Going Postal

Greetings and Salutations!

Yesterday, something happened that I have been avoiding since day one of arriving in France. Let me give a little background info.

Because we are staying in France for over 3 months, we are all required to fill out a form called "OFII." We were all informed of this over the summer, and we were told it was very important. At some point we learned that it had to be submitted before the 3 month mark of living in France. The form asks for your address and how long you'll be in France. After the OFII office receives the form they contact you with a doctor's appointment that you must attend. Along with the form you are supposed to include a copy of your passport ID page and a copy of the student visa page of your passport. Given that this process involves making copies at a copy center, filling out a form in French, going to the post office, the looming mysterious doctor's appointment, and that we had a whole 3 months to do it, naturally all of us put it off.

We started asking each other what would happen if we just didn't do it. None of our program heads had said anything to us about the form since the first week we arrived. Somehow it circulated that if we just didn't do it, France could keep us from ever entering the country again. Another answer that circulated was that France wouldn't let us leave. "Not let us leave?" someone would ask,"wouldn't they want to kick us out?" It goes without saying that there was much confusion surrounding the whole process.

I already had copies of my passport, but the thing that kept me from touching the form was the dreaded trip to the post office. My 2 hour ordeal at the post office in Bolivia had me not wanting to ever enter a foreign post office ever again. EVER. AGAIN.

Mail piled up, and this weekend I found myself with my sublet contract for winter quarter, 6 post cards, and my OFII form all needing to be mailed.

Photo Courtesy of: L'Express.fr

So, after class, I walked into La Banque Postale. The man was very nice and helpful, but I didn't have cash and my card wouldn't accept the low 87 cents charge. I apologized and packed up all of my documents and left. Near my dorm I found my atm, withdrew cash, and crossed the street to a different Banque Postale. This one was much bigger. I walked up to a lady and asked her if she spoke english (we haven't learned post office vocab). In french she said "a little." I pulled out my documents and said I needed to send them but I needed 6 stamps. She brought me over to a machine, typed in something, pointed to the screen, and started to walk away. The screen said I owed 6 Euro. "Excuse me," I said, "this says I owe 6 Euro for 6 stamps..?" "Oui," she said. I sighed and thought, maybe the man from the first post office didn't know I was sending these to the U.S..so maybe the stamps (which look like normal stamps) he had pulled out were only domestic.

I pulled out a ten dollar bill from my wallet and realized there was no place to put in cash. I stood there staring at the machine trying to figure out what I was expected to do, and how I was expected to pay. Finally, a young woman behind me pointed to the cash to change machine next to me. I got ten dollars in change, and paid the machine with coins. This is my first observation of inefficiency in the French post office. After I got my stamps (which look like long rectangular labels and not like stamps at all) I realized that they were way too big and would cover my writing. I stood there feeling like the subject of one of those photos where one person is standing still and there is a blur of motion around them. I literally stood in one spot for 5 minutes.

The woman who I'd first spoken with was running around the post office hoping from desk to desk. There were several different counters but none of the signs had been translated to english, and the words weren't close enough to english for me to figure out. I had my postcards, my OFII form, my passport copies, and my sublet contract in one hand, and my weird looking large stamps in the other. Every time I tried to stop the woman and ask or pantomime a question, she'd respond to me in french, point in no particular direction, and then hurry away.

Finally I found an employee who spoke english. She actually walked with me through the process of getting done what I needed to get done. We solved the stamp problem by folding them over the edge of the postcards.

Since mom stubbornly refuses to take some things back for me like all the other parents, I know I'll need to ship a ton of stuff back home before the program is over. But the last place I want to go back to is to La Banque Postale.