Hey all, bare with me for a bit. I'm having some computer and internet connectivity issues and my pictures won't download. Can't have a blog without pictures! Next up is about our activities last weekend: the museum of time and the festival of music.
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Yesterday was my birthday! My first ever birthday not spent with my family in the good ol' USofA. I knew this birthday would be different what with living on a different continent and all and was prepared for a very laid-back possibly slightly depressing birthday. But wouldn't you know a couple days before my birthday I started getting packages delivered from the US? I wasn't expecting much considering shipping costs just as much as the gift itself but I got packages from two people! It was very hard being a good girl and not opening them until my actual birthday.
Another tough transition is that there is nothing similar to sheet cakes here. Pastries and tarts are far more common than cakes, and the cakes they do have are either custard cakes or sponge cakes. Jeremy managed to find some boxed cake mix although it was only enough for a loaf pan, not a cake pan and googled how to make icing since we couldn't find any in the baking isle. We went to a Chinese buffet that serves food closer to American-style Chinese. For those who don't remember this blog post from way back in January, ethnic food is very different here. I found myself not liking French Chinese food at all. Then one day Jeremy's coworkers took him to this restaurant for lunch and he knew he had to take me here. So he saved the idea for a rainy day and then decided it would be a perfect birthday present. Later, we had a couple friends over for a small get together. We played a board game called Alcatraz The Scapegoat. It's a really fun game in which 3 to 4 players are prisoners trying to escape Alcatraz. You have to work together to complete 6 different tasks, but one of you will be left behind as the scapegoat. The scapegoat is voted in by the players at the beginning of each turn, so if that is the turn that wins the game then the scapegoat is left behind and loses. It's a unique twist on a cooperative board game. I don't play too many board games because I hate competing with other people but there aren't too many cooperative board games that keep it interesting enough to want you to play again and again. I highly recommend this game to anyone, click on the link in the beginning of the paragraph to check it out. (It's in English, by the way!) During the game, I told Jeremy to ice the cake and bring it out. This garnered odd looks from our friends. I said, "The cake doesn't have any icing on it, he has to ice it." Well, remember how I said we couldn't find any icing to buy? Apparently it's because they don't use icing. These guys had no clue what we were talking about. Jeremy had to physically show them the bowl of icing before they were like "huh, okay....". They both tried it. JN didn't like it but Ben did, even asking for some more! I also found out through the day that I should be getting a couple more packages and some letters in the mail eventually. I also got an amazon gift card! All in all, it was a pretty good birthday even though I spent it so far from home. A bit ago we went to an art show. I didn't take pictures because this is someone's artwork and I didn't think it polite, but let me sum it up for you; there were some canvases with haphazardly placed painted lines of singular color, a canvas that looked like a 5 year old started painting a window and got bored, a few rows of unlit light bulbs followed by a room with one lit light bulb, and a book of random numbers inside a Plexiglas case with headphones attached. When you put on the headphones, the sound of a burbling creek is heard. There were other exhibits too but you get the gist.
