Un Peu de Soliel

So yes, as you can tell by the picture above, it is absolutely beautiful here. The mornings are still fresh and smell like spring, but by lunch time the sun is shining with the strength of a Canadian summer day. To take advantage of the wonderful weather, we went for a walk inside the twisting streets of Marseille last Saturday. There is no urban planning in Marseille, or if there is an urban planner they are one of the many bureaucrats here who has a job for life (yes that is right a job for life) and then sits around and plays solitaire on the computer all day. Regardless the fact that you can walk down a street for ten minutes and then it be completely blocked off by private residences can be fun when you are just walking around, and extremely annoying when you are trying to actually get somewhere and google maps said the street keeps going. When you come to one of these dead ends you have two choice: 1) turn around and find another way to wherever it is you want to get you or 2) Wait until the private gate to the residence opens and then try to see if there is an exit on the other side that takes you to where you are going. The fact that every apartment complex is walled in and gated makes choice number two a bit more interesting, but usually not a successful as choice number one. On our walk on Saturday we took both options at different times. The other wonderful thing about the lack of planning in this city is you can walk down what we would consider an alley in Canada and come out at the most remarkable places. A little exploring and a little adventure here in our own backyard.

By the way we walked for about four hours including numerous back tracking, stopping for pictures, and taking a lunch break... well guess who got burnt like a lobster. Yes, Keith has set a new record for the first burn of the year. March 26.

In our walk we also found this interesting house. The picture isn’t very good, but hopefully you can see the bridge for the car and people that connect the house to the road. Only in Marseille.

In addition to a bit of at home adventuring last week, I also had another immigration meeting. This one was to help me determine what my education and previous work experience qualifies me to work as in France. This meeting did give me some information in terms of searching for jobs in France, but like all of my bureaucratic encounters this one was quite memorable. Firstly, when I was finally called up to the main desk to meet my “pedagogical worker” (yes that is the literal translation of her position), she was in the throes of apologizing to someone else and explaining that she had double booked herself. Right away, I thought this is not a good sign. When I arrived in her office the disorganization was confirmed by the multiple piles of papers and the fact that she looked through them for five minutes to find my dossier. In the process of looking for my dossier, I couldn’t avoid watching this fifty something pear shaped woman in black leather pants bending over to look through piles she had on the floor. This is not a good image and as fashionable as some people are here, they really need a “What Not to Wear” France edition. She never actually did find my dossier, instead she printed a new one off and all the while I am thinking, “I have to give her all of my important documents to photocopy. She better not lose any of them!” After that, she remembered that she had to call her 96 year old mother. Really I didn’t mind this. In fact, I love eavesdropping on French conversations. It is a challenge to see how much I could understanding. 

This is where I would have rather been sitting that morning.

Now on the letter I received to invite me to this appointment it said it would take two hours. We did talk for two hours and I did get some good information and it was a bit of practice presenting my qualifications in French. In the meantime, she was taking notes and filling things out on my dossier. She also showed me a couple of websites. After two hours she said all that she had to do now was type everything up. Why she didn’t just type everything in the first place was beyond me, until she started typing with only two fingers. In the meantime I read the documents she had given me, once, twice, .... three times (and I’m reading them in French people). After half an hour of typing I pulled out my novel, which I have now realized is an essential tool necessary for surviving the French bureaucracy. There will always be a wait. After an hour of typing, and three hours of sitting in the same hard office chair, I was able to sign off on what had been discussed, retrieve my documents and head out into the fresh air of the Vieux Port.

One more meeting down, God only knows how many more to go.

P.S. Can you figure out where I touched up this photo below?