VISA in Process

Hey everybody, welcome to our 18th post to our blog “Baby Boomers Move to France”. As I sit down to start writing this week’s blog it is Wednesday, May 14 and I’m waiting to get a call from the hospital that Elizabeth is about to be released from the Recovery room.

This week was Elizabeth’s birthday week too.

Last week I left off with a long list of “to-dos” for us to get done this week. I’ll share progress on that list, but first the big news, our French long stay visas are finally in process. Next week we will have a conference call with French Connections HCB to prepare for our meeting with the US representatives that take our documents for submittal to the French embassy. We will set up an appointment to visit the facility in Miami for this purpose. Once that meeting has been done, we will be in a holding pattern until they tell us we have been approved (or denied, but we are not going there).

Attacking the list

One of the things on the list was getting a hard case for my banjo. I’m proud to say that is done. In fact, the case has already arrived from Amazon and the banjo fits perfectly. I’m not sure that taking it to France via checked baggage will be the best approach. I’m thinking that shipping it via “My Baggage” might be the best way. TBD

I did drop off the hangers at Bealls Outlet and had another Goodwill run too. I was able to visit with one of my old coworkers from Bealls, Donna. She was glad for the hangers as, I guess the store has to buy the hangers now (how cheap is that Beall’s Corporate??).

We got the okay to leave some of the pictures on the wall. As I mentioned before, one of the pictures is a collectable and may be worth some money. Sad to say that we will leave the piece by Brittany too. As for the pictures that we will take to France with us, we took them out of the frames and donated the frames to Goodwill.

I did play golf on Tuesday. I ended up plus 2 against my quota, pretty good for me. Our foursome did pretty well too. We weren’t in the money though. No golf for me next week. I have scheduled conference calls with French Connections on Tuesday and French lessons on Thursday.

The big deal for the week was EB’s gall bladder surgery on Wednesday. She went through it with flying colors and was back home the same day. Still remains a little sore and will take 3-5 weeks to fully recover. She is a trooper and doing very well.

EB was eager to get something done so she made some progress on the garage organization, and we can pull the VW into the garage now.

We had a palm frond that was hanging down from the tree in the front yard. John came over and cut it down and put all of the waste in one of his bins (just one of the awesome neighbors that we will miss terribly!). He left me his pole saw as there were a couple more palm fronds that needed to come down. The new blade in the saw made pretty quick work of it and the tree looks a lot better. I got some weeding done and the yard watered. All in all, a productive day. Many thanks to John for his help.

EB worked on the spreadsheet that we want to leave the new owners. This spread sheet includes service people that we have used and some of the user manual for the appliances. Hopefully this will help the new folks get a head start. Elizabeth made up a notebook of all of the details. We will leave the notebook for the new owners. Giving them a new American flag for the flagpole too!

Uship came and picked up the table and bench for Cindy and Don. That is a load off of our mind. I know they will get good use out of the set, and it will look great in their Big Bear Mountain house.

I must say that the weekly 2-hour French lesson is the fastest 2 hours of the week for me. I am learning French, but not yet confident. It will take a couple of years to gain confidence I guess. The French teacher keeps telling the class, not to worry. She says, “You don’t have to be perfect”. I like that because we are a long way from perfect. I recall working with people from various nations and think back at how they managed speaking English. Sometimes I could not understand them, but somehow, we communicated. I’m super impressed at people that come to the US and try to learn the language. In general, I think Americans are understanding of folks trying to learn the language. Others just have no patience for those trying to learn the language. I’m sure we will run into some French folks that won’t be too keen on our attempt to learn their language. Mostly, our France experiences have been positive despite our butchering of the language. I think sometimes it is a bit of humor in their day.

I had mentioned that I will have a conference call with French Connections HCB regarding the car we will use in France. I did schedule a meeting and anticipate getting the next step in the process of arranging for the car in motion next week. I will have to decide what brand and make of car will work for us given our budget constraints and practical needs. We don’t need anything fancy. I do like that they will deliver the car to the airport for us when we arrive in Paris.

Sean, our financial advisor, came over on Saturday to finalize our financial plans for the next few years. We are all set except that because our PNC bank does not transfer the amounts of cash that we need for France, we need a new bank. I contacted Bank of America, and it seems that they can handle the international money transfers that we need. I scheduled an appointment to open an account at Bank of America and to make sure we can have access to funds for day to day living as well as the house purchase in France. They will have to transfer money to our French bank account and currency exchange company as needed. I must remember to get the B of A account Direct Deposit details.

I will need to change the banking info at the Social Security Administration to have my checks deposited directly to the new bank account. I’m disappointed that PNC can’t handle our needs because we have been very happy with them for years. PNC has been a great bank and the people in our local branch really make you feel seen. They remember you and to me that is good customer service.

