A Cariad Life

I am not going to lie, y’all– in the last 24 hours, I have asked Darrell at least 3 times, “Do we really want to do this? We still have time to back out.” Though we would lose our down payment–the papers don’t get signed until 4am, our time, tomorrow. These are last minute jitters, as well as being constantly reminded of the money, time, sense of security, and effort, we are sacrificing for this venture. Early on, I shared that whenever one of us says this, the other says, “we’re supposed to do this, and it will work out.” Darrell is the strong one right now, and everything has worked out so far…

First, a passport/visa update: On Thursday morning, I emailed the consulate office, specifically our contact Caroline, and asked what it would mean if she sent us our passports back without the visas, specifically what was the process to keep our application pending. She didn’t write back until Friday morning and confirmed how it would work. She also said, “this is why I told you about this option on November 22”–she realized how tight it would be to get our passports back by a Tuesday night flight. I shared that I had been hoping the visa process would be approved, but that we do need to fly out on Tuesday and could she please send our passport back and keep our application pending.

Then something amazing happened, she wrote back a few minutes later and said, “VFS was leaving the French Consulate right now so I hurried and gave them your passports back telling them that it was an urgent matter.  I hope that you will get them on time for your trip.” Caroline doesn’t know us, but she hurried to get our passports out! At this exact moment, we have confirmation they were delivered to our old address near the water (the address VSF had on file), where a friend met the driver to sign for them, and he is heading to FedEX immediately to overnight them to us here in NYC. If all goes as planned, we will have them tomorrow morning before we fly out at 7:30pm. We will have have to fly back when our visas are ready and we cannot work while we are “visiting” France, but we don’t have to reapply and start the process all over. Thank you to so many of you who have been praying about this–we felt your support! By the way, Caroline just wrote me and asked if I had received them yet–it appears she is cheering for us as well!

In addition, Darrell has been trying to sort the utilities, some things like electric and internet are good–the gas contract is giving us some issues and we are unsure if we will have heat or hot water when we arrive. Trying to navigate all of this while not in France and with everything in French has been a challenge. We try to remind ourselves–it won’t be this hard for ever.

Meanwhile, we have been enjoying time with family and friends. There are so many others we were not able to see before we left–we love all of you and look forward to connecting in France or back in the US.