How To Buy A Car in France

1. Do the research. Narrow your choices.
2. Contact the person with the car and set up a rendez-vous.
3. Let your wife test-drive, carefully because the owner is in the car with you, and try to act like it's all no sweat even though you've never driven in this country, you haven't driven period in 4 months, and you haven't driven stick in several years.
4. Call two days later and tell the person you want the car. Have them agree to hold it for you.
5. Wait several days for money to be deposited into your US bank account.
6. Wait another week for the money to transfer to your French bank account.
7. Go to the bank to ask for a bank check. Have them tell you to go to another branch.
8. Wait three days for the bank to be open again, go to the new branch and ask for a bank check. Have them tell you to go back to your original branch.
9. Have your director call the bank since you don't know how to yell in French yet.
10. Pray before going to the bank for the third time...I'll learn this lesson eventually, but it always seems to help when the system here keeps slamming doors in your face. When you arrive, have the manager greet you at the door since he got a call from headquarters about you. He'll order the bank check right away and explain everything you need to know about car insurance.
11. Spend the day trying to make sense of car insurance in a second language, comparing, searching for the best option.
12. Go back to the second bank on the next day to pick up the bank check.
13. Fix the rendezvous with the owner for when she is free, four days later. Give her the phone number to your bank so she can make sure you're not trying to give her a bad check.
14. Invite the couple selling the car into your home to sign the papers.
15. Hope your car doesn't get vandalized or stolen during the night and call the insurance company the next day.
16. Three weeks later, you can drive the car, carefully, because you still technically don't know how to drive in this country, but it's still not technically completely yours until you go and get your very own title in your name, which is a whole beautiful process of its own, involving even more forms and even more photocopies...

Now that you've gotten a taste of this ordeal, I'll spare you the details on that part of the process and call it quits here (unless it turns out to be awful or embarrassing).

The good news is: we can drive to the grocery store now, and when Erica goes into labor, she won't have to walk to the hospital.