Our lovely french health social security

Thierry had a bike accident yesterday and he had to go in an emergency room of a big hospital. At your arrival, nurses are speaking to you behind glasses, one of the first question is about your insurance plan. Thierry arrived at 10h and leaved at 19h, we wait so much... The french doctor I had on the phone to make sure we are insured for that type of injury told me it was the average waiting time in an emergency room in a american hospital. You can see it's a completely  private structure, they have to do profits, it's unbearable.
Even with the Obama care plan, they are far from us in term of medical coverage. I will do other post about it.
Anyway, we decide with Thierry to take the full insurance plan of the university even if it will be a big hole in our budget. Even with it you have to "copay" all, from hospital to a physician appointment. Without it you can't obtain any medical appointments, prices are incredibly high. In 2009, we saw two times a physician in a medical center in a little town of Montana, even without the american insurance it was possible and the price was higher than in France but less higher than in the east coast where we are now...
I miss the emergency room of the Hopital Sud, everyone has the same right to be here.

The doctors made a great job on Thierry, he has stitches all over his face, one very impressive near the eye.

The Grateful Dead's band, memories...

In the super Buick old fashion car, we keep listening to the neighbour's CD which was inside at the begining : music of the Grateful Dead.
With this music, a lot of memories come out. Twenty years ago, during my trip around the world with my bestfriend, we stopped at San Francisco. We didn't visit this wonderful town because we met an American guy who proposed us to drive us in his van to see a Grateful Dead's concert. We arrived in the afternoon in a big wide space, a lot of "deadheads" (followers of the Grateful Dead during the summer) were all around, they looked like "hyppie". We heard the concert from the outside, it was incredible, an overwhelming event !

A car's red tap or "parcours du combattant"

In this conutry where cars are kings, we manage to buy a car.
First step required, is to obtain the Delaware driver's license. It's not an easy step, believe me... You go to the Department Motor Vehicle whith all the documents required. We were there yesterday in front of stubborned and unfriendly employees. Why on my visa my last name is "Bouchon" and on my lease contract for the house it's "Penard"? No matter that on the other passport page you see easily the birth and the spouse name... They photocopied everything and will look at it carefully, they will call us back ; it can take 2 day as 4 weeks... Ok, thank you...
But without car, it's difficult to handle your everyday life : going to the grocery store, to buy newspapers and so on.
Hopefully we have nice neighbours and friends who take care of us. One of our neighbours lend us an old fashionned automatic Buick, to drive it especially for me it's another story...

Continental climate, hard in summer !

Since we arrived, we had a hard time with the cliamte, it's so unusual for french who live in the west part of France and it's not that nice. The summer is very hot (almost 35 degrees) and it's not cooler at night. I was against climatization but hopefully we have it in our house and now I changed my mind... It's very humid also, you have frequent big flows, thunderstorms...
Don't try to stay outside too long during evenings ; mosquitoes bite hard, bees also. I prefer the french mosquitoes, believe me !

Usual animals are very different in this part of the Atlantic coast. Squirrels are everywhere, little birds have red bec.

Which communities do you belong?

Thanks to the comment of Veronica, I watched a movie around the same period of time than the one before : Liberty Heights. It's about teenagers who live in downtown and in the suburbs of Baltimore during the year 1954. It's very hard to meet people who are not in your communitie. It can be a comminity about your religion, your colored skin, your school... In this movie, it's about jewish and catholics ; white and blacks. Even today, you belong to communities.

A movie about black maids working for wealthie families in Jackson, Mississipi back in the Sixties. It's awesome. At that period of time, if you were black, your life in south states didn't compt that much.