Monday, May 9, 2011

May 09, 2011: French/English, Prefecture, Clean, Pack

French/English coffee chat first thing in the morning. We discussed my impending Prefecture visit - everyone was surprised (but pleased) to hear that I'd had such a helpful person on Friday. The only potential pitfall seemed to be whether I would need to have our marriage certificate translated into French. Even one of the French women in the group had needed to have her marriage certificate translated because it was in German.

So it was with some trepidation that Mark and I went to the Prefecture at noon. We had to do quite a bit of work explaining (in French) at the Welcome desk what we were there for before we were even allowed to take a number, which was unusual. Then we had a very long wait. When we finally got called up to our wicket, I mangled my explanation (in French), but we had a stroke of luck - the women who was helping us traded us to the wicket next to her, where the friendly fellow freely spoke in English with us. He seemed a bit skeptical about the documents I had brought, but when he opened Mark's file he found several Post-it notes left by Friday's helpful person, which presumably explained what she had promised to do for me. So we had success - Mark's paper for staying in the country through June were ready to take away, and mine would be sent to me in the mail soon!

The rest of the day was trip preparation - cleaning the apartment before Mom's arrival to Grenoble on Thursday, and packing for my departure to Lyon to pick her up the next day.

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