back on the recepisse

After two or three glorious months of having a proper carte de sejour, I'm back on a recepisse (provisional thing). I went in on Thursday and lined up behind 77 other people, but realised I had forgotten an envelope, so went walking to try to find one, figuring my number wouldn't come up for at least 30 minutes. I couldn't find one for love or money, since newspapers in france are sold by bars, not by newsagents. I wound up in town, where I bought what I needed from the GPO and headed back out. My number had gone past, but I grabbed another and it only took 25 minutes or so of queueing. I guess they had two servers on to help with the increased demand from students arriving, but it was much better than my previous sorties.