Immigration and mad dogs

October 9, 5h France time

It’s been kind of weird week! Thinking back on it, I don’t even know what to say; it’s been a bit blurry. But it’s certainly been full of learning experiences. The most exciting thing I probably did was to take a trip with my (now two) Romanian friends to a castle about 60 km outside of Limoges. (Everyone talks in the wrong units here.) The castle was called “Montbrun,” and it looks like this: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/2383780762_59c2d1569b.jpg It’s owned by someone from Sweden, and I kind of figured, naively, that if you owned a castle you would live in it. Wrong. This Swedish person owns the castle and recently remodeled the interior, but no one lives in it. It’s just a wealthy person’s unoccupied property. My friends and I didn’t want to pay the tour price, so we just walked around Montbrun and hiked up the side of it. We considered hopping the crumbling stone walls outside of it, but I think that would have been fatal. :) We also had the fortune of coming across a little town festival when we were on our way to the castle. We watched more traditional clog dancing and ate croque-monsieurs and hot dogs. It was very French. And I learned from them about European stereotypes, of which there are a lot. Apparently, Europeans think that all Romanians are Gypsies and that Gypsies came originally from Romania. (I did some research; the Romani people, or Gypsies, actually came from India.) What’s more, these Romanian friends classified all Gypsies as being a certain way, and not a good way. I told them that I thought it seemed like a stretch, to say that a minority could all be the same, but they maintained that it was true. Hmmm.

On Wednesday I came down with a mysterious stomach flu on my way to the doctor that rendered me relatively helpless for the morning. I think I had food poisoning—from pasta I made myself. Not a good sign for my aspirations to be a good cook. My doctor’s appointment was a routine “immigrant” checkup required by the OFFI, an association here in France that deals specifically with immigrants and foreigners living in France (students, assistants like me, etc.). Tuberculosis remains a big concern in France for some reason, so I had to enlever mes vêtements for a chest radiograph (that I got to keep, incidentally). Then I had to go to the OFFI, where I sat with a big group of people from a number of countries for a sort of meeting.

Before the meeting began, one of the OFFI employees asked for the students to follow her, but I didn’t because I’m not really a student. I spoke with the woman sitting next to me, from Uruguay, who told me she had married a French man, and she said, “It’s funny you should have to go through all this to be in France for eight months.” I soon found out what she meant; I had accidentally been grouped in with people who intended to stay in France for the really long haul. An OFFI employee began a presentation to the group about the things they would have to obtain while in France—four certificates that attested that those immigrating to France had attended classes about the “values of the French Republic,” had taken courses in the French language and passed proficiency tests, and had completed other démarches administratives. (This means “administrative steps,” as in the steps in an official French procedure. To say “démarche” really makes more sense.) Then the people in the group were committed to watch a movie all about France, excerpts of which included “the French are quite attached to their ideal of égalité. Men and women are completely equal in the workplace as well as at home, and they make decisions their together.” Not completely true, from what I’ve heard and read, but of course countries will try to sound as lovely as possible to outsiders. Anyway, at this point I seized the opportunity to ask someone where I was actually supposed to be.