Most of you know by now that I found a job at the last minute. I currently make 8 euros an hour tapping Guiness and hawking haggis at a Scottish pub in the Marais. My coworkers are cool and the regulars are a mix of older Englishmen, Americans, and Frenchmen who speak perfect English. It's a good job with good people.
What I put off doing, because French bureaucracy is the stuff of nightmares, was extending my visa. The first hurdle to getting this over with was figuring out which of the multitudinous civil service offices I needed to visit. Return to OFII Office where they make you strip and then throw you against a wall for a chest x-ray? Try the exchange student office that is almost outside the city, on one of the biggest prostitution streets in Paris? How about the Préfecture de Police, the same place they take you in for questioning, drunkenness, and garde à vue? Any one of these also undoubtedly meant long waits and return visits, so perhaps you can understand my putting it off.
Yesterday I finally gathered up every possible piece of paper I could need and set off for OFII and see what was up, but the métro broke down (yay ligne 4!) on Ile de la Cité. An alarm was going off periodically and I was getting claustrophobic in the subterranean tuna can when it hit me - the Préfecture de Police is at Cité. Why not? So I hopped out and went into the vast complex to see what could be done for me.
In the Europe-Proche Orient-Amerique room I was given a piece of paper with a lot of very small print which the lady was kind enough to highlight for me, as well as mark things 1 and 2 and scrawl "ETR" and "EDF" on. Basically, I was supposed to start this process a month and a half ago. What I'm supposed to do is call a number, give them my numéro étranger (ETR) get an appointment at some offshoot of the Préfecture (bureaucracy = hydra), bring a letter from Joëlle and an electricity bill (EDF) to prove I'm not homeless and then...I don't know, pray? No, that would be a very American thing to do.
I'll keep you posted.
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