Queues.

Home nice and early today ready to get started on my 'Does America have a culture?' oral presentation (read: 10 minutes of analysing the depth of Britney Spears and Lady Gaga). Today I was able to rise late (thank God, given how late I got home the night before) but had to rush to get out the door on time, for some reason this is a frequent occurence. Not sure what that's saying but I'm guessing my time management skills could do with a bit of french influence.

We arrived at the bank (LCL, for those that are actually interested) and had un rendez-vous with a lovely man named Svelko. Svetko. Stvelko. Stvksjk. Ok, I can't remember, but I do recall him having very nice eyes and therefore alot of what he said was completely lost on me. (I think my gazing distracted him also). But despite the language barriers we were able to form somewhat coherent interactions and we walked out of the door with a bank account (or so I assume).

The french banking system is very different to New Zealand. First of all, the whole appointment thing caught me off guard. Appointments in New Zealand? You either forget them, you're late, busy or just had to have a feed at the same time. In France, if you're 3 minutes late, you miss it. Luckily Sveltko/Svletko/Slevkto was understanding about our slight delay (we blamed the metro, truthfully we were eating).

The amount of paperwork we had to go through was also ridiculous. You can check 2 more trees of the rainforest list because we definitely killed on each. Initially I thought he had accidentally printed about four times too many copies but when he started sorting through all the papers and said something along the lines of "papier" and "beaucoup" I tried to close my gaping mouth. To make matters worse, we had to sign a large number of these papers. By the end of the signing, I think I had formed a new signature that was significantly less decipherable and potentially belonged to someone else. But after saying 'no' to a cheque book (you would think France would have moved on from these but apparently not) and learning that only lawyers, doctors and other honourable professions had credit cards and that no, we were not any of the above, we were handed a gigantic dossier of paper (which I'm sure will make for excellent firewood in the winter) and bidded 'bonne journee'. Tick, french bank account.

The rest of the day was spent in a line. This isn't entirely true but it sure felt like it. The line to pick up student cards is ridiculous. Everyday the line is at least one and a half hours long. Today, we sacrificed and decided to join it. After about 40 minutes a lady came down the line asking for peices of paper (again, french love their paper) and it was at this point that I discovered that my waiting was a complete waste of time because (unbeknown to me) I hadn't even completed my enrolment). I'm not even going to go down this track cos merely thinking about it makes me stressed, but the point is I spent 40 minutes waiting in the heat in a queue that got me nowhere and spent a large part of the rest of the day trying to do what I needed to (and failing, again). Outcome: unsuccessful.

On the plus side, I had a delicious sandwich poulet for lunch and we were able to go for another small walk around St Germain de Pres which is definitely one of the most beautiful arrondisements I've been to so far. But despite walking around this area numerous times, I am still unable to navigate my way back to school successfully due to the complete lack of a grid the french seem to have implemented.

Dog poo tally: +1.