allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!

so goes the opening line of la marseillaise, the french national anthem, which i triumphantly sang upon chris and my receipt of our 3-year visas! and believe me people, this was indeed a glorious day.

i suppose the day rightfully began 2 days after our arrival in paris when we learned that we would have to return to the US to pick up our visas in person. comment? (say what?) chris had been given the impression the visas would be mailed to us. not only was this not true, but we needed to return tout de suite. so, a mere 15 days after arriving in paris, we returned to DC for 48 hours of consulat fun.

since we walked out of the consulat with our visas this cannot qualify as one of those catastrophes of beaurocracy. n éanmoins, we do have a funny tale to tell…

in gathering our paperwork, we found varying lists of which documents it would be necessary to provide the consulat. most mysterious were the widely discrepant requirements for photos: our attorney told us 5 photos, one part of the consulat website told us 2 color photos, and another part of the website said 2 black and white photos. i decided to ignore this last one, but we did bring 5 photos just in case.

the photo adventure continued at the consulat. the young lady who greeted us (if you call it a greeting) first said we each needed 1 photo. a minute later it was 5 photos, and we were please we had come prepared. 20 minutes pass and we are called back to the window where she proceeds to return 2 pictures. chris and i can barely stifle the ironic laugh – NOWHERE did anyone say 3 pictures – but stifle it we do because our french ambassadress definitely doesn’t sense the irony.

around the fourth or fifth time we were called back to the window the consulat lady cracked a smile – but what we did to merit this smile remains a mystery. Much like the real photo requirements for le visa de long séjour.