Progress

Progress! Today two big things happened:
1) I received my first piece of mail, addressed to me, at my apartment. This is very reassuring that the little sticker with my name on it on my mailbox is "official" enough for La Poste to deliver mail to me!
2) I had my immigration medical exam and got my carte de sejour (or at least the temporary one, the real one is coming in the mail).

Excellent. I finally feel like I live in France.

Now, a few interesting details. I have read on other moving to France blogs about major problems with La Poste. Specifically how a random name sticker on a mailbox isn't official enough to actually receive mail. Apparently it's official enough for my mailperson (although I was a bit concerned because I recently ordered a new mobile phone, and while the website said "delivered", it was actually delivered to the wrong zip code and a different town all together! Still battling with that one.).

BUT, apparently my name sticker is not "proper" enough for the other tenants in my building. I was in the elevator the other day with another tenant. We were going to the same floor, so she said (all in French, but I'll summarize): "Oh, are you Mme X, the new tenant?" To which I said yes, and I think she heard my charming American accent "And you're the one who put that sticker on the mailbox?" Yes. "Well, Madame, you may not know this but we just got new mailboxes so that they would look nice and not have stickers on them. Would you be so kind as to move your sticker to a different location on the mailbox?"

I'm sure she thought - Ah, an American! Of course she would do something so improper as putting her name on the front of the mailbox, not with a proper nameplate but with a (gasp!) sticker!!!

I think that was my first run-in with snooty neighbors. Everyone else has been quite friendly and even tries to speak a little English (not that they need to, but it's a nice gesture.)

Now, one point about the medical exam, and I'm sure I'll go into much more details the first time I have a real doctor's appointment. But there are no gowns... you just take off your shirt and your bra, and wait around in this little room for them to call you, and then you follow them around, naked from the waist up, while the xray tech is tinkering around and talking to you, and finally takes your xray. I'm not too weird about nudity, but I have never been just wandering around a medical office topless before. From what I've heard from other expats, it gets much worse than this, so I can't wait for my first physical!