70 days. In 70 days, I will leave for Paris. That is both exciting and terrifying.

But it still seems unreal, like the ghost of an idea just barely assuming a tangible form in the recesses of my mind. The first time I went to France in the summer of 2006, it hit me somewhere between sitting in the Charles de Gaulle airport and swimming in the Mediterranean at Nice. I was actually in France.

This week I got a first taste of the French bureaucratic system – I had to travel to Washington D.C. to the Embassy de France to apply for my visa. I worried about forgetting documents, making mistakes, appearing rude or inept, whether to speak to the officials in English or French. When you apply for a visa, you are at the mercy of a foreign country’s government. Nothing requires them to allow you to enter their country and you can be turned away for the smallest detail. The officials in the consulate were precise and exacting, as they have to be to deal with the difficult situations that arise from immigration and working within a system full of paperwork and documentation. But looking like a nervous wreck somehow won me the sympathy of the snarky French man behind the desk (he called me princess. I’m not sure how to interpret that).

So hopefully, my passport will be returned in three weeks with a visa stamped in, giving me permission to enter France, live there for up to a year, and travel as I please. It will be a concrete sign, there in my hand: I’m going to live in France.

(Step 1, accomplished. Now for learning how to tie my scarf like a Parisian.)

Location: 4101 Reservoir Rd, Washington, DC