Flashback #1: Setting: Summer in Central Florida, the 1960s. A teenage girl is housebound and bored on a weekday afternoon. She turns on the TV and flips the channel to the local PBS station, which is showing a travel show about France. She sits down with her bowl of soup and watches…and falls in love with a country. An inner promise is made: “I’m going there someday.”
Flashback #2: Setting: April 2019 in Central Alabama, eyes on open Facebook Message screen. This same girl, now far advanced down the time conveyor belt. The message she’s focused on tells her that her long-time friend is considering moving to France. Our “girl” expresses envy, and the desire to go there. Her friend comes back: “would you like to come to France with me? I need a traveling companion.”
After several exchanges with her friend-efactor (if you will allow me to coin a word, which I do all the time anyway), our girl----who is of course the writer of this piece---finally becomes convinced that her friend is serious and that this actually could happen. So began the preparations for international travel.
Aside: Now that I have done the background housekeeping, lemme out of the third person! It’s so stilted, so contrived---so falsely humble. I am always suspicious of anyone who refers to themselves in the third person. Aren't you?
First up: Get a Passport.
I prepped the necessary paperwork and paid an expediting fee and sent it off. The verbiage in the paperwork had stated that it could be up to a month before I would receive my passport---which put its arrival dangerously close to my departure date. I thought I would be biting my nails. Okay; I do that anyway. Nope! My concerns were unnecessary (aren’t they usually?) My passport came within 10 days!
Next up: Try to work out the finances I would need to make this happen. I first planned to board my 4 dogs...but the cost would have been between $850 and nearly a thousand dollars to do that for nearly two weeks. Then an incredibly gracious thing happened: one of my closest friends volunteered to stay at my place to watch over my dogs and my home. When a few days later it became "iffy" whether she'd be able to stay the entire 13 days, another friend stepped up and offered to puppy-sit the second week. That problem was solved!
I decided to set up a Fundraiser through Facebook. It went well. I almost met my goal...about 95% of it. But I had friends and family who didn't want to go through FB and who contributed to me directly. If you've never done it before, it's pretty straight-forward.
I chose to open a separate checking account from my personal account used to pay my bills. I also linked my PayPal account to this bank account as well. Facebook has about a 10 day lag before they post the money in your fundraiser, and they charge a 2% fee for each deposit as well. So take that into account if you decide to investigate further.
The bottom line is that I was able to acquire enough money to take care of my dog and house sitters, keep the electricity at my home turned on, and to contribute to expenses incurred in France. So a fundraiser through Facebook may be an option for you to consider in the future.
In my next post I will be sharing the first leg of our journey to France and back. Please keep an eye out for it. À bientôt!
