So the past couple days have been a roller coaster.
The first major loop was learning that our information on the Schengen Zone and its rules were out of date. We were under the impression that you could only stay in each country of the zone for a total of 90 days, but now you can only stay in the entire zone for 90 days. When we leave France, it will be day 84, and all but our last farm is within the Schengen Zone. So after going to see the United States Consulate here in Nice, and consulting with some people back home, we found out that we’ll actually more than likely be just fine; just travel quietly, be really nice, and worse comes to worse, play dumb. Which means I’m going to be a rubber band ball of stress everytime we’re traveling.
That is, if I get to travel.
The second loop is that our continued research in finding train and plane tickets to all these places has proven to cost us more than we had originally budgeted for. Which means with the amount of money I currently have left, I can’t afford to get from one country to the next and get home. Getting home is pretty important… but so is this trip. Considering all the time I spent emailing all these farms and organizing them, all the saving I did before the trip, and all the work I did throughout my college years so I can earn the scholarships I have to make this possible, it’s extremely important to me that I actually get to go through with our plan. I don’t like the idea of Jon even considering forfeiting anything because I can’t, but I also don’t like that people seem to think that I’m merely a tag-a-long in this trip and that I didn’t have an active part in its planning from the very beginning.
Combine all this with a six hour time difference (which means my mom is working when I’m in need of someone to talk to), the fact that I emailed my dad two weeks ago just to say hi and I still haven’t heard from him (he’s been busy getting ready for a new job, which involves a lot of travel, but still), and the fact that my new Bank of America card is stuck somewhere in Nice’s postal service (that is a story unto itself, and I will be giving Bank of America an earful when I get back to the states) and you can imagine my state is probably pretty fragile. Very fragile, really.
Okay, sorry for the sap story, but my absence had to be accounted for some how. There you have it.
Parlez Lentement. 