French Visa.

Wednesday I went into Boston for the day for a Jose Gonzalez concert at the MFA. While I was in town I planned on getting my French Visa taken care of so I could just get that over and done with.

I took the 8 o'clock train into South Station and then went straight over to the Arlington street station to try to find a place to get two more photos and find the consulate.

The consulate was pretty hard to find, possibly just because of my occasional poor sense of direction and also because they don't put the numbers on Hotels and there are a number of them on St. James St near the consulate. Expecting the consulate to have it's own building, I was looking outside all the buildings for a French Flag. Course I didn't find one.

The consulate is actually inside of a large office building, 31 St. James. I finally found it after being asked a billion questions by people passing by. "Where's the Ipod store?" "Do you know a Kinko's here?" Of course not. And the Ipod store is like six blocks that way. Do I look like I know where I am? No, because I'm looking down at a little notebook that I sketched out streets in and addresses. So should you ask me for directions? Probably not. Two young black men with heavy accents were looking for a Kinko's and I realized I could make a copy of my single passport photo and then have three.

So I went off on my own and found a Kinko's, to where I was given horrible service and wasted $2 on copies I found wouldn't work. Ironically the two young guys where there with little envelopes that passports come in when they mail them. Photos must be PHOTOS not copies. (duh)

So I went into another copy place in the same building as the Consulate to see if they had a machine that could copy photos or make more. Another girl who I had seen on the street who looked lost was behind me in line when the manager came out and said that the copier was broken and that we could go to another one one street over.

We walked together and I asked her where she went to school, obviously a college freshman or sophomore. She was at her orientation and is going a semester abroad to Spain and they didn't tell her she needed to go to the consulate today or that she needed to bring copies of everything. She was also without any money. We went down a set of stairs and into a long busy copy center and I spoke to one of the men and he suggested I just go get them redone because they might not accept a copy. One man who was there picking up copies told me to try a CVS around the corner where I could make photo copies of photos.

I said goodbye to the other girl and went over to the CVS and found that taking six more would be actually cheaper than making copies. The guy at the desk was super friendly and then after cutting them out, I skipped back to the consulate.

Going up to the seventh floor, I walked down to suite number 750, past two men speaking in French in the hallway. Ah, I am in the right place!

A little guard opened the door for me and directed me to the Visa section. It was a small little room with a closed off room attached through a glass window. I sat in one of the chairs around the outside of the room, next to a middle aged woman who struck up a conversation with me. We waited and listened to an old French woman trying to fight in English with a woman in the hallway, where the younger woman then yelled at her in French and then the old woman yelled back in English and French and then the young woman again in English. I laughed and the woman beside me said, "That's what happens after you've been here a while, you can fight in both!" she said she was from a DOM, probably la Martinique by her accent.

As I thought, the two young Kinko's men walk in and sit down after hovering by the window for a minute. "Find your Kinko's?" "Yes? Ah! It's you!" They went up to the window, turned in forms they had forgotten and were on their way "Bonne chance!"

There was one girl in front of me after la Martinique who was studying abroad in France for a semester from Uni of New Haven. Her mom was with her and they were talking about her paperwork and she was mentioning how they didn't have the financial guarantee. Out of self-interest, I asked her if she needed help, showed her my notarized form, gave her a blank copy out of the forms box and told her to go notarize it at the Post Office. Still, they didn't get out of line and went up to the window after la Martinique was finished. At the same time, a father and daughter walked in, looking like Nantucket people.

Nantucket people, for those of who don't know, are typically self-righteous rich people, dressed in casual but very expensive Polo's, khaki shorts, and boat shoes. Men always have impeccably white teeth and a short buzzed hair cut that still is long enough to style and women usually wear pearls and headbands. I kid you not. There swarm the beaches like flies in the summer.

Anyway, young miss unprepared went to the window, couldn't understand what forms he was looking for and would hold it up to the window guessing if it was the right one or not. Of course the financial guarantee is last. "Do you have you have a bank statement?" "No." "Financial Guarantee?" "No." And with that the young, obviously intern, Frenchman ran his fingers through his hair in that classic, "Agh" look. Finally, mom steps in. "If I get this notarized, will this work?" she asks, holding up the form I gave her. "Yes, that is it." "Okay, you wait here," she says, pointing to her daughter and scooping up her purse. "I'll go run to the Post Office and do this."

She is still at the window. I hop up to my feet and walk closer, nodded on by Mr. Nantucket. "Should I wait over there?" Yes, you should. She looks prepared for the long haul at the window but I walk closer and the young man seems relived to see me coming.

"Bonjour, j'espere tout va bien aujourd'hui." Hello, I hope everything is going well. I try my best to be polite and speak in French to make things easier on our young intern, who looks like he's been talking to idiots all day.

Form by form we go through the list and he inspects them, asks for a copy and gives the original back. Finally, the financial guarantee. "Avez-vous un situation de compte?" Do you have a bank statement? "Uhh, le site dit que c'est le seul chose..." The website said this is the only thing...

