We met the relocation agent Chantal at the RER station in Nanterre. One must apply for a Carte de Sejour in the prefecture where one lives, and ours is in Nanterre. Chantal is about 50 years older than she sounded on the phone, but very sweet and patient. And she just raved about how beautiful my name is so how could I not love her.
We walked to the prefecture together and went through a few security checkpoints before finally entering the department for foreigners. It was packed with people standing in a variety of lines, but she navigated us to a small frosted glass cubicle apart from the crowd to wait. While we waited there was a loud commotion in another cubicle and and we could see an Asian woman sobbing and screaming at an agent. Chantal nodded gravely and said "Yes, this is quite common. Many people want residency in France, and it's not easy". This left a terrible feeling in my stomach as I imagined what we might be in store for. After a 40 minute wait, we were finally allowed inside.
Chantal's contact Pierre was a well dressed, harassed-looking man who I thought bore a striking resemblance to Steve Carrel (Dave disagrees). Every surface of his small glass office was piled with stacks of documents and paperwork and exotic trinkets from foreigners he's helped. Chantal handed over our paperwork and he tapped everything into his computer while they laughed and shared stories of troublesome foreigners.
He cut apart our photos, asked us to sign a few things, and 20 minutes later we were done.
We were each given a Recepisse de Demande de Carte de Sejour, which serves as a temporary residence permit. After two months we'll have to go back to pick up the permanent cards. The cost of mine has already been covered by Faurecia, but we'll have to pay 220 euros for David's. I was really annoyed by this seemingly pointless administration fee until Chantal assured me that Faurecia will reimburse the cost.
And then, after all this work, the Carte de Sejour is only valid for 9 months! After seeing my obvious discomfort and irritation, Pierre scratched out the date and changed it to 12. How kind!
Here are the photos from our temporary permits, I scanned them because they're just so bad. We had them taken in one of the many photo booths in the city (remember Amalie?). The booth I chose had some color imbalance and I look like I have jaundice. Dave looks gaunt and sickly. Our mothers are going to think I'm not feeding him enough.
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