Has it ever taken anyone longer than 10 minutes to open a bank account in America?  Yeah, I didn't think so.  I opened an account at Chase this summer and they were like, "What's your name? Oh OK, no, you don't have to prove it or anything but do you want a credit card to go with that too?"

I have now spent over a week trying to open my French bank account.  When I first went into the bank, the lady told me I needed, among other things, proof of residence in France, work contract, my parents' identification, and proof of their residence in the US.  When I had finally gathered all of these papers (as if my mother doesn't have anything better to do than sit around scanning unnecessary documents to send me in France), I went back for my meeting today.  In the process of opening my account, she asked me for all kinds of stupid information like how much I'm earning here and how much the school is charging me for rent.  I was like "Well, isn't someone nosy?"  So she finally opened my account, but said "oh, you didn't bring me your avis d'imposition, you'll have to send me that ASAP.  Well that's basically a tax/earnings statement, and there is absolutely no reason that I would have one, since I've never worked in France before.  But she was like "it's ok if you don't have it you can bring me your parents' tax returns".  Well. THAT was the last straw.  I said I'd see what I can do and left.  I really really wanted to try do do things on my own, but I finally decided to ask the english teachers for help, because the 3 other assistants I know were given bank accounts with no problem, and didn't have to bring any of the ridiculous shit that I was asked for.  The teachers were equally outraged, and offered to go to the bank with me this afternoon, which is super nice of them, but I'm still SO frustrated that I have to deal with this.  It's absolutely ridiculous.  And to top it all off, I had my first group of students on my own this morning, and they basically stared at me for the entire hour of class, despite my pestering them with question after question.  ARRGGHHHH.

I will now attempt list some good/funny things to try to counteract my frustrating morning.

•  Molly is coming to spend the weekend with me, and we're going to beautiful Pau on Saturday.

• When high school students are not in class, they are either outside smoking, or lurking in corners making out with each other.
• 2€ wine.
• It is still really warm and sunny here, in the middle of October.

Yeah, can't really think of that many good things right now, but at least it feels good to rant about stuff, even if only in cyberspace.  Sorry if this is depressing, I'm hoping it will eventually be funny...