The Medical Exam

Monday morning, we had to get up early and head to the train station.  As part of the visa process, Sandy and I have to get a medical exam to make sure that we aren't just coming to France for a year for free medical care.  The issue is that the facility we were assigned to is well south of Paris.  So, we needed to take a few trains and then... I wasn't sure.  How would we get from the train station to the facility?  It looked like maybe a bus wasn't too far off, so I figured I would make it work once we got there.

So we get off the train where we planned... and there was nothing.  Seriously, nothing.  There was a back road that ran near the station, but nothing else.  We started walking up the road.  After maybe a mile or so, we came to a fairly main road and a bus station.  The problem was I couldn't tell exactly where we had to go.  We hopped on the bus for 1 stop and then regrouped.  At this point, I was pretty helpless, but pressed on.  I found a bus stop maybe 1/2 a mile up the road that would take us to where we needed to go, but we had to walk.

As we walked, we went through an area that definitely wasn't safe at all.  It looked like homeless people might've been sleeping there, but we ran into nobody.  Eventually, we got to the bus stop, but we were already late to our appointment.  We weren't sure if they would make us reschedule if we arrived late, but we pushed on.

When the bus arrived, it was already full.  Sandy, Morgan, and Nick barely squeezed into the bus and there was no room for me.  As the door beeped that it was going to close, I sort of jumped in and pushed, cramming me into everyone standing inside the bus.  As the bus took off, we suddenly realized that we had no handrails to hold onto.  We pretty much smashed this poor lady and then gained our balance.  Thankfully we could laugh about it because we were just running into everyone on the bus.  After 4 stops, we were able to get off and walk around the corner to the OFII office.

They didn't have an issue with us being almost 30 minutes late.  They said that we had to start outside, at this mobile imaging truck.  Chest x-ray time!  We stood there in front of 3 orange doors not knowing what to do. 

Someone came out of one of them, so Sandy walked in.  I stepped into door #3 when that room was vacated.  It was maybe 2' x 3' with another door on the other side.  Apparently, the so-called doctor was on the other side.  We figured out that we were to undress from the waist up.  There were no gowns or anything to put on.  This man opened the door and we walked in to get our chest x-ray.  We then returned to our orange box to get dressed and wait for the films.  They handed us our x-rays and we went back into the building for the rest of the exam, which consisted of us attempting to answer questions from people that spoke only slightly more English than we spoke French.

In the end, we were both approved.  We found a different train station that actually had a bus running to it to get home.  The (hopefully) final step will be to apply for residency.  There is a company hired to do that for us, so we just had to sign a couple of forms.

Sandy and I talked after that and realized that we'd both made a big mistake in this process.  I'll take the blame for it completely.  We pushed on when we got off the train, even though we knew we weren't in a good situation.  We put an agenda ahead of the safety of the kids.  I will never, ever let that happen.  Thankfully, we ended up with just tired feet from extra walking.