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.