Time to go!

It's fairly early in the morning here, but I can't sleep. I am a ball of nerves and excitement and adventure, making final preparations to leave Eu. Two of my friends arrived a couple of days ago, and we've spend the past two days having too much fun and playing cribbage and making little adjustments to our bikes. Bungee cords to attach our stuff and trash bags to stay dry, new tires and good air pressure (we got to teach Andrea how to change a bike tire/tube!).

I can't believe how good it feels to be so genuinely excited about the people in my direct company... And to be around people who have as crazy of a sense of adventure as I do. Yesterday we went for a ride and got totally drenched in the super-cold rain, but did they care? Nope, they just wanted to walk out onto the cobble stone beaches and listen to the ocean.

Our general plan has so many holes in it, which means a million additional possibilities for us to fall into fun and adventure. I've pretty much accepted the fact that I will spend the next month damp and probably not too warm, and mostly in my tent at night. Our first main goal is to get to Brussels, and then on into Holland. After that, who knows! Maybe back south a bit, but the weather's warming up so much, hopefully it won't matter by then.

Aaand, to answer your question Candy: I no longer have a mailing address or a physical address or any way to receive letters in a timely fashion. If you send something to me here at the school (3 Rue Jean Mermoz/76260 Eu./FRANCE), I will get it, but not until some point in June. I will try to get some post cards in the mail as I bike, I promise!

At any rate, if you're reading this, chances are I love you very much and miss you quite a bit, too.

The Prefecture...

Monday April 16th I woke up at the crack of dawn, in order to drag myself to the Prefecture de Rouen/Seine Maritime. The Prefecture itself opens at 9h, but, to make sure I'd be seen, I decided to get there at 8h30. When I arrived, there were probably 50 people in line already... all wanting to talk to the immigration office.

There were TWO windows for people to be seen at, and each person took between 10 and 30 minutes at the window. OH MY GOODNESS. It was my own personal hell... the people in front of AND behind me both had screaming babies... colic, one may say. It felt like the line wasn't moving at all. I may have shuffled my feet forward a whole meter in half an hour. For a while I wasn't even sure that I'd be seen at all. Time crawled by so slowly, yet somehow the line advanced even MORE slowly.

Finally, around rolls 13h, and I am at the front of the line. And what do I see? The guy at the window I'm supposed to go to... he gets up, and leaves. BUT, HARK! Someone else comes, and older man with salt-n-pepper hair, to replace the guy who'd been dealing with all sorts of immigration drama for 4 hours.

Yup. I got a fresh worker. Someone at the beginning of their shift.

I sat down, handed over my passport, explained that I don't want to go home in July, because tickets are all sorts of expensive, and I'd like to just... stay here as a tourist... for a few weeks. I was essentially a huge, whiny American.

But what does he do? The guy looks at me and says something to the effect of, "we're going to start over. You didn't say any of that stuff to me."

So we started over.

Do you have work after July 20?

No.

Do you want to return to the United States?

No, not right away. I'd like to stay in France for a while.

Okay. Do you think you will be able to find work?

Yes, I think so.

Alright. I am going to set up a meeting for you to get a titre de sejour.

(A titre de sejour is a long-stay visa that would, effectively, allow me to work here in France, either with a contrat à durée déterminée or a contrat à durée indéterminée. )

Dude types away on his computer for a few minutes, entering information from my passport. He intermittently explains things to me like "normally, once your visa is over, you have to leave the Shengen State."

Then he gives me a folder with some information concerning the documents and taxes necessary for a titre de sejour (a work contract, pay stubs from said job, and proof of residence). He says that once my visa expires, I will only be allowed to circulate within France. My meeting is set for 2 October, 2012. So long as I have my sheet of paper that's proof of this meeting, I cannot be deported. In the event that I give up, and can't find work here in France, I can show that piece of paper to customs at the airport, and they will have to let me through and back to the states.

SO. That's solved. I can stay in France until 2 October. Woohoo!

BUT:

THIS OPENS A DOOR WHOSE EXISTENCE I HAD NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED.

