Bank Accounts, Job Search, and cell phones issues

This past Friday I went to get my new bank card for my recently opened French bank account. Unfortunately, the location of my branch is not close to where I am staying at the moment, but it was the only bank that would make an immediate appointment with me last week when I was frantically searching to open a bank account to give to my employer in order to get payed. I guess that's what you get when you leave things to the last minute. Whatever. I prefer to think of my tendency towards procrastination as "living on the edge."

When I went to my "rendez-vous" last week to open the account (Aulivia's mum Claudine kindly drove me there) I was met by a jovial woman who offered us coffee and croissants before we got down to business. I had to look over a number of documents, none of which I really understood properly, so I just nodded at the appropriate moments, smiled, and signed away on the dotted line.

As a little bonus for opening up an account with the bank, I was told to select a free gift. I had a choice between a digital picture frames, mp3 players, or points towards something else from the vast catalogue. I ended up choosing the points; I've got my eye set on a sweet solar powered back-pack.

The account was ready right away, but I had to wait a week to come pick up my debit card. So after a quick look on google map (thank you god for Google map!), 20 minutes on the train, 10 minutes of wandering around lost and confused (only 10 minutes!) and 30 minutes on the bus, I was the proud owner of my very own French Visa/debit card. But, as the nice woman at the bank reminded me with worry in her voice, "You don't have any money in the account!" I assured her that that I was aware, that in fact I did have some money in another bank and that this account was just so I could receive my paycheck. And with that I smiled and wished her a bonne journee, feeling rather proud of myself.

The next thing on my To Do list was to start looking for an apartment and another job. After replying to a few offers on Craigslist, I felt slightly better about the whole thing. Just a matter of waiting for the response to come rolling in, no?

Feeling like I was on a roll, I decided I'd try to figure out how to finally change the voice-mail greeting on my phone, which was currently still Lauren's (Aulivia's sister) voice. The task proved to be a bit more confusing that I has anticipated. I couldn't really understand the options, and thus didn't know what numbers to press. After struggling for a few minutes, I was starting to get panicky. What if someone was trying to call me about a job/apartment and after hearing "Hi you've reached Lauren, leave a message" they got confused and decided they'd reached the wrong number. Gah! Everyone was out except for Claudine who was sleeping after working a night shift at the hospital. I wasn't about to wake up her up to help me with my phone, so I enlisted the help of the only other native French speaker in the house; Aulivia's 7 year old sister Lisa-Marie.

"Lisa, can you help me with my phone?"
"OUAI!"

I put the phone on speaker, and asked her if she could just tell me when she heard the appropriate option for recording a voice-mail greeting.

"Can you tell me when she says something about a recording, Lisa? Just tell me which number she says to press. Do you think you could do that? "
"OUI!"

It took about 3 minutes to realize that even though my little friend speaks French fluently, I had probably misjudged the potential technical savvy of a 7 year old child, or rather lack thereof. She starting hitting different buttons, held the phone to her ear, pressed some more buttons, giggled nervously, and then I lost her completely to the Lady Gaga music video that was playing on TV. Lisa likes Lady Gaga like an addict might enjoy their drug of choice. She kinda just drops everything, stands there glossy eyed, eerily still, with a crazed expression on her face, until the video is over. It's disturbing and makes me wonder whether or not there is something about Lady G that I'm missing out on.

I decided to calm down, remind myself that I most likely would not be receiving any calls from anyone for a few days, and wait patiently until Aulivia returned home from class to help me out. Besides, at least I was the new owner of my very own French bank account. Even if there isn't any money in it.