Even after all the buildup of telling everyone, quitting my job, leasing our
house, packing up, moving out, and saying so may goodbyes, the actual
departure felt like it came out of nowhere. And I guess, in a way, it
did.
The second it was announced that France would be opening it’s borders (the
announcement was made on June 9th), we scrambled to get our visa appointment.
It was a bit of a mess, but we were able to snag an appointment for July
7th.
The appointment itself was a bit chaotic. The visa center was clearly
understaffed and overwhelmed. Which, made for overwhelmed people on both sides
of the desk! They asked for a few unexpected item, which was expected as
French bureaucracy is legendary. Luckily, we were able to supply
everything they needed and after about an hour and a half we were on our way.
It was time to just sit and wait and hope and wonder and worry. *Side
note, I would be happy to do an in-depth post on the entire visa application
process if anyone would like. If anyone reads this, that is.
The VFS officer told us it averages about 3 weeks, but it could be more or it
could be less. So that was real helpful. That waiting period was really
hard. We knew we would be leaving “soon,” but what exactly did that mean?
Wait, I should rephrase that. We knew we had applied to be leaving soon, but
we didn’t REALLY know if we would even be approved at all. What if we had done all
of this just to be denied?!?
Finally, correspondence came. And it was NOT what we were hoping for. Because
Nora is of school age (especially in France, where school starts at age 3),
they were requesting proof of enrollment and approval to be homeschooled in
France. And the best part was they wanted all of this within 7 days or our application would be
denied. How does one get these approvals? Oh, you know, simply by
sending a formal letter snail mail style to the mayor, or Marie as the case
is, to the area in which you will be living requesting a certificate of
enrollment and approval to homeschool be mailed back to you. Seems easy, right? Not. Oh, and did I
mention that this was all happening in July when schools are closed? Needless
to say, our hopes were dashed and I started researching visa requirements for
Costa Rica. Here we were, moved out of our house, jobs gone, and now this
insane request looking like it would keep us from actually leaving.
Here comes the big miracle. The miracle known as my friend, Ruchir. I
should stop here and introduce Ruchir as my good friend for more than 18 years
who, by total coincidence, bought a house and moved to southwest France all
while we were planning our move. Ruchir was the first person we told about our
plan. Poor guy was sworn to secrecy for years! Anyway, back to the
miracle part. As soon as I receive the VFS email, I forwarded it to Ruchir with
a bunch of sentences that may or may not (definitely did) have included
multiple cuss words that amounted to “Please help!” And help he did.
Within the hour I had a response that Ruchir was actually good friends
with the Marie and would meet with him immediately. Y’all, this is the part
where I tell you, I KNOW how lucky we are! This was the biggest,
miraculous save in history. I will always be grateful to Ruchir for pulling
this off for our family.
Oddly enough, while this was all happening, can you guess what showed up at
our door? Paul’s Visa! Yep. It turns out, the French government wasn’t
holding up Paul’s Visa waiting on Nora’s schooling documents. No, he was free
to go. It would only be Nora and me who would be staying on the States if we
couldn’t get them the requested documents. While this was mildly infuriating
on the feminist front, it did give me the satisfaction of knowing that as long
as we could get them the schooling proof, everything else was in order and we
should be good to go. Thankfully, five days after Paul’s visa showed up, the
other two arrived. We were free to fly!
And fly is exactly what we did. Our visas arrived on a Friday and we
immediately booked our flights to France for the following Monday. We
knew it was time to go and we wanted to get gone as quickly as possible.
Mostly because we had been building and building up to this trip for so long and
now that we had everything we needed, we wanted to get on with it. But also,
the Covid situation in Texas, the U.S. in general really, was not looking
good. Cases were starting to skyrocket and we knew the French government
could close its borders again at anytime. We were not going to let anything
stop us at this point.
I wanted to make the day a little special for our family and honestly, I
wanted it to feel fun since I knew that it has the potential to be an all-out
cry fest and I didn’t want that, especially for Nora. We catered the best fajitas in town from Lupe Tortilla and hired a
party bus to drive us all to the airport. There may have been some shots taken
and there were definitely a lot of tears as we said goodbye. But there
were also lots and lots of laughs. If you have to say goodbye to your
whole family for a whole year, I think we did it just about as best as it can be
done.
And just like that, we were off.
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