Visa Validated

Well the official visit in Orléans went fine. I just got back, with a fresh stamp on my visa and all the paperwork in order. Since my counselor wasn’t able to miss work to drive me into Orléans an hour away, another Rotarian volunteered to escort me there and back. I really enjoyed talking to him on the way there and back, since he had plenty to say in answer to some of my questions that my classmates aren’t often interested in. We discussed everything from France’s history, to the coming elections to the changes in French society due to immigration.

I also saw part of Orléans for the first time, but as my Rotarian guide explained, a great deal of Orléans was destroyed during the first and second world wars and so despite its rich history (it was the city which Joan of Arc saved during the Hundred Years War) it lost its historic buildings and does not have the reputation of being the most beautiful of French cities. Rather, it is the administrative center of the region- which was why I was summoned there to register my visa.

Since we arrived early, we got a coffee before the doors were opened. In Europe, a coffee is always what we would consider an espresso, so they find our coffee extremely watery.

When the doors opened to the building, spent the next hour and a half alternating between waiting and being summoned to different offices to some papers and have other papers signed. In between waiting I met another American, who recognized me by my passport, from Virginia who had finished his undergrad and was spending the year being an assistant English teacher. Since he is the second person I’ve met here working as a teaching assistant (a girl from Wisconsin is now doing the same in my English Literature class), it seems like an interesting idea to keep in the back of my mind for the next four years.

All the official business dealt with briefly and efficiently, and I had no trouble understanding the French, so the visit passed quickly. As for the medical examination, I was measured and weighed and it was verified that my glasses sufficiently corrected my vision (this was actually the only part of the visit which took any effort, since read the eye chart required remembering the French alphabet and I always mix up the vowel pronunciations). They also took a radiological picture of my chest, which seemed strange to me until the American I met in the waiting room explained that it was to look for tuberculosis, something which isn’t often worried about in the US. Luckily, I’m TB free which I suppose is something nice to know.

Besides that, all it took was one final stamp, I was free to spend the rest of the year in France!