sunshine_queen | (no subject)

Mystery of the bank solved! Apparently I can only withdraw 300 euros per week. Luckily some dude at the bank could approve me taking out the rest of the money I needed for rent/the money I wanted to take to Strasbourg/buy groceries with.

Also, I just found out a few days ago that I actually needed to go to the Securite Sociale office to, you know, get social security stuff so I can go to the doctor here FO FREE or whatever happens when you have free healthcare from the government. I was planning on going eventually, but today my roommate Romy was like "I'm going, want to come" so I got my stuff together and it was crazy simple to the point where I'm terrified it's not actually going to work and I'm going to need to go back a thousand years away. But for right now I am hopeful!

I am also writing more 'Sam and Sonja are together but now the worlds have ended and oh noes Sonja has to tell Sam the truth' and I don't think I've ever written anything more difficult. HOW DOES SOMEONE REACT TO THIS NEWS? My whole brain is crying.

They had the Christmas lunch at school today, so I ate at the cantine with my roommates, and the food was mostly bizarre except for their exceptional potato things which are like a cross between tater tots and hush puppies, but the dessert, OH THE DESSERTS, they were so delicious! This little chocolatey cake thing that was melty in the middle and a bag of chocolates and a little Clementine!

Today I talked about religion in America with one of my classes. Part of it I spent talking about the Amish (thanks,

littledivinity!) and the rest of it was spent answering mostly offensive questions. Like, I get that apparently America is either THE COOLEST EVER or PLACE THAT MUST BE RELENTLESSLY LOOKED DOWN UPON but oh my god, do you know what America does not have a lock on? Religion. Also, shut up.

That being said, they did ask me about Scientology, and that was just fun to explain.

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That seems... oddly low, especially for a weekly limit.

Yeah, I have no idea what that's about.

I have a daily limit of $1000, but I've never heard of a weekly limit that won't even cover the rent.

IDK, man! I've never heard of this. It was weird because I knew I had the money, but I couldn't get it.

The idea is probably that if your bank card and PIN were stolen, the thief wouldn't be able to immediately drain your account. You might be able to talk to the bank about upping the limit a little so you can pay your rent without having to actually go in to a teller in the future though.

It's always unsettling when the machine just randomly won't give you the money. It happened to me once when I'd used my card at a machine that was found to be compromised so they froze it... except they called my house in London when I was at my parents' place for Christmas, so I had no idea until I went in to ask why my card suddenly wasn't working anywhere.

Yeah, I understand that part, and they are SUPER CRAZY SERIOUS about theft here, which is a double edged sword in my life. The good news is, this probably won't happen, because I'm paying for two months' rent right now, and I'll know for the future not to do two months at once again.

I am glad I found this out this week and not next week, when I'm taking money out of my account so I'll have some in the states when I go home!

Yeah, it's good that they're looking out for that, but definitely a bit annoying when you legitimately need that much cash at once. My brother had to get the bank to up his limit so he could actually buy all his textbooks at the same time.