What is art? How much did this person get paid to make this stuff? Did the amount paid cover the amount probably spent on the drugs it would take for someone to think up this stuff? And who looked at this and was like, "Hm, yes, truly philosophical, I must display this in my art exhibit." Maybe the art of modern artists is not the pieces exhibited, but the ability to convince an exhibitor that these pieces are worth being exhibited. At least there was free wine and snacks. This last weekend we went to an outdoor art expo where artists were selling their pieces. There were a variety of medians used and, in my opinion, were more "actual" art than the art show we went to. Some were pretty decent prices, too, and nothing was too absurdly priced. Of course the pieces I liked were more than I could afford. However I thoroughly enjoyed looking at everything, unlike the modern art exhibit that just left me baffled. This weekend we will hopefully be going to two events! A timepiece exhibit and a musical festival! I lost the pin code to my phone, which means I haven't been able to use it. In hindsight I should have saved the number on the computer so I wouldn't have to rely on a piece of paper the size of a peanut, but such is life. So we recruited our friend JN and his lovely ability to speak French to go to the store with us to figure out what to do next. They told us we could do it online. Long, long story short we couldn't do it online and spent about 45 minutes trying to do it via the house phone and an automated customer service line. Having done that, Jeremy asked if JN could show us how to change our password on our banking site so we could raise our credit limit. You see, we had called our bank's customer support line to ask for a credit limit raise because we needed to buy wardrobes (many French apartments don't have closets) and an initial credit limit is €500. They told us to do it online. Have you ever set up an account on a website and they send you an e-mail with a temporary password to use for the first time you access the site? Yeah, our bank did that and sent us the wrong temporary password. So we can't access our online banking information. We told JN this and he said, "Well sure I can help you change your password, but you can't change your credit limit online. That has to be done in person with a bank adviser." Ugh. So apparently, the only thing French customer support knows how to say is "You can do that online." Whether you can actually indeed do "that" online is apparently not their concern. A couple side notes: the electrician came today (an hour late) and "temporarily" fixed our problem and he will come back on another day with the proprietor to properly fix it. Whether he actually temporarily fixed the problem and why he needs the proprietor here to properly fix it are unanswered questions. I took it to mean the landlord, but apparently according to google translate propriétaire can mean either landlord or owner in French so maybe he meant the owner of his electrician company. If it's anything like the US a lot of electrician companies will have one licensed electrician, in a small business he is also the owner, and apprentices. The other side note is I noticed my posts have been void of pictures recently so I took some pictures of my afternoon walk with my dog Kisa. Lately it's been too hot for me to do much outside, but today had a nice strong breeze. It's actually probably been considered nice out to French people, but I've lived a pampered life of air conditioning so I'm sweating through my socks. One thing I did not have the foresight to see before we got here was how to clean the dang dog. She's so so SO furry, so it has to be done either outside or at the groomer and since we live in an apartment, the first option is out of the picture. I didn't think it would be hard to find a groomer but here I am, tearing my hair out, because I can't find any within walking distance and dogs aren't allowed on the trams.
I finally found one that was only a 10 minute walk away. Luckily, they had a "contact by email" option so I could write French instead of trying to speak it. I spent close to an hour writing an email to them only to get an immediate automatic response back that the "mailbox had been blocked due to inactivity" which surely means they are no longer in business. Do you know how often it rains in Besançon? Seriously, my dog reeks. I would dip her in the river but she would probably catch 5 parasites and grow an extra ear or something. I don't know the state of cleanliness of the water, but I've never seen any one or thing else besides ducks and fish in there so I think I'll keep her on land. Speaking of water the plumber and landlord came (at 7:30 in the morning) today to check it out. If you recall, the initial plumber wouldn't say what was wrong with it except that we needed a new hot water heater. This one is saying it's an electrical problem; the switch telling the hot water heater to turn on is faulty. So now we need an electrician to come out. The landlord is happy since the electric work will be much cheaper than a new heater. Hopefully it will happen soon because we don't have enough hot water for me to shave more than an eighth of my legs a day. My legs look like a wheat field in various stages of growth and harvest. It's hot, I want to wear skirts and capris! So I was released from the hospital on Friday. I sat there for the rest of Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday became the day of hell, aka colonoscopy prep. I don't understand why they haven't created an easier going, better tasting method. It tastes like lemon, ocean water, and dissolved chalk. I had to drink two pitchers of it, one Wednesday evening and one Thursday morning. More specifically, 4 in the morning on Thursday. My procedures, for I am getting not just a colonoscopy but also an upper GI endoscopy where they enter from the mouth to look at the esophagus and stomach, are scheduled for "morning". When in the morning? Who knows!
