Un petit peu overwhelmed

I'm feeling very overwhelmed lately. It's understandable...between my insane work schedule, planning the trip back to the US with my hubby and the in-laws in tow, planning the wedding, starting to work on the miserable moving process and just normal, everyday things like cooking and cleaning, my life is hectic! I almost can't believe it! Just a few months a go I was bored and miserable sitting around my extremely small apartment with no job, no projects, no money and absolutely nothing to do except send out my resume. And now things are so crazy I feel like I can hardly find the time to breathe!

My work schedule has become insane. I know that most people with a similar job to mine, teaching business English in and around Paris, complain that their companies never give them enough hours and they can barely make any money and they need at least two jobs to survive. Well, that is certainly not the case for me. I currently am teaching 23 lessons a week! That is a lot. Especially considering they are not all near one another and I have to spend a good portion of my day on the metro going from one company to another. I currently teach 34.5 hours a week (the time I am actually in lessons). Add to that 18-20 hours of metro a week, and you already have way more work than most French people could even imagine doing. And then add to that the time I spend preparing lessons, doing work-related paperwork and responding to work emails when I get home (sometimes up to another 2 hours of work/day) and you can see that its chaos! I'm happy to have a job and be working, especially during the economic crisis when people are losing their jobs, but this is crazy! Most of my days are 11-13 hour days not including the work I have to do when I get home!

Then there's the wedding. Once I finally get home and get all my work done I have to focus on the wedding plans. And let me tell you, planning a wedding from another country is not easy. Thankfully I have some wonderful friends who are helping me and my poor mother who has basically become my wedding slave since she has to go meet with everyone and do anything that can't be done by phone or email. It must suck for her to. It will be a relief when this wedding is over! I just hope it all goes well and that we don't forget anything! I'm pretty excited for it though. My friend, Michelle, is making my dress, we are going to have a Christmas theme since the wedding will be Dec. 19, and it should be fun, just stressful since we arrive in the US two days before the wedding and will have very little time to take care of all the last minute details! I'm lucky I have a lot of friends and friends of friends planning weddings right now cause they definitely made it easier to find vendors. My friend, Susan, hooked me up with her DJ, a friend of a friend hooked us up with her photographer, another friend of a friend hooked us up with an officiant. It's nice to know that someone else has used/is using the same person and that they seem trustworthy since I can't meet any of them until the day of the wedding!

While all the wedding stuff is stressful, and is very hard to deal with from another country (luckily I'm not picky or bridezilla or anything since I haven't seen anything...not even the wedding location!), I am looking forward to getting to have a "real" wedding! Not that my wedding in France wasn't real, but it was kinda depressing. I wore black, I didn't have any of my family and only a few friends who I met since I came to France...it just wasn't the same as this is going to be. It will be so nice to get to celebrate with my family and all my friends who I've known for forever, and to get to wear a wedding dress and follow American traditions! I just wish Lionel could have some of his friends and other family there too. But at least he will have his parents!

And we are also trying to plan our trip to the US. While most of the time will be spent in Ohio, of course, we are hoping to travel a little between Christmas and New Years. It will be my in-laws first (and perhaps only) trip to the US, so we want them to have the chance to see a little more than just Ohio (and mainly all the restaurants and I want to go to and all the stores I'm looking forward to shopping at). We were originally thinking New York City, but we are a little concerned about the prices (since the cheapest flight I have found is $400 round trip). I know it is the worst time of the year to go, right at the holidays when everyone wants to visit NYC so flights are expensive and I've heard (I'm too scared to look) that hotels are even worse! So now we are branching out a little and also considering maybe Philadelphia, Boston or Washington DC. What do you think? Where can we go with a car and not have too much trouble driving around? What would be most interesting for Frenchies? Cheapest at Christmas? Or would it be possible to do more than one of these cities in 4-5 days? Any suggestions/advice would be appreciate since we have to figure this out ASAP!