hmmm, an update

So. I've been... not so great... with this whole blogging about my experiences in Eu...

I've been feeling all sorts of lethargic and have the tell-tale signs of repressed anxiety, and of late, that's been the main reason I've not felt much like leaving my room. And not really wanting to leave my room has left me feeling guilty; why not get out and enjoy the semi-nice weather, or go for a bike ride, Sea Lion? Why not!

And a part of me is like "ugh Caroline you just really, really suck at life!" But the rest of me is hiding behind some element of the truth, which is:

This place is useless. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the derailleur on my bike is missing a part. Just a tiny piece. In a normal world, I would be able to go to the hardware store, find a couple of nuts and a bolt, then just jerry-rig it right up. I mean, even a bread tie would pretty much fix it, if THOSE would even do me the honor of existing in France.

But here, in Eu? What happens when I explain to the guy at Gedimat (a regional home-improvement store) that I am looking for just a couple of little pieces in order to fix my derailleur? HE TELLS ME TO GO TO A BIKE SHOP AND JUST BUY A NEW DERAILLEUR! Not like... oh, hey, let me HELP YOU find what you're looking for. Nope. Not helpful. Not you, Mr Customer Service Dude.

My other task, since like forever, has been to procure a front bike rack for my Peugeot. You know, at a sporting goods store. Last week I forced myself out of bed at EARLY O'CLOCK and took the hour-long bus to Dieppe, then waited 25 minutes for the bus to Decathlon. I finally get there, and there's nobody working in the bike area that day. I look at the racks, and nope, no front racks. And nobody available who can even begin to use the computer system to find out if they may be able to order me one.

Another example of how useless this town is: a while back I mis-typed my PIN three times in a row, which resulted in my bank card being de-activated. Naturally, this happened on a Saturday. Naturally, my bank is closed on Monday. Tuesday rolls around and I go to the bank, asking them how to go about fixing it. They say I have to go to Dieppe. Hitch: at this point, I have no money, and have not been grocery shopping in 5 days. So I ask Marta if I can borrow 2€ to get to Dieppe, which she loans me without hesitation. I was planning on going right then, and getting to the bank at like 4:45pm. But Laura, one of my roommates, offers to give me ride to Dieppe on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning Laura drops me off at the bank. Having (blind) faith in the banks of France, I leave the 2€ from Marta at home, figuring I'll for sure get my card working again by the end of the day. But nope. The woman who's trained on how to use the machine to make the cards work again, she wasn't in that day, so they asked if I could come back on Thursday. They promise she'll be in, and I'll be able to get my card working. Cool. I can't access my Euros, they're just numbers on a screen. I explained to the woman who was working that I couldn't GET home in order to come back the next day, because it'd been 5 days since I'd been able to access my account. Eventually, once I've caused a scene and am practically in tears, the woman gives me 2€ of her own money to take the bus home.

I go back to Dieppe the next day, this time actually using the 2€ from Marta. I get to the bank, and the woman who knows how to use the card-fixing machine is in a meeting, could you please come back this afternoon, mademoiselle? NO I CANNOT! The main teller recognizes me and, probably in order to avoid me making another scene, goes and gets the lady out of her meeting.

And you know what she did, what her magical training taught her about how to re-validate a bank card? She put the bank's copy of the card into the reader. Typed in a 4-digit code. I put in my card, typed my PIN. We repeated this three times, and my card was good to go. She wasn't even discreet about entering in the company PIN. I had it memorized for a few days afterward. She's clearly a highly-competent woman, with her training on using this super simple machine and all. The only woman for the job!

So, while it may not be oh-so-honorable of me to just like, camp out in my room with my ever-growing list of reasons that the world is just a huge, terrifying machine that is going to eat me alive... there's not much out there to help me accomplish my goals. At least not here in my little corner of France.

/complaining.