Deciding to move to Rome was easy. Then came the logistics.

This is the second comic in a series on moving to Italy.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was our giant stack of paperwork for our visa applications. Planning a move abroad required patience and a tolerance for frustrating bureaucracy (luckily, our experience as foster parents had sharpened both of these skills). There were quite a few bumps along the way: To apply for a student visa, we first had to prove we were serious about the language, so we enrolled in an online course at our local community college. Yes, to apply for a student visa for a language course, we first had to take a language course. We were also required to provide proof of housing; because our school didn’t provide this, we had to apartment-hunt from an ocean away.

Meanwhile in Seattle, we were planning to rent out our home while we were abroad. There were a few tense months where we existed in purgatory. We had accepted tenants and signed a contract, but we still didn’t have our visas or a place to live in Rome. The worst-case scenarios played endlessly in my mind. When I finally stepped off the plane in Rome, the weight of all those possibilities lifted. We were here.