This week I traveled down to the south end of Paris (a place I have never been to), and walked into the French Consulate.
The reason I needed to go and talk to the Consulate is to get residence here, and once I have residence I go on the French Healthcare and get a social security that is all mine and I can keep for up to 10 years. That's why I need to go to a medical check-up, so they can make sure I'm not coming in with any previous conditions that they would need to take care of.
I have heard the horror stories from all the other Au Pairs, so I was ready to expect the worse. Stories like, unacceptance of paperwork, request to re-submit paperwork, and multiple trips back and forth. With fingers crossed I walked up to the building, and then got lost. After a few minutes of wandering the halls I found myself in a very colorful looking DMV type room.
I had all my documents ready, but when I got to the desk they said that the copy of my passport was too dark and that I needed a passport picture to give them. I was thinking "dang! I'm going to have to go home and come back and do this all over again."
Turns out I was wrong. They have photo booths all around Paris like something out of an old time movie. Well the guy helping me told me there was one just up stairs and I could run up and get my picture from that. Also there was a copier that charged very little for a copy. I ran up there very quickly, and was back within 5 minutes.
They passed me on to the next step which was waiting a area. Again I was thinking "this will take forever!" but it was very smooth. I had no problems at all. They looked at my papers and gave me an appointment to go on to the medical check up. That was really easy. I don't know how I have managed to do all of this without any real problems.
So at the end of November I will go in to get a medical check up. At that point I will be here for three months and I'm sure it will take another few months for everything to go through and for them to send me my official card.
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