French Bureaucracy

Probably not the last post I'll write about this wonderful entity... But so far [knock on wood] the bureaucracy gods have been good to me. I got my visa last week - a mere 7 days after applying for it, and being told I'd have to wait at least 2 weeks before it would be done. So hey, with this second paperwork nightmare out of the way (I count securing housing with only a couple of painless emails and a deposit paid online the first major success), I'm feeling like I'm in pretty good standing. Hopefully this kind of chance doesn't wear off!

I leave in three weeks (twenty days, to be exact), and am starting to make lists. Lots of lists.

And I'm practicing my French cursive. In the past, some assistants have been told that since the primary-school kids are expected to read and write cursive, the assistants have to reinforce that skill as well. Others have said the kids just have trouble reading American handwriting. No biggie, one might think, except French cursive isn't quite the same as the American cursive that most of us learned in school. Lower-case letters are mostly the same, but the French add pretty loopies on their Rs and Zs, and the Ps don't close the loop on the bottom, much to my chagrin. It's the upper-case letters that I've had to work on the most - just remembering what they're supposed to look like. I have the most trouble remembering what the "tops" look like on the Fs, Is, Js and Ts. And I don't like the upper-case S!

Here's my practice:

That's all for now... more as news develops.