Sick enough to stay home does not, unfortunately, always mean having enough sense to stay home. Especially when there are free museums to visit and you've been housebound for a week already.) So we went to the bookstore and my mom picked up a book about the tapestries, as well as some keychains for the women in a knitting group that she leads. I decided that her purchase qualified us to use the restrooms, and we headed off.

The walk from Cluny to the musée des arts and métiers is just over 2 kilometers long. According to google maps, it requires no fewer than 17 steps, 14 of which are continues (the street changes names) and 2 of which involved turning left, walking 5 meters, and then turning back right. In retrospect, I probably could have skipped printing the directions. En route, we passed the following churches:
1) Saint Severin (click the British flag for English)
2) Notre Dame
3) Saint Jacques
4) Saint Nicholas des Champs
and a bunch of others that we couldn't find names for.

We arrived at the museum and went up to the top floor. Mostly we walked through until we got to the fabric room, where we stopped to examine all of the looms on display. There were a couple of full size looms, but most were painstakingly made working reproductions, which someone had taken the time to weave several inches of cloth on so that one could see what the looms' outputs would look like. My mom took photos of all of them, a task that was made somewhat easier by the fact that teh security guard was sleeping through our entire visit. (On the other hand, it's not like it would be all that easy to haul off a huge Jacquard loom without anyone noticing.) Mostly we hurried through the rest of the museum because we had somewhat limited time, though we stopped to look at the gears room.

Then it was back to the metro, and home, where we were greeted by an extremely enthusiastic Cherry.

In which we go to the market

Thursday morning all three kids headed back to school after the Toussaint (All Saints' Day) holidays. So, after I had dropped Cherry off (Blaise took Sapphire and Ezio) and tidied the house a bit, my mom and I headed to the next suburb over for the market. (We tried to go to one in town, but there is no market in Fontenay-sous-Bois on Thursday morning.)

It took us about 20 minutes to get there, and then we spent 40 minutes wandering through all the stalls and stands, looking at what they had. First, we walked through the outside part of the market, which was where all of the clothing vendors had set up, not to mention the shoe salesmen, yarn sellers, and pots and pans merchants. Once we had exhausted the possibilities there, we headed to the inside part of the market. While there were some dry goods there, the vast majority of the inside stands were selling food of some sort: breads, pastries, meat, cheese, fish (with heads and eyes), fruits, vegetables, candy.

Afterwards, we headed back to the apartment, and then went to pick up Cherry from school.

In which we quest for our cartes de séjour

A brief background:

Anyone who wishes to live in France for longer than 3 months or so has to apply for a residency permit, called a carte de séjour. In order to obtain this permit, you first go to the préfecture (or the sous-préfecture) for where you live, and show them your passport, visa, birth certificate, proof of address (so rent receipt or utility bill), proof of employment, and a few other things. They take copies of all of these things, and give you a piece of paper with some information and your photograph. This is your application receipt, and it is valid for 3 months. Then, you are supposed to be contacted by the regional office of immigration and integration (OFII), who schedules you for a medical visit. After the medical visit, you take a form back to the préfecture where they present you with your actual carte de séjour in exchange for 300 euros.

In our case, this all went smoothly until the part where OFII was supposed to contact us with information about our medical visits. After 8 weeks of waiting and hearing nothing from them, I tried calling them. When that didn't work, I tried emailing them, but their email account just bounced back everything I sent them. So I wrote them a letter, and enclosed a stamped, self addressed letter, and heard nothing. Finally, we asked a friend of Blaise's who is French to call OFII for us. They didn't even answer the phone.

With nothing left to try, and only one day remaining before our receipts expired, Blaise and I headed back over to the sous-préfecture, hoping that they would be able to do something about it. (Fortunately, we were able to leave all three kids at home with my mom.) After waiting in line for a bit, we were able to give our about to expire receipts to the clerk, who asked for our medical visit papers. When I said we didn't have them because OFII had never contacted us, she assured me that they would contact us, probably around mid-December. In the meantime, we just needed new photographs, and the would make us new receipts that would be valid for an additional 3 months.

We didn't have additional ID photos with us (maybe we should start carrying them around?), but there was a photo machine in the building. Unfortunately the machines only take coins, and all of my cash was in bills. There was no change machine, the building was about to close for the day, and the cash desk was unwilling to make change. So, I walked up to the big line of people waiting for tickets to allow them to pay their bill, and pleaded for someone to change a 10€ bill. Eventually I ended up taking 8.50€ in coins in exchange for my bill, which gave us enough for the photo machine.

After waiting in another line, we got tickets to go back to the carte de séjour person and get new receipts. She assured us that they would be the last temporary cards that we would need. We'll see about that.

In which we go to the department store

When my mom came last weekend, she brought with her a kumihimo disk and various yarns and ribbons for Sapphire. Sapphire loved it, and has made many beautiful cords in a rainbow of colors with it. Then, of course, she decided that she wanted to learn how to knit. Now, Sapphire has decided that she wants to learn how to knit on many different occasions, and each time she has given up in frustration after 10 or 15 minutes, but my mom thought that Sapphire was working so well with the kumihimo disk that perhaps she actually was ready to learn how to knit. Unfortunately, my mom didn't bring supplies for teaching her how to knit with her, so we needed to track down knitting supplies.

