LA en vie

How to get a vaccination in France and the U.S.A.

One of my family members had to get a vaccination and we went to the doctor.

In France, we would go to the doctor, get the prescription, pay the doctor, go to the pharmacy, buy the vaccine (be careful, it probably needs to be refrigerated), take it back to the doctor's office, and be vaccinated.

When my children were small, I found it very annoying to have to go out and buy the vaccines each time. But I got used to it.

In France, medications and vaccines are cheap. The last doctor's visit and vaccination, in Paris, had cost less than 100 euros total.  You have to pay up front, but everything is reimbursed.

Here, when we arrived at the doctor's office we had to fill out one medical form but two payment forms, one of which is at left.

The doctor introduced himself, spoke a little French (not bad) and explained everything in the fullest terms. He seemed almost deferential compared to the French doctors I know.

I understood why when we got the bill.

$275 for three minutes and a jab.

It's so beautiful

"Everyone hates L.A.," said a new acquaintance of mine at a party yesterday, "until they get here."

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,   
With half-shut eyes ever to seem            
Falling asleep in a half-dream!   
...
Eating the Lotos day by day,            
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,   
And tender curving lines of creamy spray....

   --Tennyson, "The Lotos-Eaters" (1833--he wrote it while a university student) 

The cashier confides in me

Santa Barbara, up the coast from Los Angeles, is one of those idyllic places where you can almost believe you are in a fantasy kingdom, where everyone is rich and beautiful. I had to go up there for an errand. The weather was perfect. The people on the streets were casually well-dressed, and even the few beggars, and the handicapped people I saw being shepherded down the sidewalk, looked somehow soignés-- maybe it was a trick of the light.

I have not gotten over my thrill at being in a place where English-language books are cheap, so I spent a couple of hours browsing in a bookstore and bought several guidebooks to my new region.
"Are you a new arrival here?" asked the clerk, a boy of about twenty. "I am, too."

"Yes, I am," I said, still startled by the instant intimacy of Americans, and not wanting to go into the whole story. "Where are you from?"

"I come from Pensacola, Florida. I moved here a few months ago."

"How do you like it?" I said. "The weather is so perfect here, you must love that."

"I don't, actually," he said. "When the sky is blue like this in Florida, it's a nice day. It's warm most of the year. Here, it can still be really cold. And the thing is, somehow the people are really different here. It's not what I expected. I thought I would move here for good, but now I've decided to move back home in a few months."

"Good luck," I said.

"Thanks," he said warmly. "I hope you have a great life in California, though!"

On the American planet

When I was a little girl, smothered in the all-encompassing American culture, I assumed that in other countries, people were just as self-centered. In France, people would be listening to French music; in Thailand, people would be watching Thai movies; in Japan, people would wear Japanese clothes. The exotic globe beckoned.

It was a shock when I first went overseas, and did not find the variety I had been longing for. Everywhere, people were listening to American music, wearing American t-shirts, watching American television and movies. It was deeply disappointing to me to discover that the monolithic American popular culture was popular everywhere. Even in France! But outside the U.S., it at least serves the function of constantly reminding people in other countries that they are not alone on the planet.

Now that I've come back to the U.S., it's home to the monolith. On the radio here (which you need when you spend all day in the car), you can listen for hours without being reminded that the rest of the world exists, except in a daily nod to the number of people blown up in Iraq (where's that?). The trouble is that while Americans obliviously listen to traffic reports and the latest news on Anna Nicole Smith and the astronaut love triangle, the rest of the world is still out there, watching us, judging us on our television shows and on what we do outside U.S. borders. I hope I can keep this in mind-- it's already getting harder. 

The grocery bagger

There were a lot of things to buy for my new abode. I filled a large shopping cart and wheeled it up to the cashier's desk. As I started to unload it onto the conveyor belt, she looked surprised and said, "Oh, that's nice of you!"

I looked around. No one was unloading their own stuff. The clerk took each item out of the cart and scanned it. At the other end of the conveyor belt, a bagger was waiting with another cart. Each bagger deftly slotted the groceries into bags-- "Paper or plastic?"-- and into the cart.

It still seemed rude to me not to help, so I continued to unload the cart, and the clerk and I got into a conversation. I told her that in France, the clerk never helps you unload and rarely helps bag the groceries, even if there are no other customers, or even if there is a long line behind and the customer makes them all wait while he or she slowly bags everything alone. Instead, the clerk will just sit, hands empty, calmly watching you struggle. It used to make me so cross. That was before I discovered the magic formula, Livraison à domicile! [Home delivery]

"In France, though," said the clerk, "don't they have good health insurance coverage?"

"Everyone is covered," I said.

"Not here," she said glumly, and gave me my receipt. "Must be nice!"

No different is different

For a long time now, my identity has been "the expatriate." With all the problems, it also means you're special...different... interesting.

Suddenly I'm here, just one of the crowd of other Americans. Not being different is so different.

Not sure I like it.

The easy driver's license

My first year in Paris, it took me several months of sweat and tears (literally) to get my French driver's license, a miserable, expensive and hair-raising task.*  So when I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles today, it was not to get a license, which I assumed would take weeks, but just to pick up A, who had been dropped off there. I was slightly dazed when I walked out of the DMV an hour or so later with my brand new California driver's license!

I had had to produce my passport; an old U.S. driver's license, which I carry in my wallet because the French one freaks out American cops (the DMV didn't mind that it had expired when I stopped being able to renew it from overseas after 9/11) --this exempted me from the driving test; and $27. While I waited for my number to be called, I skimmed through the California drivers' booklet, but I didn't have time to finish it. Then I posed for a photo, gave a thumbprint, and winged it on the written test. There were a couple of hard questions, but mostly it was necessary knowledge and common sense.

On the back of the application, I registered to vote. I could have done it in Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

* According to this official-looking site, updated in October 2006, you can now just exchange your foreign license, within your first year in France, without having to take the French driver's tests. A welcome revolution.

Hard to believe it's February in other places

Vive, la différence!

--The lights are on, all the time, everywhere. No minuteurs that leave you stumbling in the dark if you don't hurry.
--The elevators are big. The smallest ones fit six people.
--The cars are huge. If you don't have an SUV you feel dwarfed on the road.
--The restaurant servings are enormous. Everyone takes the leftovers home in boxes and doggie bags.
--The newspapers are stuffed with special ad sections.
--The stores are open all the time. You can buy a sofa on Sunday.

"I lived in Paris for six years," said the woman who delivered two chairs to me yesterday. "First on the rue Saint-Anne, then near Place Pigalle. It was kind of a funky neighborhood, full of hookers."

"Do you miss it?" I asked.

"It was a different time in my life. The Easter chocolate parade was cool, though."

"What Easter parade?"

"Didn't you ever see it? The Easter parade, with these giant chocolates. It was over by the Opera. Six-foot-tall giant Easter eggs."

So childish