He jumps up, goes into a back room, and speaks in French to an obviously older man. Yes, that form is fine.

Phew. An application fee later and I'm due back Monday to get my passport and visa! Yay! One part of French bureaucracy down, a million to go. I decide to go over to the French Library, since it's in the same area. It's in a beautiful old house one street away from Beacon, where the Brown Stones are. ( Photo is from someone else. I couldn't find out who, but it's not mine. Please don't sue me!)

After going to the Library and speaking with a librarian, who took me into the Fiction room to suggest some that I might read before going next year, I went over to Cambridge to Schoenhof's Foreign Booksellers with some suggestions.

I looked through what they had, which was all really expensive. Around $35 and up! So I asked for a suggestion from the man at the counter, who didn't seem to know very much. He just kept saying "There's so much" over and over. Instead of asking questions of what I like to read, he just sighed and gave really bad answers. But he did turn out one book, Les Marins Perdus by Jean-Claude Izzo. So I bought it for 14.96, with tax, and was on my way.

I'm not really sure what it's about but it had something to do with Marseilles and sailors and sounded interesting by the staff review. I know it's also a movie.

After getting back on the Green line I went to the MFA to pick up the tickets and wander around and look at my favorite paintings. Admission was free at 4 so I sat outside on the steps, along with a lot of others. After about fifteen minutes I went in and was told I needed to check my bag.

There was a grumpy old woman at the coat check but I smiled and got my little tag and went across the museum to the box office. Of course, when I got there I realized I'd forgotten my credit card to get my tickets so I went back to get it out of my bag.

"You know it's one dollar for every time you take your bag out." The grumpy old woman said. "Really? Is that a new thing?" I reached into my wallet and pulled out a one reluctantly. "Got you!" she said, pointing at me and smiling. Sure did.

"Are you going to see El Greco?" There was a special exhibit on El Greco and other Spanish painters from the same era. "No, I'm here for Jose Gonzalez." "You're not going to see it?" "I don't know, maybe."

She reached into her chest pocket and pulled out a ticket. "You go now. And don't tell anyone," she winked. I zoomed up the stairs and into the special exhibit. The paintings were interesting, mostly religious but definitely haunting. (El Greco's Toldeo)

In the exhibit I got a phone call from my mom, who was on her way to join me for the concert and dinner. I finished looking at the paintings, thinking soon I'd be seeing paintings in Paris and Montpellier.

I waited outside the MFA for my mom and a man on a bike stopped asking for change for his ones. I didn't really catch on and ended up giving the guy a ten for "the room at the Y." Oh well, hopefully he actually spent it on that. He could probably better use ten dollars than me and besides, the special exhibit was $20 and I got it for free.

My mom arrived and we went back to the Pru and got dinner at a small Thai resto around the corner from St. James Church. Ironic to end the day where I began.

We went back to the MFA and got seats in the third row. The concert was phenomenal. Twi the Humble Feather, the openers, were awesome. Three men with guitars play sci-fi themed music about a character named Twi. Each of the men's personalities matched their guitars, the highest pitched continually nodding his head side to side with the beat, the middle man crooning melodies and tapping his feet and the bass very stoic in movement but certainly not lacking in emotional performance. At times they sounded like a group of monks in chant, other times the guitar paired with mouthed effects sounded like a spaceship whizzing by. (Twi the Humble Feather)

Gonzalez went on finally and played three encore songs. The effects were mesmerizing.

At the end of the concert my mom offered to buy a t-shirt in exchange for her ticket and I liked the t-shirt for Twi much better than Gonzalez. I went to look at them and the bandmates were jogging in place and I joined in and then my mom came over and the hyper-high tone guitar said "Aren't you going to jog too?" and she started up as well. I introduced myself and bought a shirt and left with a smile.

We walked back the the Pru and got the car out of the garage, forgetting to validate our parking we paid 34$, more than a single ticket to the concert. My mom was nevertheless pissed. I wish i had remembered we needed to do that.

All in all, regardless of being in a major city people are helpful and friendly, although so many of my peers in Arkansas say that Boston is such an unfriendly place without a communal ideal. I think they're completely wrong. You can't just approach someone on the street and expect them to welcome you into their home, as home is considered private and private space is highly cherished.

Why we desire private space is because in the city there is very little of it. On the subway bodies touch in often uncomfortable circumstances. At work we all sit in tiny cubicles with very little space and privacy, where everything said can be heard by anyone who cares to listen.

Hopefully the French feel the same way about public versus private and why that barrier exists. I've been taught a lot in school that French people enjoy their privacy and that things that may be considered common, like a store, are private in France. Bonjour always must accompany an entrance into a store.

But as I'll be a somewhat lost foreigner in France, I'm sure I might overstep the privacy bounds once or twice, although I'm going to be very gingerly about things I'm sure.