Moving to Paris FAQs

Otherwise known as: When the heck are you leaving??

1. It's a good thing Paris is so gosh darn magical and amazing.
2. It's a good thing I'm not a control freak.

Allow me to explain in a standard Q&A format.

Q. When are you leaving?
A. No idea. Sometime within the next week, I hope.

Q. What's the hold up??
A. The French government.  Oh how wonderful it is.  The French Consulate in Houston has my passport, and they've been waiting for the paperwork from Paris to process my work visa, put it in my passport, and overnight my passport back to me. They've lost the visa paperwork twice so far.  But supposedly they have it today, so now it's just the waiting game for them to process it and mail it to me.

Q. I thought you were leaving tomorrow/last week/two weeks ago/a month ago?
A. Ah, yes. Me, too. Yet here I am. I will have booked 5 flights by the time I actually get to leave for Paris!

Flight #1: Jan. 31st
Flight #2: Feb 21st
Flight #3: March 1st
Flight #4: March 8th
Flight #5: TBD. I will move my flight to the day after my passport arrives in the mail. Sometime this week, I hope.


Q. Are you all packed?
A. No, not really. I don't want to put all my clothes in until right before I leave so everything isn't all wrinkled from sitting in there for a week.  I envision it going something like this: Receive passport, book flight for next day, spend all day/night packing, get on plane.

Q. Do you know where you're going to live?
A. In a hotel!! Yayyy. I will book a hotel room for a week and start apartment hunting when I get there.  I had hoped to have an apartment ready to move into, but that has not been as easy to find online as one would have hoped.

Q. Is it true you have had 14 goodbye lunches?
A. Pretty much.  I keep thinking I'm leaving, and then I'm still here.  It's hard to get any sort of closure with people when you're not sure if it's the last time you're ever going to see them again in your life...or if you will see them on Thursday.

So basically...I'm moving my whole life to Paris, but I don't know when I'm leaving, when I can start packing, when to actually say goodbye to my friends and family and be sad, where I'm living, what dates to book a hotel, or when I can look for apartments in Paris because I might start work the day I arrive.  This is kind of hilarious.