Well, Joe and I were planning on him visiting me sometime before his graduation in late July, when I am planning on visiting him. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen after all. He's got too much studying to do, and his parents aren't comfortable with him making such a big trip when he's never really traveled by himself before. Whereas, I like traveling, and I've done it before, so I kind of know what I'm doing and it's not such a big deal for me to fly out there on my own.

Also, it's too expensive for him, since he's got so much debt (student loans) he'll have to pay off upon graduating.

So that's one big disappointment. I was really hoping to meet Joe in person around my birthday, which was the plan.

The other major frustration is that my parents don't really feel comfortable with me going out there if they don't get to meet Joe first. Granted, it's my decision, not my parents', and they can't stop me from going if I want to go, but I still live at home and they'll be mad at me if I do go, now. Joe has offered to talk to my parents, so they can get to know each other so it's not so weird, and I presented the idea to my mother, and she seemed very unhappy with the whole situation.

I can hope that my parents will soften up to Joe by the time I leave for England, but I am seriously doubting that they will. At this rate, I'm going to have a major battle with my parents over the trip, because they're going to try and make me wait till he can visit. And that might not be until a good way into 2012. I'm not going to wait that long just to make my parents happy.

I love them, but my parents are very conservative and stubborn with their ideas and beliefs, and I'm not going to bow to their wishes if I know for a fact, from experience, that they're just being overprotective. I understand why they'd be WORRIED about me flying out to England all by myself. I get that. It's just that they take it too far, when they try and talk me out of it EVERY single time I do anything like this. I want to go to a convention, they have a heart attack and tell me I don't know any of these people that I met online that will be there at the convention; they tell me I'm young and naive and inexperienced and probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between someone friendly and someone who wanted to kidnap me or kill me. Even though I've proved them wrong, shown better judgment than they expected, they won't let their oldest child grow up, it seems. Or they don't want to, anyway.

I dunno. It's just frustrating to me that my parents won't even try to be understanding about it. I don't really want to have to have a fight or falling out with them over a visit that should be totally happy and exciting for me. =S