The path to residency

Today Matt and I went to get a medical examination for our French residence cards. Apparently, the French government needs to check that we're healthy before granting us the residence permit.

We arrived at the a non-descript government looking building and entered into the lobby. Two French women were arguing with each other at the reception when we came in. Matt barely asked them a question in French and they pointed towards the stairs and told us to go to the end of the hallway (it was in French and that's what we thought). At the end of the hallway, we found a waiting room was packed full of people waiting for their appointment. Every seat was taken and people were standing along the walls. It so looked like a crappy DMV office in the US. We were entering the belly of French bureaucracy. We had read several books on the French and how utterly frustrating the experience can be sometimes. We prepared for the worse and hoped for the best.

We made our way to the check in counter, where two more French women seemed to be arguing with each other. One of them looked at us, said our last name, and said take a seat (en francais, of course). She actually smiled when she said take a seat because she realized how ridiculous that would be as there were twice as many people in the room as there were seats. They must have been running way behind.

After waiting for about 40 minutes, they called our names. We actually had a few false alarms since anything that remoted sounded like Valle we jumped at. Who knew what would happen if we missed our name being called. Maybe they would never call it again and we would have to come back the next week. The room was silent so every movement or happening was watched by 40 other people in close proximity. Matt and I were called separately. They took our height and weight and then tested our vision. They didn't even ask Matt if he was wearing contact lenses.

After that thorough checkup, they lead us into little changing rooms and instructed us to remove all clothing from the waist up! The room had two doors - one we walked into and closed behind us and another leading to the x-ray room. A technician would open the door to get us when it was our turn for the chest x-ray. As I walked into the room topless, I was thinking that the US medical community is so concerned about making patients comfortable. I guess the French aren't shy. I wasn't thrilled about walking topless into the x-ray room, but at least the technicians were female.

Once the x-ray was complete, I redressed and headed back to the waiting room. We waited for another 20 minutes, when a doctor called me into an individual room. They read the chest x-ray, took my blood pressure, and listened to my heart. After asking a couple of general questions about vaccines and medications, I received a stamp of approval by the government.

We received some several pieces of paper from the check in/out desk and were told to take it to the prefecture office. Matt asked where that was. Ah, only 15 feet away from the check in/out desk. Fifteen seconds later, we were at the prefecture office. We weren't sure what to actually do there, so we laid all the papers we had just been given on their desk. The French bureaucracy loves paperwork, so we kept our xrays, contact lense prescription, passports and metro tickets handy just in case. One women handled my papers and another handled Matt's. Several minutes went by with some confusion. Finally, they came back to us, separately, with post-it notes with a fax number on it. I guess the prefecture office is just there to handwrite a fax number. Before we were about to leave, they handed me a piece of paper that showed five 55 euro stamps photocopied on the front. It was clear that you needed to buy the stamps somewhere and paste them on this piece of paper before we faxed it off. Matt tried his best to understand, but his French was no match for the vagueness of the explanation.

So...all that's left to become residents is to buy 275 euros, fax the paperwork in, wait a month or two, return to our local (we don't know where it is) prefecture office, probably pay some more money (on top of 275 euros plus $225 to get the visas), and then wait until they send our residence card in the mail. Don't worry-Matt also passed the exam. It was an interesting view into the French medical system.