Job update

I still haven't gotten to this yet but it's been occupying a lot of my time, so I figured I'd give it a shot even though everything isn't settled.

I accepted the job as an au pair for the family in Paris.  They have five children: a 14 year old girl, boys 12 and 10, a 3 year old girl, and 1 year old boy.  I will mostly be taking care of the youngest two, but I will be helping the eldest with her piano and possibly vocal studies and all of them with English.  I am sort of imagining myself as a 19th century governess at this point, but with more feeding of babies.  Let us hope there is no Mr. Rochester lurking around.


The apartment in their building that they were offering is miniscule and shares a bathroom with the floor - basically a typical US dorm but smaller.  I said I wasn't comfortable with that and it turned out they have another apartment very close to where I live now that they will give me.  It's a bit bigger but much more equipped.  I will be about four Metro stops from their home.

Dealing with the logistics of everything, though, has been very difficult.  The family has been on vacation since mid July, with only a brief stay back in Paris.  They were supposed to give me a key to the apartment so I could put some of my things in there while they spend August in Montpelier, but the mother forgot to get the key from the father, who left early.  So now I will have to put my things in the extra apartment in their building and possibly stay there for a few nights, depending on the following situation...

The most difficult part so far has been the visa.  It turns out you cannot go from a tourist (90 day) visa straight to a longer stay visa - the mother was under the impression I could just go to the prefecture (central police station) and get the visa, but after a VERY long wait there I was informed that was impossible.  So I called the US embassy here in Paris to see if they could help.  They could not, and said I absolutely have to go back to NYC to get it done.

So then I tried to get in contact with the French consulate in NYC (I can only go to the one in NYC as all residents in NY, New Jersey, and Connecticut must get their visas from that office) to ask about if I should get a long stay visa or an au pair visa - the difference being that au pairs must be enrolled in a certain number of language classes - and they said I must do the au pair visa, with the language class.  Sigh.  So I began the process of enrolling in the language class.  I'll get the registration for it tomorrow, which I will need to get the visa.

Next problem: apparently the NYC consulate is so very busy that as of last week there were no more appointments available in August.  The earliest I was able to get was September 7th, the week I'm supposed to be starting work.  This of course will throw off the mother's schedule, as she was set to go back to work that week herself.  Unfortunately I don't think I can get around this, so now the mother is somewhat annoyed.

My plan as of now if to stay here in Paris until around Sept 6th, go back to NYC, hang around for about a week waiting for the visa to be processed, and then go back to Paris.  I am currently trying to find out if I can extend my stay in my current apartment until the beginning of September but I don't know yet.  If I can't I will probably end up staying in the apartment in their building until they get back from Montpelier with the key to my actual apartment. 

So things are still somewhat up in the air regarding my plans for the next month or so.  It's been extremely stressful to try to figure out all this stuff while doing class work (I'm sure I don't need to go into how frustrating it is to try to talk to the bureaucrats in the prefecture, the US embassy, or the French consulate), so I'm glad the courses are over.

Anyway, since I'm (hopefully) going to be in Paris for the next year: would people like it if I continued this blog past the end of this semester?  I honestly feel like I'm mostly just writing to my parents and a few friends so it's hard to tell.  I probably won't do as many interesting things when I'm not in school but I'm sure I will have more free time when I don't have tons of readings and papers so I might end up traveling a bit or exploring Paris even more.  Thoughts?