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.