It has been…maybe a month or more since I opened my French bank account. It took about a week to set it all up, but the tricky part has been getting my debit card. I STILL do not have it. I have been stopping by the bank once or twice a week now to check in on it and my only answer is “it’s not ready.” Today, this was getting to be ridiculous. I just got a phone call from my favorite mysogynistic bank representative who told me why…

He had sent this official letter to verify that I live where I do. The postman would come, and I would sign a document, and then the postman would send it back to the bank. This went smoothly (again, over two weeks ago). On the phone he says, “You didn’t sign it.”

“Si si! I signed it! I told you…the postman came, I signed the thing.”

“Was it really you who signed?”

“I don’t understand…I just said I signed the paper…”

“It wasn’t accepted because the signature doesn’t match what’s on your passport.”

What? What does my signature on my passport look like? OH. Oh my God. The loopy cursive that I inscribed when I was 15 years old?! No joke, there is a heart as a dot above the i. Man, they let you have passports for a long time before they expire.

>more