Creative Meanderings

Bonjour from France again! 🇫🇷

So… the Universe heard my pangs of frustration and loneliness by providing us with our plan of action for Phase II Part 1 and 2.

Part 1 Recap

I already covered most of Part 1 in the previous post. We ate as a coping mechanism, but thankfully it was only one real meal a day in early afternoon applying daily intermittent fasting so that our bodies could use as much time as possible to digest the tasty offerings of the Italian cuisine.

Basically, our visa situation both got simpler and more complicated at the same time. Our Internet woes were only really remedied by taking advantage of cafe culture, which generally works best for me anyway, but isn’t as good for running an online magazine as my big screen iMac. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Our plan to move to a bigger place has become reality, only in a different country….

Part 2 – The Visa

It seems that the procurement of the mystical Type-D visa is reasonably straightforward from the Italian embassy. Since our last “residency” is considered France, thanks to M’s ability to get it swiftly and my dependency (not so thankful), we think we don’t have to consider the US aspect for me.

Although we were led to believe that we could simply go to Nice, which isn’t far from where I wanted to be based anyway, to be near my friends, we learned that thanks to the Pandemic C, all consulates have been closed and the only place we can do this visa processing is through Paris.

The upside is that we get to visit Paris. It’s a city that I’m not all that enamored with after visiting it once on my own for a few days in a very cold and wet November a few years back. M loves the charm, which I deem cliche and over-hyped. So, he is determined to show me the reason why it is considered a city of love 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨 …. We shall see. 😜

Unfortunately, the earliest appointment we could get is for June 10th. This is about a month away. Luckily, the consulate is communicating quickly and clearly via email, so I feel a bit more at ease with that.

So, why are we in France now?

Well, M has to travel around the EU for work. Now that the borders are open again with just a negative PCR, he is eager to go away. As it has been about 15 months since we spent a night apart, I’m equally eager for him to go away. 😉

Since M wants to travel and I really cannot go across borders unless by car, where the likelihood of being checked is slimmer, (have done two crossings now and not been stopped 🤞🏽) I felt that it was safer for me to be in France should anything happen as at least I am in the system here for my residency application. Plus, I have friends here and can speak some of the language. I could not say the same for the tiny town that we were living in; and the dark stone-walled apartment that I would end up hiding away was not conducive to stability in my mental health, which is a bit on edge as it is with the stress all of this is applying to my carefully constructed sanity. 🤹🏽

Therefore, we have rented a lovely place near where we were before (and my friends) for the next six weeks. At the time that we rented, we didn’t know that it would be possible to get our visa on the same day as the appointment as we had heard it could take a couple of weeks. So, we wanted to be safe….

We will have to be out the day before my birthday, so am not sure what we will do as that is a long way away and our plans are ever-changing. However, I am already a million times happier having only been here for about four hours. I’ve got my friends on notice and plans in motion. 💃🏽🥂

I’ll share some photos next time. For now, I’m just reveling with lighter air! ✨

~T 😀