We drove by our North Port temporary digs. It is not the greatest neighborhood but will suffice for the short time that we will be there and the price is right. It is only 1 bedroom, but we won’t have much except some boxes that will be shipped out right before we leave and anything we are going to take with us on the plane.

The last thing that I had on the list was to work on the French bank account application. Now that we will have a new US bank, I have to wait to finalize the account numbers. A little bump in the road, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I think that I can finish the paperwork next week. Fingers crossed.

Air flights, Rosie and Artimis

Elizabeth had done some research and discovered that Jet Blue had a fairly friendly policy for bringing pets aboard the airplane. I contacted Jet Blue and talked to a representative and explained what we need one-way tickets to France and needed them to be refundable and that we were so happy that Jet Blue has a favorable pet policy. I explained that we need refundable seats since we can’t be a hundred percent sure of our flight schedule as we have the pets AND are not 100% sure when we will have our Visa’s. I booked tickets for us and even booked an extra seat for the animals. I’m fat dumb and happy, right? Weelll not so fast Bucko.

Elizabeth happened to go on the Jet Blue site to review our reservations and noticed that our tickets were NOT refundable. It is a good thing that she checked because she also found out that Jet Blue does not allow pets on international flights. WTF??!!???. We had to cancel those tickets and get a refund and then search for an alternative. The customer service person gave her apology and said that she would make a note to get the guy that I had worked with better training. Ya think? I was so pissed, I could hardly see straight. Elizabeth peeled me off of the ceiling and we started our search for alternative flights.

You know these things happen for a reason, right? We were both on our phones searching airlines and flight options coming up short until BAMM up pops a nonstop flight from Miami to Paris and at reasonable refundable price. EB called the airline and went through the process with a customer service person. Unfortunately, that person could not arrange the flight for the pets. She said we would have to contact the airline partner. This is a Delta flight operated by Air France. For crying out loud. EB tried but could not get through to a customer service representative to arrange for the pets. A new task for latter. EB went ahead and book flights for the two of us though.

I will book a car rental in order to get to the Miami airport. Elizabeth will check with a friend that may want our VW for his son. We are hoping that we can get that squared away during the last week of July.

I’m thinking that the universe is trying to tell us that the animals aren’t going to France. I think Artimis is going to have to stay in the US. Maybe Rosie can go with us since she is so small, but with her last flying episode, we are so unsure. I hope so. I just don’t get why it is so complicated. We are not the first people to take an animal to Europe. It seems like the rules are changing. Elizabeth grapples with leaving Rosie as she made a promise to her father to look after her. I guess we need to try some better dog drugs….

Getting Organized and Purging

We cleaned out our closets big time. Most of the clothes went to Goodwill. That was relatively easy. Today we took on the challenge of clearing out our file cabinets. Luckily, we don’t have a ton of cabinets, but the work of clearing out the years of paperwork is a bit daunting.

Elizabeth is the queen of organizing and I am happy to be the grunt. We attacked each file folder and dumped and dumped and dumped. Stuff like diplomas and old old pictures and report cards had to go. My mom had kept all of our report cards, prom pictures, student achievement awards and etc. Just before she passed away, she sorted it all between my 3 brothers and my sister and boxed all of the stuff up and sent it to each one of us. For a move to France (on a tight budget) we can’t take it all. EB had the same thing from her dad. It is a little sad, but to be honest neither one of us has looked at any of it in years. We got a big bin and slowly filled it with all those memories. Next stop a paper shredding company. Maybe now not being tied to “stuff” will be a bit liberating. Just hoping old ghosts don’t haunt us.

Okay don’t laugh, I have a confession: I kept my high school letterman jacket and my college letterman jacket for years. Okay, you can laugh, I’m laughing too. There is no way that I could fit into those jackets now. Those were proud moments, and I won’t forget the feeling of achievement when I shrugged those jackets on for the first time, but who needs 50+ year old jackets that they can’t fit into. Maybe I’m finally growing up. LOL

Anyway, after all of that purging, we ended up with a few file folders with the important stuff.

Next week

Next week will be full of activity. Fun stuff like:

Opening a new US bank account and transfer of funds from our existing bank.

French bank acct paperwork

Contacting the Social Security Administration to update check routing to new bank

Visa follow up

French car follow up & conference call

“Traveling mailbox” follow up

Medicare follow up & stop supplemental insurance fees

French financial adviser conference call

Find Artimis a home

So, until next week

We are so happy to have you with us on our adventure. We are learning the trials and tribulations of moving to France as we go. Please leave your comments or questions in the comment section below. We read all of them and enjoy reading and responding to your comments.

Have a great week (passe une bonne semaine)