Finally at 11 am, a transporter comes and wheels my bed into the hallway to attach to a machine that will help him transport me to the operating room. After a few minutes of fiddling around, it becomes clear that my bed will not support the machine. He calls someone up and tells them it will need to be pushed manually which requires two people. Never mind that there are, like, 5 other empty beds in the three closest rooms that I could switch to. So now I have to wait for two people to be free, which takes another 20 minutes. I'm brought to a prep room where I strip down and wait for what feels like an hour. I'm wheeled into the operating room, anesthesia is administered, and I don't know anything more until a little after 2 pm when I wake up while spitting up as a nurse removes my breathing tube. She uses some kind of suction tube to help clear out my spit up. Apparently this happens a lot, especially if you've had an upper GI endoscopy. I keep coughing and more phlegm is coming up. I can barely talk but that doesn't stop me, in my drugged state, of asking for the suction tube so I can play with - I mean, clean up after myself. After she gives me that, she does an evaluation of me. The French, especially those in the medical field, have this annoying habit of saying "Oop" whenever they do something or touch you. When you're not used to it, it gets real annoying real fast. I wish I had kept a count of how many times a day I heard it, because it was probably at least 20. Usually, I just smile and ignore it but apparently in my drugged state I am less tolerant. Every time she "Oop"ed, I "Oop"ed too. In between "Oop"ing, I pointed to random things in the room and asked how to say them in French. She answers me the first couple times but once she is done her evaluation, the last bit of which was mysteriously "Oop" free, she leaves and I am ignored. I eventually dropped the suction tube and my poor brain couldn't grasp the concept that I just needed to tell my hand to grab it, so I just sat there and whimpered at my loss. Eventually someone else post-procedure got wheeled in. I waved, even though she was unconscious, and the nurse promptly set a curtain barrier between us. But this let me see who was originally behind the curtain so I waved at him instead. He wiggled his foot and a paper from his bed fell on the floor. For some reason I was very troubled by this and cried, "Ooooh nooooooo!" It was at this moment the nurse decided I had recovered enough and called someone to wheel me back to my room where I spent the next couple hours winding down alone, though I still felt drugged well into the night. I wanted to use the bathroom but the hand IV was still in. If you're not familiar with an IV placed in the hand, it's very annoying and hurts more than the kind placed on the inside of the elbow. Typically, extra IV line is gathered and taped to your hand as well which makes the needle move around less and allows slightly more comfort. This luxury was not performed for me, so I opted to wait until they removed the IV line to go to the bathroom. I didn't really need to go, it's just that except for a robe draped over me, I was still undressed and I wanted to put some clothes on. The doctor said they keep it in for 4 hours after anesthesia in case of emergency. It was finally removed and I went to go to the bathroom. The next paragraph is graphic and honestly a little embarrassing, but I think it's important to share as an important view of French healthcare. Skip the next paragraph if you'd like. I get up and notice that they had left me in the mess they created during the colonoscopy. I had thought something felt off but honestly I was so drugged up I couldn't make a good connection. I had received a colonoscopy in the US about 5 years ago and they clean you squeaky clean afterwards. It wasn't until now that I even knew that the nurses in the US did that for me. So here I am, laying in my own waste for 4 hours and it is not contained to just one area. It's all over the lower body and they leave it to the drugged up, uncoordinated patient to clean up in their bathroom sink (there are no showers in the hospital room) with anything they have on hand once they are coherent enough to understand something is amiss. Luckily I had saved my washcloth they had given me that morning. This was disgusting and I am outraged that such a thing happened. I am actually currently fighting off a minor urinary tract infection because of it. I wonder if they do the same for elderly patients who have a hard time cleaning themselves on a normal day? The next day the doctor comes in to tell me results. The inflammation and ulcers are confined to the colon, specifically the descending colon and rectum, which indicates ulcerative colitis over Crohn's. The histopathology, however, came back as indefinitive. The samples of the inflamed, ulcerous areas came back as neither Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, but as undefined inflammation. What does this mean? Who knows! The doctor still thinks it is ulcerative colitis, just caught early on. The symptoms are right, it looks like it, so it will be treated as such. I was sent home with a long prescription list and orders of blood work in 2 weeks and every month after for 3 months, and an MRI and check-up in late July. Even though the food was horrible and I am very upset over the state they left me in after the colonoscopy, I am very grateful it happened here in France, where a 9 day hospital stay won't have me in debt for the rest of my life like it would in the US. I'm sure it'll still cost a pretty penny, but nothing like the US. 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AuthorA US citizen discovering expatriation in France. Archives
February 2016
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