Medical Visit

I had a very interesting day yesterday. I had to go into Besançon for the medical visit of my Carte de Séjour, which is what I need to stay in France with health insurance. I had to miss my afternoon classes and take the train. It is about an hour and 15 minutes away. Then I got the doctor’s office and the doctor poked and prodded me then he took an x-ray of my chest and I was told to wait outside. Then a few minutes later the nurse handed me a sheet and the x-ray of my chest and told me I could go. It was all really kind of strange.

So I had to walk all the way back through town to the train station holding my very own x-ray of my chest. I have no idea why they would even give that to us…what are we going to do with it? Sarah said that I should try to sell it on eBay. I wonder what I could get for it.

In the end I had to miss two classes, spend 14 euros to ride the train for almost 3 hours, and I was in and out in less than 15 minutes. At least now I think I can finally check the Carte de Séjour off my list of things to do!

The movies we saw on Wednesday were really good. We went to a French comedy about a guy who had five sisters and a mother who all wanted him to get married, so he hired a woman to act as his girlfriend and they end up falling for each other. It was predictable but still entertaining. Then we went to see "Scoop" the new Woody Allen film, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was in English with French subtitles. I really like this movie, but it was weird to see how so many of the jokes weren’t translated well in the subtitles. A lot of it just didn’t make sense. That may have been why there were only about 6 other people in the theater.

I am still working on the whole Internet thing. On Wednesday I went into France Telecom to ask them what I should do because it has been more than two weeks since they came to install it. They told me that the Internet was hooked up, and it should be working. If it wasn’t then I had to call their helpline. This morning I called the helpline, which is not toll free and cost me about 20 euros on my cell phone because they still put you on hold! After I was disconnected once I called back and did my best to understand what he was trying to tell me to do. It was very difficult! The guy ran a few tests then he said that it was not working properly (surprise, surprise), so someone is going to come out on Monday to look at it again. At least now we know it is not something we are doing wrong.

I am not quite sure what we will be doing this weekend because tomorrow is a national holiday. I think they call it Remembrance Day here, which is our Veteran’s Day. Nothing will be open. It will be like a weekend of two Sundays, and Belfort looks like a ghost town on Sundays! O-well maybe next week I will have the Internet to keep me company! I’ll keep my fingers crossed!