Three Truths and a Lie

There is a great ice breaker game that I used to play with my students called "three truths and a lie."  Each person makes four statements about themselves, three being true and one being false, and the object of the game is to see if the audience can decipher the lie.  Being an avid reader of blogs and other memoirs in which people seem to gush about their glamorous lives abroad I can't help but feel like I am playing this game.  Every book or blog I read seems to have the same four take-aways:

Learning a new language is rewarding.
Moving abroad is easy.
It is important to chase your dreams.
Living in another country is a constant adventure. 

However, what the authors don't seem to tell you is that only three of these statements are actually true: there is nothing easy about moving abroad. 

As I read about the many men and women who have decided to leave everything behind and move to France to follow their dreams or to be with the love of their life I can't help but want to scream as they describe how they made the difficult decision to go, packed their life into three large suitcases, and boarded the plane to Paris.  "Wait!" I want to yell, "Did you get a visa to go over there? If so, how? What did you need to do?  How long did it take?  Where did you apply?" If these past four years with Florian have taught me anything it's that moving to another country is no cakewalk.

After meeting Florian in October 2011 we spent the rest of my stay in France flying around and meeting each other in various cities throughout the country to maximize our time together.  As my teaching contract came to an end in May 2012 and my visa was expiring we searched desperately for a way for me to stay in France.  However, without a job I couldn't get a visa, and without a visa I couldn't get a job.  Sad and defeated I packed my bags, said "au revoir" to Florian, and headed back to the United States to find a teaching job.

Four years later I still don't feel like much as changed.  We are married now and I am in the process of applying for a spousal visa, but I still find myself running into one problem after another.  First they sent our marriage license to France, then the extra copies of our license got lost in the mail, only to be found in time for the French Consulate to close for August vacation.  It's been a wild ride and we are still only in the beginning stages.  Although we are now together, I can't help but feel frustrated that after all this time I am still residing in France on a 90 day tourist visa anxiously awaiting the arrival of our livret de famille so that I can start the paperwork for my visa.  However, in spite of all the ups and downs I am trying to focus on what is really important: I am finally reunited with the man that I love.  I know it won't be an easy process, and I am sure that we will be met with other challenges along the way, but I chose this life and I wouldn't change it for anything.

So with that being said I'd like to revise the above statement:

Moving abroad is easy challenging, but well worth it!