A Successful Day (mostly)

Well folks, today has officially been A Successful Day.

Success #1: My shower has been fixed after 2 and a half weeks of cold water and doleful shrugs when I complain to anyone who seemed vaguely responsible (I could never track down the person who was actually responsible, just people who knew him or knew of him). It took a dramatic flouncing up to one of the people in question in the school canteen, interrupting their lunch, and announcing that I now had a cold because I still had a cold shower, so what were they going to do about it. Hey presto, hot water!

Success #2: I have a fully functioning TV! Still not quite sure how this happened because I had no emotional blackmail tools to help me on this, but after 2 months of a decrepit TV with a video player which didn't seem to have worked for the best part of twenty years, I arrived home today to find a replacement sitting in front of the old one. It even has a digibox. Merci bien.

Success #3: After 2 months, 6 forms, 3 copies of my birth certificate (original and translation) and 3 copies of my bank details, I finally have health insurance and a social security number. Again, still not sure how this has happened because I had already resigned myself to the belief that my health insurance application would never be accepted. The highlight of my lengthy correspondence with the MGEN (all by letter, might I add) has to be last week, when I was asked for the third copy of my birth certificate "avec les mentions en marge" - "with notes in the margins". I still don't know what this means, nor did any of the teaching staff present at the time, and all I could do was ask the teacher responsible for me to write a note stating that as my birth certificate is not a French one, it is not the same as a French one. This was topped off by the fact that the stamped addressed envelope included in the letter was too small to fit in anything that I needed to send back. Student Finance England, eat your heart out.

But pride always comes before a fall and this is no exception. In the course of writing this blog I heated up leftover stroganoff from the previous night to eat for my tea. I had kept it in a tupperware box, the previous contents of which was an orange jelly, and my beautiful stroganoff therefore had the pleasant orange, sugary aftertaste which one really needs to create the perfect stroganoff sauce. Fail #1.

But all in all a good day I feel. Vive la France!

Bises,

Sophia xx