Rassafrassin’ bureaucracy…

  Okay, I am officially a member of the “France’s bureaucracy is monumental and engraging” club… or, if such a club doesn’t exist, I’m thinking about creating it.  You need anywhere between 3 and 10 pieces of paper to do anything, from merely proving your existence (but, but… I’m standing here, aren’t I?) to opening a bank account to proving that you are worthy of being paid.  It’s absolutely infuriating and I’ve been pounding my head against the bureaucratic wall for the last week, and particularly for the last three days.  And I’m not finished, because when I stepped up to what I thought was my last desk this afternoon, I discovered that a piece of paper that was absolutely necessary was also one, as it turns out, that was absolutely necessary for another thing that I had applied for at my school earlier this morning.  I had left the piece of paper at the school to be copied, the school is closed on Wednesday afternoons, and I’m working all day tomorrow.  Argh!
 
Other than the bureaucracy and the normal extreme homesickness, things are actually going pretty well.  I really like Laon - it’s small and imminently walkable (presuming you like stairs… a LOT), and quiet, which I find nice.  I’d probably go crazy if I were forced to live here for years, but for a few months, it’s nice.  The people are very nice, put up with my broken-and-ground-into-dust French, and consist of a round assortment of ages and types.

    The first few days in Amiens for the training were a lot of fun, despite the training itself.  (The training was not very informative and was boring on top of that.)  But I made a few friends: three from Germany, one from Nothern Ireland, and a couple from England.  We hung out quite a bit, and it was really interesting to me to have to translate English!  When my friends from England and Northern Ireland started speaking quickly, it was almost as difficult to follow as the French or German the others spoke.  :-)

    One of the things that is the most striking to me is the sheer age of things around here.  I mean, there are the usual assortment of new-to-fifty-years-old buildings, but sprinkled among them are three hundred years old buildings, or five hundred years old streets.  I walked around the medieval walls of the Ville Haute (the part of Laon that’s up on a plateau), and it was sobering to realize that even these walls, so ancient by American standards, are postively young in comparison with the founding of the city over a thousand years ago…  Made me feel like something of a Mayfly, given how short my lifespan will be in comparison to the duration of the walls and city.  It also made me wonder whether I will be able to make any lasting impression on the planet, and about the dubious advisability about having given certain members of the US government the ability to make such an impression.

    Anyway, I am doing well.  I will be spending the next few weeks merely observing in classes at my school (which turns out to have a high majority of “special needs” classes).  My first observation period today was more like a session of 20 Questions, and it was interesting to see what they were interested in.  All the students hung on my single-word affirmative to the question, “Do you have a boyfriend,” for instance.  :-)
   
Until next time… bonnes journées!