Les Silhouettes de Sophie : Poster Child for Bad Luck

Come one, come all. Come hear the multiple stories about how I, previously only a normal amount of unlucky, seem to have drawn all the bad luck in France to me. Today, an incident in which I got stuck inside a public outhouse in a stall that had only a squatting toilet, on an almost-island made me feel this post was necessary.

It all started the first day of my job. I had done a day of observation and I was coming in to work at my school for the first time. I took the bus, walked most of the way to my school, listening to music and looking at a message my Dad had sent me. Bad choice #1. I went to cross the crosswalk which was not at a light but was in the middle of a narrow street. I looked to my right (for no real plausible reason) and as I was scanning over I saw a lady already in the crosswalk, walking towards me. I thought that since she was in the crosswalk, it must be safe for me to cross. I was wrong. I stepped out when a small blue car flew through the crosswalk, apparently not seeing me. Said car's rear view mirror hit my elbow while the lady crossing yelled "Good job!" and raised her fist in anger at this driver's lack of awareness. I was pretty shocked, my elbow was bleeding and bruised and this lady and another older man came up to me and started speaking in French. Normal me would have had no problem responding but I was flabbergasted by the series of events so I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea half the things they were saying. The car stopped a ways away for a good minute and then sped off.

"What do I do?" I kept asking like a record on repeat. The older man had seen the license plate. He wrote it down for the lady while I kept asking that looking around confused. "Should I call the police?" No answer. They were chattering on but barely addressing me. I luckily had the mind to take a photo of the piece of paper with the license plate number. They told me to call the police, finally. While I was on the phone, they both walked away, the lady carrying the license plate number.

Dazed and confused, I made my way over to my middle school. Once I got in, I told the secretary that I had just got hit by a car and she worriedly sent me over to the nurse's office. Once there, the nurse asked me what happened, gave me some painkillers and cleaned my scrap. My whole body was starting to feel the shock when my teachers came in, flustered and worried about me. I explained again what happened and they insisted that I go to the police station straightaway. Someone from the school drove me to the police station and dropped me off. I waited to talk with a police officer and he took my report and set out to find the lady who had hit me.

In the end, I had to get a doctor to check my arm (which was not broken but was really badly bruised). Because I hadn't received my health insurance number yet and I didn't have a doctor, I tried going to a clinic with my neighbor which took way too long, and finally I called a doctor to come to my house. All in all, I had to miss two or so days of work. And, the woman who was responsible was found. However, she claimed she hadn't seen me when she stopped so she left. Which basically means she gets off scot-free. And I was the one who had to call her or have my insurance deal with her insurance.

After this, I proceeded to get in two more minor car accidents. A teacher from one of my schools was driving me, when people started walking out into the crosswalk. She broke and the car behind us didn't break fast enough and ended up rear-ending us. And finally, I was taking the bus home from work when it ran into a parked car and tore off the side and front bumper. I'm sure I'm making you want to drive in France!

Because I hadn't been in enough traumatizing experiences, I was flossing my teeth when, hop!, as the French say, my filling on my baby tooth molar (yes I still have baby teeth that will never fall out) broke and popped out. Off to the French dentist I went! Which was actually a really painless and easy experience so yay! The paperwork to be reimbursed by the French government is another story....

And finally, la crème de la crème of stories, another funny histoire. Two weekends ago it was Australia Day. One of the other assistants, Ara, is from Australia and he thought it would be a fun day if we had a picnic at the beautiful presqu'île nearby. We had a lovely afternoon. The sun was out and it was warm. Emma even did a polar plunge in the water. I put my feet in. All was well. We all got up around 4 pm to catch the last bus back to Toulon. On our way off the island, we stopped to go to the bathroom. The bathrooms were outside and they were standing toilets. The kind girls hate because you have to squat over them. That being said, I had to go so I went in and locked the door. When I tried to get out, I found that the lock had broken somehow between the moment that I locked it and the moment I went to open it. I could turn the lock and it clicked but that wasn't opening the door.

Luckily, Emma was there and I asked her to try from the outside. It wouldn't budge. She went outside and grabbed the 15 people who were there and they all started talking about how to spring me out of the disgusting prison I was in. Meanwhile, I was there asking everyone what was going on and insisting that we speak English just because I was in a bit of a panic. No one knew if there was a groundskeeper (seeing as it was a Sunday and it is the south of France) so while some people tried to find on, my friend Becca tried to unscrew the lock with a knife from the other side. When that failed, a handful of boys tried kicking down the door from the outside. When that failed, I tried from inside. About twenty or twenty-five minutes later, the groundskeeper rode up on a little lawn-mower thing, took out a screwdriver, and finished unscrewing the door handle, let me out, said nothing about the door handle which my friend Marc had broken while kicking the door, and walked away.

Exhausted from the kicking, anxiety at being locked in a bathroom, and excitement, I stumbled out and we stumbled home (having missed our only bus) and I laughed hysterically. It was just too funny. I felt like Jess from New Girl. It just seemed like something silly enough to happen to her.

After that, Marc drove Emma and me home, but a bunch of my other friends got stranded at the bus stop and had to wait an hour for the next stop (Thanks to South of France Sundays!). I am eternally grateful to them all. If it weren't for them, I would probably still be locked in that bathroom.

So now you have (perhaps) read the entire history of my bad luck in France. But, I will have you know that I have had good luck. This last vacation (which I will post about soon) went off without any hitches and travels were all delightful instead of slow and painstaking. I also left my phone in the bus and no one stole it. In fact, the bus company called everyone short of Barack Obama trying to figure out how to return my phone to me. So thank you bus company ladies! You're both stars!

I'll finish this post with some pictures of the beautiful day we had at the Presqu'Île though, just to end on a cheery note :).