In Manhattan, finding knitting supplies would be fairly easy. If you want inexpensive stuff you go to JoAnn's, or Walmart, or Hobby Lobby. If you want classier stuff, you go to Wildflower Yarns. In any case, the needles and yarn are easy to find. In Paris there were more obstacles. The first, obviously, was that we had to figure out what yarn was called in French. Evidently, it's fil, but that's also the word for thread, string, and wire. So doing a google search for fil might lead to a yarn store, or it might lead to a store that specialized in barbed wire (probably not a great thing to learn to knit with). Eventually some English language searches for yarn and Paris suggested that there were some Phidar boutiques in Paris, including one in the BHV, a big department store. Also, the store was said to have a sizable craft section, and it was certain to have toys and books, since all the department stores here seem to have those.

Unfortunately, various illnesses and other issues interfered with actually going to the BHV until Tuesday. We set out through the Auchan mall so that I could stop at the ATM on the way to the train station, but we were sidetracked when I saw a winter coat that I thought Ezio might like. Trying to get him to the store to try on clothes is a bit like pulling teeth, so I took the opportunity to have him try it on. He liked it, so we bought it, then headed back to our apartment to drop off the jacket he had been wearing. Back through the mall we went, to the ATM, and finally to the train station, where we hopped the train into Paris.

Once we arrived at the proper metro stop, we discovered that we could go directly from the station into the store, which meant that we didn't have to get wet, or lost. We started on the craft supplies floor, where we were able to find lots of colored pencils (for Sapphire), but no yarn. So we stopped in the book section to pick up the newest Asterix book (in French) for Ezio. (He learned to read English from Spiderman comics. I think he's going to master French from Asterix comics. My opinion of comics has changed dramatically.)

Then we headed up a few more floors to find something for Cherry. She's not quite old enough for crafts, and she's not ready to read Asterix, so it was the toy department for her. My mom picked out a Polly Pocket set for her, and then we headed over to the restaurant for lunch. According to my mom, the view out the window was amazing. According to me, the view of the white wall behind her was, well, white. The apple tart was pretty good though.

On the way back down, we managed to find the tiny yarn department tucked away in the home decor floor. While my mom and Sapphire picked yarn and needles, Ezio, Cherry, and I examined doorknobs (which come in an amazing array of shapes) and looked at lights. (Did you know that you can buy fluorescent light bulbs in every color of the rainbow? I've always wanted purple lights in my kitchen.) Then we headed back down to pick up a second Asterix book for Ezio (because you have to spend the same amount on each grandkid, you know).

We headed back home afterward, and Sapphire learned how to knit from my mom. Ezio started reading his Asterix books. Cherry played with her Polly Pockets. And I snuck Nutella.

In which we visit the doctor

By the time we got home from the museums on Sunday, Blaise was feeling quite ill. He had been suffering from some gastro-intestinal issues (which I will leave to your imaginations) for several days which had gotten substantially worse. They didn't seem serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room (not to mention that I had no idea how we would go about that), but it did seem worth seeing a doctor about in the morning.

Monday morning, I began the process of trying to find a doctor who spoke some English. I began by calling the doctor's office in our apartment complex. No English. Next, the doctors' office up the road a bit. There may have been a doctor there who spoke English, but every time the receptionist tried to forward my call, I got cut off. (This business of getting cut off when a call is forwarded seems to happen to me an awfully lot in France.) The third call I made to a doctors' office near the center of the city. The receptionist assured me that the doctor spoke English, and suggested that we come in that morning.

Once I had showered and dressed, Blaise and I set off. Fortunately, we were able to leave the kids with my mom, so it was unnecessary to drag them with us. We found the doctor's office and added our name to the list at the desk. Then we went into the waiting room, and waited.

I think this is what was going on, though I'm not exactly sure. It appears that most general practice doctors in France split their hours into two parts. During one of those parts, they see patients who have made appointments. During the other part, you just show up, take a number, and wait for your turn. So the reason the receptionist suggested that we show up in the morning was because that was when the doctor had drop in care hours.

In any case, there were about 6 people ahead of us, and once they had all gone in, the doctor called us back. (No nurse, interestingly. Perhaps that's normal there, I don't know.) It turned out that he did not, in fact, speak much English, though he did speak some. Between my French, Blaise's French, and the doctor's English, we managed to muddle through somehow, and left with prescriptions for an antibiotic, an antidiarrheal (it's amazing what you need a prescription for here), extra strength tylenol (ditto), and Prilosec. We were also given strict instructions to go to the emergency room if Blaise got sicker, and to return on Wednesday if things hadn't improved substantially.

We paid our 22 euros (not bad for a doctor's visit) and headed for home. After lunch, I went to the pharmacy (which had been closed earlier) and spent three times that much filling the prescriptions.

