France, you Tease; or, My Latest Tango with Bureaucracy

So here's the deal. I'm off to France in 10 days. Pretty damn cool, I must admit.

I made the prescribed pilgrimage down to the consulate in Miami last sunday, in order to be near the first in line the next morning- and that worked out nicely, I was #4. Sweet.

Consequently, my parents took me there, and used it as an opportunity for a truncated Miami vacation. Despite having lived in FL since I was 6, I'd never seen Miami before. I need to get out more.

It turned out that the hotel we chose happened to be in the same building as the consulate itself, pretty damn convenient, nice hotel too. Monday morning, I was in the consulate, with my applications, pictures, passport, etc... everything seemed to be in order- then I noticed the signage- NO VISAS WILL BE GIVEN OUT WITHIN 24 hours.

So, I give the woman all of my materials, she checks them out, and says- you can pick up your passport on wend.... ahhhhhh. So, she sees my discomfort at this, and explained that I should give her an express mail envelope and the passport can get mailed to me... So thats what I did- headed to the Post Office, got what I needed, took it back the the consulate and that was that.

My passport arrived today, and that is the very last road block to safely and legally making it to France. Stoked.

I am glad I didn't wait even longer to go to Miami. So, moral of the story is that nothing happens in one day, when dealing with the French Bureaucracy, and this is just phase one. haha, get used to a year full of it. C'est la vie, non?

Wait, what am I doing?

Oh, thats right. Moving to France.

16 days. Starting to feel a bit o' pressure.

Its not so much the new country, or continent. Neither is it being away from family and friends. It isn't that I'll be away from the creature comforts of home. It isn't alot of things.

Mostly its because I don't speak French, which I understand to be crucial over there.

I know, I do speak French. However, its been a while.

Back when I was speaking it on a daily basis- over a year ago- there was always a linguistic safety net. No matter what, you could always break the suspension of disbelief created in a college French course, and parle l'english. Not anymore.

Ah, whatever. No reason to worry. The Whole point of this whole French thing was to do something out of the ordinary for once-- I think living in France qualifies.
And there's no better scenery for learning French then the French countryside (I assume). I do wish I knew the language a bit better though.

(please note, the almost completely superfluous french cartoon featuring Futurama)

Football, Futbol, Football Americain, Soccer & Baseball

My life has been reduced to a series of countdowns for the last couple of months. Most recent of these is (as of today, August 14th) 20 days. No, that isn't when I leave for France, but instead its a much more important day, the first FSU football game. We play Clemson to open the year, on Labor Day, and once again I am in nervous anticipation for the new season. Consequently, it is one of two FSU games that I will be in the US for. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt I will be able to view either in person.

I have to come to grips with the fact that I will be without football americain for a year, other than snipets and scores from whenever i can make it to an internet cafe. This just won't do. I know that to survive I am going to need my sports fix, so I am doing what i can to immerse myself in the ins and outs of European football. I have already adopted my new "hometown team" the Girondins de Bordeaux, who play in League 1, the highest level of French football. I watched their most recent game on saturday, which they won 2-0, and are now tied for the league lead. Of course the season is only two matches old...

Lets not get into Baseball, because while my Braves are just a few games back from the damn Mets, I'll be missing out on the whole playoffs, and the last couple weeks of the regular season. Oh well, these are the sacrifices I make to get to live in France. I'll take one for my teams...

do everything one last time.

So, i'm out of tallahassee in 5 days. I've made peace with the situation, and said most of my goodbyes. It's been a good run, I'm cool with leaving this town. I'm just now experiencing a sort of misguided desire to do everything somewhat meaningful in this town one last time. Its mostly pointless to try to redo things out of pure sentimentality, but whatev.

Add to that, I've been saying my "goodbyes" to people now, for what feels like a month solid. By the time I actually leave it's going to feel rather anticlimactic. Meh, maybe not. We'll see. Next on the agenda; learn to speak french.