Up until this point, I had not considered the possibility of staying in France. I had no idea it was even possible for me to get a titre de sejour. This does not in any way change the fact that I miss Oregon and I miss the people I love so much. But, at the same time, I can't help but ask myself: why not try to stay? Why have I put so much time and effort into studying the French language, and being here in France? Isn't it logical, in some ways, to continue down this path? Won't it be just as difficult for me to find work in the states as here in France? Don't I have an edge, in some ways, because I speak English? I highly doubt I'll have any opportunities to use my French in Oregon. But here, I'm even becoming comfortable engaging in small talk on the bus or with cashiers and bartenders.

Baah. So. What to do? I think I am going to use the week of 19-23 June to job hunt in Paris and in Rouen. And, of course, keep my eyes and ears peeled while I'm traveling. If something turns up, wonderful. If not, I will stick to the original plan, and wwoof and head home at some point in September...

A voir!

So, Caroline, when you comin' home??

I'd say that's probably my most frequently asked question. When will I be home? When will my paws be back in good, fresh Oregonian soil?

I don't know, dawg. I really don't know. But I miss it, hard. I dream about it every night, about lawn yoga and the river and my old side porch and hiking and the endless amounts of love and care that I long to return to. Ideally, I would arrive home toward the end of August or beginning of September.

So. Here's what I do know:

I am leaving Eu on 27 April.

By bike.

With my tent, sleeping bag, and no real destination.

I will not be alone; two friends from Denver are coming over to pedal around with me until 21 May.

Tentatively, I will see them off in Madrid, and then meet up with a friend who's working as an assistant in Spain.

Tentatively, instead of meeting up with this friend, I will turn around and WWOOF in France for the month of June.

25-29 June I will be in Sotteville-les-Rouen, working at a Stage Region Langue.

This will, ideally, replenish my bank account. However, it may take up to 3 months for me to be paid. Which is annoying.

My travailleur temporaire visa ends on 20 July.

This means that, in theory, I have to GTFO of France, for 90 days.

Here are the options I'm currently considering, and the most obvious holes in each one:

Option n°1: Admit defeat, pack up, respect the law, and go home in July.

Problem A: Plane tickets from Paris to Portland in July (ie. the height of the tourist season, in the most touristic country in the world) cost roughly 1000€.

Problem B: I know that I will not have been paid for the Stage Region Langue by then, and the last time I had Le Credit Lyonnais transfer money to my American bank account, I ended up losing like half of it in fees.

Option n°2: Stay in France, throw caution to the wind, and hope nobody looks too closely at my passport/visa when I eventually DO leave France.

Problem: If someone does look too closely at my passport/visa, I could face hefty fines, be detained, get a big red X in my passport, be banned from the EU for 1-3 years, and/or end up having to buy a whole new plane ticket.

There are a couple of other options that branch off of this one, such as, in theory, I have to leave France and the Schengen State for 90 out of 180 days. So I could hypothetically travel around inside the EU, but outside of the 25 or so countries that compose the Schengen State. However, I speak French. I want to be in France. If there's any chance I am going to be travelling alone, I would much, much rather be in a country where I speak the language.

Moreover, nobody has been able to clarify for me if I must leave just France, or the Schengen State entirely. But I think it's the latter.

Option n°3: Prolong my temporary work visa.

Problem: I don't (currently) have work after 20 April. A possible solution would be to get a job in Paris, in a hotel or something, for the summer. However, Paris is a super expensive city to live in, and, given the option, I would much, much rather spend the summer with dirt under my fingernails.

Option n°4: Figure out if I can ask, very politely, for permission to stay as a tourist. Tourists have the right to stay in France/the Schengen State for 90 days without a visa.

Problem: After probably 5 hours total on the phone with consulates and embassies and prefectures, and a visit to the sous-prefecture, I have yet to find a living person who knows, or who is willing to tell me, if this is possible.

Airfare goes back down to reasonable toward the end of August, which would, by the way, be an ideal time to head home and find work and settle in for fall. I am not going to give up hope concerning prolonging my visa, but it's looking complicated at best. I'm trying to find time to go to Rouen, in order to go to the prefecture and ask in person. But if it goes anything like my trip to the sous-prefecture, I'm just going to come home and take a super long shower and eat a whole bar of chocolate afterward.

