Stamps & Lessons

All I want is a French class.

Sure, I’m learning the language by exposing myself to it everyday, but I’m still far from fluent. Plus, I can’t read or write for shit. I need professional help.

I thought my school was going to do that for me, but it turns out my school is a big fat liar on this and many other things. So I sought outside sources: Alliance Français is too expensive; free “language exchanges” are too informal; I need something in between. The Mairie de Paris offers adult learning courses for 50€ a year. It’s perfect.

To enroll, you have to mail in an application that took me at least an hour to fill out. (It’s all in French. Explain to me why they make the application to learn French in French. Please.) I searched the internet for the address, gathered up the money, and went looking for a stamp.

My first stop was a Tabac, where I shyly asked the owner for a stamp.

“A WHAT?!” he asked.

“Um, a stamp?” Maybe my vocabulary word for stamp was wrong, so I tried to explain it another way. “The thing you put on an envelope to mail a letter.”

“We don’t have,” he replied. C’est tout.

The post office must have stamps, right? It’s a bit far from my house, but I was desperate. I trudged through the chilly, wet air to the nearest one…only to find it inexplicably closed.

Feeling slightly defeated, I crawled into my favorite café and went to work. I was e-mailing a French friend about dinner plans, and I figured I’d also ask about stamps. Can you buy them at a Tabac? If so, what’s the word for them?

I will copy and paste the response here:

You can buy stamps at a Tabac, but they all haven't it and those which are supposed to have it can't provide all the time. I know France is complicated! But I like it, sometimes.

That was the final straw. I gathered my application and made the long haul to the application processing center: I was going to deliver this bad boy in person, today.

I burst through the bureaucratic doors and explained my purpose. The lady at the front desk directed me to a small office on her left, where I found a woman sitting, doing nothing. I presented my application.

“I’m sorry, but all the classes are full. Try again in January.”

At least I have four month to figure out how to buy stamps.