Now that the tickets are purchased, B and I are taking care of all the things we need to do before leaving for a month. Yes, we'll be gone 3 days short of a month!
July 11 we fly out of Toulouse and arrive in San Diego. We chose to leave the 11th because B really wanted to go to ComicCon, which is July 12-15 in San Diego. Considering how far in advance we planned this trip (not), tickets were already sold out and we didn't know if we would be able to really go. Enter my dad's colleague who volunteers for ComicCon: 2 free 4-day passes! I'm excited, but also a bit worried about attempting 4 days of ComicCon. I've gone before, and it's a lot of people, a lot of time on your feet, and a lot of money to buy a sandwich at noon. We won't have any time to get over jet lag either, but you only live once...
July 18 we fly to Calgary, Canada to spend a week with family out in the Alberta farmland. There are a number of wedding anniversaries and birthdays in July, so we're celebrating all of them together with a family reunion. When I was searching for flights to Calgary, I stumbled on WestJet, which offers direct flights from San Diego to Calgary. It was $10-20 more expensive per ticket than US Airways or the other carriers, but also 2-3 hours less travel time, so I thought it was a good trade off.
July 24 we fly to San Francisco instead of heading straight back to San Diego. Initially we were supposed to stay with my mom's cousin, so with the idea of a free hotel for 4 nights I agreed with B that we could go to San Francisco. Then I learned my mom's cousin didn't have any space for us, so I've been doing couch-surfing requests. I looked at Air B-n-b quickly because I stayed in Turino Italy with Airbnb and it was a good experience, but the cheapest rooms in downtown San Francisco were $87 a night! For not even a real hotel! My husband's a huge photography nerd, so I've done couch surfing requests with people who list photography as their job or interest, so hopefully something will work out. I don't think our budget could take a hotel in San Francisco! (Hostels are around $30 a night per person in San Francisco, so $60 for both of us and not really a deal)
July 28 we fly back down to San Diego to spend a second week with friends and family.
On August 3rd, we have a super early flight to Ft Lauderdale where we will stay with my cousin until Tuesday August 7 when we fly back to France. My aunt and uncle live in the Keys, so we might go down to the Florida Keys for the weekend.
August 8 we're back in France, and we'll head to B's parents a day or two after we arrive to pick up the cat. Tartiflette will be at 'summer camp' with Raoul le chat cool while we're gone (i.e. with my in-laws and their 10 year old cat that Tartiflette likes to play with).
This trip will be lots of firsts for my husband: first time to Canada, San Francsico and Florida. First time meeting the family in Canada and Florida. First time at ComicCon. First time couch surfing.
I always have a hard time going back under my parents' roof, even if it's only for a week or two, so hopefully all the events will keep me occupied/distracted.
I've also been thinking a bit about seeing my American friends. An American friend of mine is here in France and came to stay with us for a few days. Her story deserves a separate blog post, but in short she is the first American friend I've spent time with in France who didn't study abroad or do the teaching assistantship program. She's 100% American, and I realized how French I've become. With my life so different from my close friends from childhood/high school, what value is there in making significant effort to keep in touch and keep the friendships going? There is of course value in putting effort into friendships, but I just wonder for those friendships were we don't have much in common any more and our different life paths have made our world views significantly different. It's normal to change in the 10 years since high school, but I've always thought (hoped?) that we would remain friends like my parents and some of their childhood friends.
2 comments:
"I always have a hard time going back under my parents' roof, even if it's only for a week or two, so hopefully all the events will keep me occupied/distracted."
100% agree. Having your own home makes everyone else's, even family, feel weird. It's just not yours anymore. Point.
"With my life so different from my close friends from childhood/high school, what value is there in making significant effort to keep in touch and keep the friendships going?"
Not sure I agree. Did your parents move (as) far away from their childhood friends? For me and hs/college peeps, I know we'll always be friends, but right now, we're just not the "see each other and talk every day" type of friends like we were when we lived in the same town. So depends on what you mean by significant effort. Emailing regularly? Flying out for visits?
Or is the question, should you hold on to these friendships so you can pick them back up if/when you move back? Like, if you moved back tomorrow, would you still want to be friends them? Is that more what you were thinking? Worried you're holding onto them for sentimental reasons when you wouldn't be if you'd stayed in the states? Because that's not really a fair question, since you'll never know the answer to what might have been. I think if you like hanging out with someone, doing things you both like to do, then do it as often as you can, even if it's only once a year or less.
For the question of maintaining friendships, I question making efforts because I feel like more and more I'm the only one making them. I'm the one calling, emailing, asking for news, planning events when we come, etc. We also had some bad experiences last time when friends canceled on us last minute to do things together. B and I were like "Do you not understand we are only here for 10 days and then probably not for another 2 years?" One of my best friends in high school canceled on us because she needed to clean house. We were just floored that she would consider vacuuming more important than spending time with a friend she rarely sees. Yeah, okay, vacuuming is important, but not that important!
And I feel like we have less and less to talk about. Most of my friends don't see each other anymore and have new different friends that I don't know. They aren't very interested in our lives in France and basically ask us why we don't come back to California more often.
I should say though that there are other friends that are much better in the each-friend-making-an-effort department.
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