Well we got our new cartes de séjour today from the Préfecture de Police. We went in the morning and there wasn’t too much of a queue. Things went alright and we got our new residence permits.
The only bump wasn’t really a bump, but it was funny enough to note. When we advanced to the desk to pick up our cartes and were met with a “attendez s’il vous plaît!” and a truly hideous scowl. Apparently the woman attending the desk wasn’t yet ready! It fit my image of the typical disgruntled administrative fonctionnaire so perfectly that I found it almost farcical. I had to restrain myself from laughing out loud. However, after that when it was our turn, the woman was considerably more pleasant. In the end, we were able to get what we came for within about 15 minutes.
One new development is that our titres de séjour were renewed for a full year, rather than the additional six months that we’ll be staying. That takes a bit of the pressure off the rush to leave by the expiration of our residence permits at the end of our stay. One unpleasant thing about living abroad is that one has to frequently worry about one’s legal status, for example staying past the expiration of a residence permit, which can be revoked at any moment. Still it feels a bit better knowing that we have legal status well past the end of our séjour.
… Now if they’ll only pay my salary on time…
Update: So I will get paid, but not until next week. Oh well, I guess a week late is par for the course in France. The even better news is that I will be reimbursed for my travel expenses to a conference last November and we finally got reimbursed for something else that we were beginning to expect that we would never see happen.