Okay. It feels good to have this down in writing. Thoughts and comments or ideas are greatly appreciated.

hmmm, an update

So. I've been... not so great... with this whole blogging about my experiences in Eu...

I've been feeling all sorts of lethargic and have the tell-tale signs of repressed anxiety, and of late, that's been the main reason I've not felt much like leaving my room. And not really wanting to leave my room has left me feeling guilty; why not get out and enjoy the semi-nice weather, or go for a bike ride, Sea Lion? Why not!

And a part of me is like "ugh Caroline you just really, really suck at life!" But the rest of me is hiding behind some element of the truth, which is:

This place is useless. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the derailleur on my bike is missing a part. Just a tiny piece. In a normal world, I would be able to go to the hardware store, find a couple of nuts and a bolt, then just jerry-rig it right up. I mean, even a bread tie would pretty much fix it, if THOSE would even do me the honor of existing in France.

But here, in Eu? What happens when I explain to the guy at Gedimat (a regional home-improvement store) that I am looking for just a couple of little pieces in order to fix my derailleur? HE TELLS ME TO GO TO A BIKE SHOP AND JUST BUY A NEW DERAILLEUR! Not like... oh, hey, let me HELP YOU find what you're looking for. Nope. Not helpful. Not you, Mr Customer Service Dude.

My other task, since like forever, has been to procure a front bike rack for my Peugeot. You know, at a sporting goods store. Last week I forced myself out of bed at EARLY O'CLOCK and took the hour-long bus to Dieppe, then waited 25 minutes for the bus to Decathlon. I finally get there, and there's nobody working in the bike area that day. I look at the racks, and nope, no front racks. And nobody available who can even begin to use the computer system to find out if they may be able to order me one.

Another example of how useless this town is: a while back I mis-typed my PIN three times in a row, which resulted in my bank card being de-activated. Naturally, this happened on a Saturday. Naturally, my bank is closed on Monday. Tuesday rolls around and I go to the bank, asking them how to go about fixing it. They say I have to go to Dieppe. Hitch: at this point, I have no money, and have not been grocery shopping in 5 days. So I ask Marta if I can borrow 2€ to get to Dieppe, which she loans me without hesitation. I was planning on going right then, and getting to the bank at like 4:45pm. But Laura, one of my roommates, offers to give me ride to Dieppe on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning Laura drops me off at the bank. Having (blind) faith in the banks of France, I leave the 2€ from Marta at home, figuring I'll for sure get my card working again by the end of the day. But nope. The woman who's trained on how to use the machine to make the cards work again, she wasn't in that day, so they asked if I could come back on Thursday. They promise she'll be in, and I'll be able to get my card working. Cool. I can't access my Euros, they're just numbers on a screen. I explained to the woman who was working that I couldn't GET home in order to come back the next day, because it'd been 5 days since I'd been able to access my account. Eventually, once I've caused a scene and am practically in tears, the woman gives me 2€ of her own money to take the bus home.

I go back to Dieppe the next day, this time actually using the 2€ from Marta. I get to the bank, and the woman who knows how to use the card-fixing machine is in a meeting, could you please come back this afternoon, mademoiselle? NO I CANNOT! The main teller recognizes me and, probably in order to avoid me making another scene, goes and gets the lady out of her meeting.

And you know what she did, what her magical training taught her about how to re-validate a bank card? She put the bank's copy of the card into the reader. Typed in a 4-digit code. I put in my card, typed my PIN. We repeated this three times, and my card was good to go. She wasn't even discreet about entering in the company PIN. I had it memorized for a few days afterward. She's clearly a highly-competent woman, with her training on using this super simple machine and all. The only woman for the job!

So, while it may not be oh-so-honorable of me to just like, camp out in my room with my ever-growing list of reasons that the world is just a huge, terrifying machine that is going to eat me alive... there's not much out there to help me accomplish my goals. At least not here in my little corner of France.

/complaining.