Saturday, April 20, 2013

Vendredi, 12 Avril 2013: Preparations, Preparations...

I arrived back from Marseille early this morning. I had spent last night with Andréa in preparation for my 10 day visit to my host family's vacation home. My family and I, in fact, didn't leave today like I had thought but Andréa left for Montpellier on time with his friends. I spent the rest of the morning getting my documents in order to renew my student visa. I drove around centre ville to find a parking spot so that I could easily access the sous-prefecture. I ended up driving around for an hour and when I finally found a spot, I decided I was going to give up. The sous-prefecture was closing in 15 minutes. So that's it folks, I'm not renewing my visa. I'm either going to leave for the states in May or I'll just leave the Schengen area temporarily and return as a "tourist." As an American, I can stay in France for up to 90 days as a visitor. Though, I have a lot of desire to go back to Virginia and settle all of my business.

I went home and opened up the package my brother had sent me with all of my mail. There is no foreign mail forwarding service so even though I've changed my address with the U.S. Postal Office, my mail is still going to my parents' house. All of the letters in the package were repercussions of my mom's false fraud claim last summer. Fortunately, she wasn't able to fabricate any proof that she didn't sign any of the student loan documents so I win, again. There are a lot of fees attached to all of the legal work that went to my defense though, so I have a mound of bills to pay on top of all of the bills I already have when I get back to the states. I'm lucky to have a good job at home.

I was kind of short with Andréa all day due to all of the stress but I made an effort not to be mean and take it out on him. He did that thing that he always does though--asks questions. There are just some things that I prefer not to talk about at the time being but will tell him in due time. He likes to be up-to-date though--to the moment, so it's a bit of a problem for us. I often give one word answers when I'm frustrated and when I do this, Andréa always thinks he's the cause. I ended up having to tell him that if he didn't let it go that I would get pissed. He got the message. I don' t know if being nosy is a French thing or not, but it's certainly a difference between Andréa and I. I'm more of the "don't ask, don't tell" type. Americans are more inclined to keep things to themselves, or so I've been told.

I spent the rest of the night re-doing my taxes. I just got another W2 in the mail from a job I forgot I had last year. Let me tell you, filling out 1040X's are super annoying...So make sure you have all of your W2s and 1098-E's before you fill out your 1040 form!!!

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