A Year Abroad: The CAF.

The Caf is like French centrelink. Except multiply the problems and administration difficulties you have with centrelink by ten, maybe one hundred, and you have the caf. For me, I'm eligible to claim back some money through the caf on the rent I pay as I'm a university student paying rent in a French house.
Before leaving Australia, a lot of people warned me that French admin is terrible and the caf takes a lot of paperwork to get, hence a lot of frustration. I laughed it off thinking I have a whole year to sort it out. It's now been four months and I'm still going through paperwork. My main problem: in order to get the caf, I need to have a French social security number. To get a French social security number, I need to have completely registered with a French health insurance company, including bank forms and visiting doctors offices to have them fill out forms for me saying that they will be my treating doctor if ever I should need one (fingers crossed I don't. I'm pretty stubborn with going to the doctor here anyway, so I would have to be on my deathbed to actually go). As I was at the doctors having them fill out forms, they asked me what my social security number was in order to complete the form. I explained that I didn't have one yet, that was the point of the exercise. They filled out the rest of the form but advised me to go and see the actual insurance company which I did that afternoon, who also informed that I needed to provide a translated birth certificate before anything else could be done. BUT, it has to be translated by a member of some special council approved group. Finally finding an approved company, I handed over my birth certificate last week to be translated which needs to be picked up tomorrow (it's taken a week to be completed as last Thursday was a public holiday so the company closed it's doors for four days). So, once I've received my translated birth certificate, and taken it to the insurance company, then had my file processed to receive a social security number, I can add that to the corner of one page of my caf 10 page application. Oh, and I'm also waiting on my landlord to send me back a form that he has to complete proving that I do, in fact, pay him rent. Needless to say, French admin is a frustrating bundle of processes and redtape.
But, the main part of my story comes after I'd handed my birth certificate into the company. It was a nice day (I was wearing a singlet!), so I went walking. In my travels, I found a museum with a really nice garden, which I sat in and read. That's the main part - the garden. It was a lovely garden, but the weather hasn't been quite good enough to go back yet.

Reading bench in the park

Part of the garden from the chair

The museum

I've spent the last few days planning a Spain and Portugal with Nat. We're just going to backpack it for 3 weeks around mainly the south coast, but also heading to Madrid and back up to San Sebastian before heading home to Bordeaux. So far, we've booked all of our hostels. No transport yet though.
I'm also heading to Nice on Wednesday. One of the girls who I toured with in Turkey has been there for the last six months and is heading home at the end of the month, so I'm going to fit in a quick 5 day trip before she leaves. And it's amazing timing! I'm going to be there during the Cannes film festival, so we're going to the premiere of the Great Gatsby! Yay! I also much head across to Monte Carlo for a day too.