The ANAEM and Falling in Love

The ANAEM is the Agence Nationale de l’Accueil des Etrangers et des Migrations. Translated roughly to English, it stands for the National Agency for the Welcome of Foreigners and Migrations. The ANAEM has a dual mission: to welcome and support aliens when they move to France, and to assist French nationals and workers when moving outside France.

This friendly and welcoming agency is where all of us non-European language assistants are required to pass a medical exam. The exam is one of the requirements for our carte de sejour, which allows us to remain in France for the duration of our work contract.

I don't need to devote much time to how the purported importance of this medical exam escapes me, given that I've been in France since late September, and I only just received my summons to the ANAEM two weeks ago. Let's just say that if me and the other American assistants had arrived in France with tubercular lungs or smallpox, our students would already have been irreversibly exposed to whatever horrible disease we might be carrying. And having our lungs x-rayed at the ANAEM in December would do little to save the poor little buggers.

Kim, Corinne, and I were all schedule for the exam on the day of our first major snow storm in Saint-Etienne. Our little city was receiving a healthy dusting of snow when we boarded the train, and everything looked pristine and white. You can imagine our chagrin when stepping off the train and onto the platform in Lyon only to discover cold, wet rain.

Unfazed, we popped by Lyon's Marché de Noël for a warm cup of vin chaud before heading to the ANAEM. The irony of drinking before a medical exam is not lost on me. However, I wasn't particularly concerned that I would have to pass a sobriety test in order to be allowed to remain in France.

The ANAEM was closed when we arrived at about 20 minutes before 1:30 PM. We stood at the entrance as employees returned from their lunches, huddling close and rubbing our hands together for warmth on the off chance that they might let us into the building early. Apparently, rain, wind, and cold are not good enough reasons to let "foreigners" into an empty building before reopening time.

Once inside, I was reminded once more of how much being inside French government buildings feels like being in hell. Or being in a scene out of the movie Brazil (not that there's a difference).

"Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures?" And such.

The bureaucracy alone makes my head explode, and the architecture seems intentionally designed to intensify the explosion.

The exam was simple and brilliantly executed. One doctor asks you questions about your health, another doctor x-rays your chest, and a final doctor reviews the x-ray and signs the form that will enable you to go downstairs and obtain a final signature before taking the form back to the Saint-Etienne Préfecture. Which will then enable you to wait a month before passing once more by the Préfecture to pick up your shiny, new, plastic-wrapped carte de sejour.

Only we were all rather nervous about the x-rays. Or sex-rays as they were dubbed. Being left shirtless in a room with an unfamiliar French woman spewing commands at you rapid and only semi-comprehensible French (almost as if on purpose) is not the most comfortable experience.

We all came out with our forms signed and varying tales.

On my turn, the x-ray doctor had me lift and hold my hair up off of the nape of my neck, leaving me in a topless pose that I tend to reserve for bedroom seductions.

Corinne, wearing a necklace, was told to put the necklace in her mouth (shocking, I know).

Finally, Kim, topless Kim, Kim who also had on a necklace, was told to take it off while the doctor wrapped the protective lead pouch around her waist.

"You guys, when she wrapped that thing around me, it felt like we were in love!