Today we got the little pieces of laminated paper that make me feel like we really, truly LIVE here… that we aren’t just visitors.
The Carte de Sejour is what makes you an official resident of France. We turned in a mound of paperwork to the relocation company that then maneuvered the red tape to get ours. The requirements include physicals given by a government doctor (That involved getting a mandatory chest x-ray. Seemed kind of bold for a country swarming with smokers. I guess they figure the medical system is already overwhelmed with people suffering from lung maladies… can’t let any new ones in.) After a few weeks, the cards arrived and we were set. That isn’t what we got today.
Today we got our French Permis de Conduire. (drivers licenses)
Without one after a year here, you can’t get insurance. Or so I read somewhere (Probably in a booklet produced by French insurance companies)
But getting one can be hard if you don’t come from the right place in the U.S. And we didn’t come from one of the right places.
There is a small list of states in the U.S. That have reciprocity with France. If you have a license from one of these states, you present your license and are given a French license. Voila! Of course, we checked the list before we moved. North Carolina is not on it. A friend told Bill that Ohio is on the list; we considered getting Ohio licenses when we visited Bill’s sister in Cincinnati. But when I checked the French consulate’s website… no Ohio. So we came here not sure what we’d do. Officially, you have to have the U.S. License before your visa was issued. That means a quick trip now to, say, Florida would provide tans but not licenses.
Taking the test to get a French license is apparently hard… very hard. Even French people often fail the first time they try. Kind of like lawyers trying to pass the Bar. The mere idea of taking the test made me nervous. We were looking at taking a week-long lesson before the test. The only place that HR at Cat found giving the lessons in English is in Paris. A week in Paris is fun. A week in Paris learning to drive did not sound fun. And we’d have to go one at a time because Kaitlyn isn’t old enough to drive.
So, the woman in HR who didn’t relish the idea of spending a small fortune on this week in Paris asked if we’d ever DRIVEN in a state with reciprocity. And, suddenly, Ohio was included in the list. I wrote to Ohio, got official documents showing that we had licenses there and for how long. We gave that, our current NC licenses and our pictures to the relocation company on Monday. Yesterday they sent Bill an e-mail… they got our French licenses. I didn’t believe it until I had mine in my hand. It’s now in my purse. Next to my Carte de Sejour.
I think I’d better read through my French driving guidebook… learn a few of the rules and roadsigns.