Jeff and I have done a lot of research on visas. More than I ever wanted to know about visas. Especially UK visas, since the UK is where Jeff and I - if given the choice - would use as home base for the entire year we are over there. However, since there isn't a visa for people who strictly want to live there and funnel money into the economy and not take a job or health care away from the citizens, we can't. We have to use visitor visas.
So in doing research, I discovered that we can stay up to six months in the UK in a year's period of time. I also learned that since we're from the US, we can just show up at the UK border and get a three month visa no problem. However you can stay for up to six months in one chunk if you want. So I looked into that. There are two ways to do it: (1) extend your three months to six after you're there, but pay a huge fee, or (2) apply before you get there.
So Jeff and I chose the 'apply before we get there' route and started filling out the visa application. Only to get halfway down the page and discover they wanted our address of where we would be staying while there. This is where the Catch-22 comes into play. Because in order to get a place for six months you need a visa.
So we were stuck. And at this point in the process of researching visas and places to live and so on, I was fed up with the whole thing. My Type-A-must-plan-everything brain said "Fuck it. We're getting on a plane and we'll see what happens."
So this changes our plans considerable. We were planning on doing six months in London and six months in Dublin (sticking to the English speaking countries because I refuse to be a dumb American who doesn't know the language) but now it looks like we'll be keeping it simple and doing three month stints everywhere. Jeff really wants to do Germany (he cant stop talking about
donorkebabs) and I really want to do Italy (think of all the architecture) so we might be doing a marriage compromise and doing London, Germany, Italy, and then maybe London or somewhere else in the UK. This will of course mean learning at least the basics of a few languages, but it seems to be the only way.
Packing
In other news, I started the packing process the other day. Jeff and I are packing our stuff up with the mentality that we most likely wont be unpacking it after we get back to Spokane and instead moving it directly to a bigger city where I get a job. So we're doing a lot of culling of things we don't need. And two things have happened so far.
The first is that I felt very fat and unfashionable for about an hour. I was sorting clothes and getting rid of things that don't fit (I'm very anti "oh, I'll lose the weight and then be able to fit into it again" which consequently makes it so every girl ever has a box of clothes of every size she's ever been that she never actually wears again) and got rid of ton of stuff. Granted a lot of it was stuff from college (and there was even some high school stuff floating around), but it was still depressing. It was also depressing because I was also getting rid of my "office" clothes. When I graduated the first time I bought a bunch of nice business casual stuff because I had the mental image of me wearing cute outfits and heels every day to work. And let me tell you - I never did that. My style is strictly a jeans and trendy t-shirt with some Converse Chucks, and since most of industry also wears that, it's perfectly acceptable work attire. So much to the point that when I used to decide to dress up, all the guys in the office would ask me why I was so dressed up. And now it's even worse since I work and school from home. So I decided that I was going to let go of the fantasy that I would ever need really nice work clothes, kept a few of my favorites for the odd occasions, and got rid of the rest. My other thought behind this is even if I do end up a with a job that requires that kind of dress, I can always get new stuff. But carting it around right now seems silly.
The second thing that happened was Jeff had to force me to sort books. I started looking through them and suddenly realized that I could not live without them and Jeff was being crazy to think I could. He promptly turned me back to the book shelves and told me to try again. So I was a little more brutal (still probably not to Jeff's level of brutal, but it was step) and ended up with a large stack of giveaway books. I still have piles and piles of books though that will get boxed up and kept. Notice my total ruthlessness with the clothes and complete unwillingness to get rid of books.
So the process has started and our apartment looks like a mess but I'm figuring that's how it's going to look until we leave so I better get used to it. It's weird because when we were still in May, August seemed so far away, and now that it's June it's suddenly very close.