Fortunately, after 2 days of antibiotics, antidiarrheals, and a severely limited diet, Blaise seems to be feeling quite a bit better, though he's beginning to be a bit cranky about subsisting on rice, pasta, and bananas.

In which we see Medieval Stuff

When we visited Paris two years ago, one of the museums that we visited was the National Museum of the Middle Ages (also known as Cluny, which is what I'm going to call it). This museum has, among other things, a tapestry series called The Lady and the Unicorn, which is one of the most famous tapestries in the world. When my mother realized that we had seen it, she was extremely jealous, so of course we needed to go to see it while she was visiting.

Yesterday morning, we made plans to go to the Cluny, as well as the Museum of Decorative Arts, since our experience in the past was that the Cluny was not an all day affair. The former museum was part of the free first Sunday program, the latter was not, so we had to decide what the best order for visiting was. Eventually we decided that we would go to Decorative Arts first, with the idea that Cherry and I could split afterwards if necessary, and Mom, Blaise, Sapphire, and Ezio could continue to Cluny.

The Museum of Decorative Arts was somewhat underwhelming. They had a really cool glass elevator, which Cherry and I rode down to the bathrooms, and an interesting exhibit of Depression era evening gowns. Evidently French women during the Depression were all very tall and flat chested. I got to show Cherry a Fisher Price record player and a couple of other toys that I had once had. We also got a very nice photo of her throwing a silent tantrum on the floor of the museum.

Afterwards, we headed over to the Carrousel of the Louvre for lunch. We had acceptable Japanesish stuff, but at least we were all full afterwards.

After lunch, we headed out (in the rain) to walk to Cluny. I'm still not exactly sure why we chose to walk, since it was a decent way (just over a mile), and there were convenient train stops for both museums. By the time we got there, we were soaking wet, and then we had to wait for half an hour to get into the museum, during which time Cherry announced (loudly) every 30 seconds that she needed to pee. We finally made it inside, and headed straight down to the bathrooms. Cherry wanted to use her own potty, but was willing to have me guard the door instead of locking it, fortunately.

We saw a very cool exhibit celebrating 50 years of Asterix down in the recently restored Roman frigidarium. We went upstairs and saw the lady and the unicorn tapestries. We saw a 7th century Visigoth crown. (Actually, we saw three of those.) We saw a surprising number of depictions of Mary nursing baby Jesus. Then we headed home on the RER.

In which we celebrate Halloween

Several weeks ago, Blaise's mom emailed me to ask whether or not they celebrated Halloween in France, and I was forced to admit that I really didn't know. I knew that Toussaint (All Saints' Day) was an important holiday (the kids get a week and a half off school), but I had no idea about Halloween. So, of course, I got on the internet and poked around a bit. As best I could figure, there was some Halloweeny kind of stuff, but it wasn't really a very important day. I did, however, find that the American Library in Paris was having a Halloween party for kids, and since Halloween was a Saturday, it was actually on Halloween. So, last weekend when we went to the library, I signed the kids up.

Then, we planned to buy things to make costumes on Monday. But Cherry was sick, as was Blaise, so that didn't work out. Neither did Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. By Friday things were beginning to seem a bit desperate, so off to the Auchan we went. Since Halloween isn't a very big thing here, there aren't rows and rows of costumes like there are at, say, Target. Instead there were a few witches hats, a bit of face paint, a pumpkin costume, and some Asterix and Obelix masks.

Sapphire wanted to be a witch. Since she already had black pants, we found her a black sweater, and, fortunately, a witch's hat. We debated buying face paint, but she really wanted green, the one color that they didn't seem to have.

Ezio wanted to be Asterix. We had originally planned to make some cardboard wings and attach them to his winter hat, but were lucky enough to find an Asterix mask in the bin of Halloween stuff. Then, we needed to find a black shirt, which was surprisingly difficult, and red pants, which was unsurprisingly difficult. He eventually ended up with a black girl's turtleneck and a pair of Asterix pajamas that had red pants.

Cherry wanted to be a pumpkin. Since there was no appropriate pumpkin costume at the Auchan (the one there was for 10 to 14 year olds, which seems like a kind of lame costume for a tween), we needed to make one. So we needed something orange (a bath towel) and something for a face (a yellow washcloth). There was, fortunately, a sewing kit in the apartment. And so Friday night my mother made Cherry a pumpkin costume out of a towel and cut up bits of washcloth.

Saturday after lunch, we set out. We stopped along the bridge to snap a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower, then headed the rest of the way to the library. Sapphire insisted that I carry her hat the whole way because she was worried that she might look odd with it on.

Once we were at the library, the kids got to decorate pumpkin and ghost cutouts, which the library staff then hung all over the library's reading room. Then they sang some songs and listened to some stories. They went for a parade through the library and had a costume contest (which none of my kids won). Finally, they watched the Great Pumpkin movie.

On the way home, Cherry melted down, oh, say, 50 times, and so the 45 minute trip ended up being a 90 minute slog. Then we had trick or treaters knock on our door, but no candy because we didn't know there would be trick or treaters. Oops. Perhaps we could have offered them red beans and rice.