Well, looks like you can break the rules and nothing happens as a result.
My roommate faced a sort of scolding from our host family and a "don't do it again" from AIFS.
I'm not impressed, but what can you do?
Today I got to spend the first two hours of my day in the French version of a DMV. Somehow the paperwork for all us long-year students to get a residency permit to allow us to live here legally for the year got messed up. As a result, the carte de séjour we were supposed to receive (and applied for back in November) month ago never arrived, and we are, more or less, here illegally. It turns out the government office in charge of this whole business lost our paperwork, including a translation of our birth certificates, copies of our host family's national identity cards, their electricity bill from the previous month, proof of financial guarantee, proof of inscription, proof of attendance, copies of our passports and visas (expired, now, at least 4 months back), a certificate signed by our host family's acknowledging that we're staying with them for the year, a packet of official forms, and 4 passport-sized photographs.
We had to get it all again. And we had to bring the "recipesse" which we received in the mail back in December, acknolwedging that we'd applied for the carte de séjour. As a group of 20-year-olds is apt to do, most of us didn't have half the paperwork we needed when we met this morning at the Prefecture at 9 am. I had more than most, but I didn't bring my actual passport, just copies of it.
It was a harrowing morning. We went through metal detectors, weaved through lines, got to sit in hard, hospital-style chairs for hours, and didn't have time to eat between the end of that and getting to class on time. On May 7, I have to go to a French doctor to get a check-up, and then once that's done, I can finally receive my carte de séjour, less than a month before I leave.
Did I mention that getting this carte costs me 55 euros?
Bureaucracy, I don't like.
Two weekends ago, I went to the Loire Valley with AIFS. We visited Chambord, Blois, stayed the night in Tours, then saw Azay-le-Rideau and Chenanceau. The latter two are my favorite, being more delicate and smaller, not to mention prettier overall. Chambord has impressive stairways, though. Supposedly designed by Leonardo de Vinci.
While in Tours, on our way to dinner, a few friends and I stumbled upon a wine tasting that was winding down. For 2 euros, you buy a glass and get to go to whichever booth you want and have as many sample glasses of different kinds of wine you want. I think I had a total of 5 full glasses on an empty stomach before we decided to head off. And I got to keep the glass. It was a trick keeping it in tact throughout the rest of the trip, but I managed, and now have a nifty souvenir.
I'm ready for a break from school. The weather is getting warmer (tomorrow the high is 18!) and the sun is actually showing its face for long stretches and, as a result, spending the majority of the day locked in a classroom studying French is torture, as defined by the Geneva Conventions.
My parents arrive a week from tomorrow, and I head off to Venice to begin my Spring Break French Roadtrip! Mom and Dad are going to freeze, and I'm going to be wearing tank tops.
