One of my 101 items is to take a vacation in Europe for more than 10 days. When I wrote that I knew that I had a month long sabbatical coming up and I knew that I was planning to apply to a particular program that allows you to stay with a family in Spain (probably Madrid) for "free" (after the $450 program fee) in exchange for 15 hours per week of English instruction. So I finally sent all of the application materials in. And now I am in the long "wait for some family to choose me out of the line up" stage. I feel like a kid waiting to get adopted. Was my introduction letter good enough? Am I too old? Do I sound like a person they'd trust to live in their house for a month? They basically keep trying to match me up until August 11 at which point they give up and I have a month off of work with no place to go.

I'll probably still go to Europe, but maybe not all in one place. And I don't particularly want to travel alone because I am not outgoing and it is sort of scary anyway. But who else can randomly take a whole month off? No one in my family. And I don't have friends that I would even consider asking. I'd even do a series of traveling with people for a week here and there. But again, who plans a trip to Europe with 3 week's notice? Other than me. Not to mention that though I moved this sabbatical from May to September at the request of TPTB at work and now September is super inconvenient. May would have been ok. But no one knew that back in March when we were discussing it. So there is no blame, but it means that I'll be more stressed at leaving work than I would have been.

Really, I'm just sort of worried that I haven't been chosen yet and it has been at least a month since I sent the application. Probably more. So I am feeling all unloved. By total strangers. And worried that if I have no concrete plans I will give in to the pressure to not take the time off of work. Already I'm thinking "I'll only take 3 weeks instead of the 5 in my current plan."