Headscratchers / The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

• Disregarding how unrealistic it is that Lena gets a (modest) salaried position at RISD teaching five days a week after getting her Master's... what happens to her job? They take the trip to Greece in the middle of October; most college instructors can't just call in a sub like a high school teacher. The rest of the novel takes place between October and April and instead of doing any teaching, Lena mostly hangs out with her parents and sister and then leaves the country again to go to both Greece and Australia in the middle of the teaching year. It could be reasonable to assume she took a leave of absence after Tibby's death, but what about before, when she was seemingly able to jump off to Greece willy-nilly?
• It's understandable why Carmen started out her career in New York, being that she started out as a theatre actress, but how has she been a regular on a network TV show and is still based entirely in New York? Even shows set in New York are generally shot in Los Angeles these days, and there's no reason for her to have to be in New York other than for it to be easy for her to get together with her East Coast friends at the drop of a hat.
• How exactly are Bridget and Eric keeping their heads above water? When she is working, Bridget barely seems to make minimum wage/full-time money, doing odd jobs like landscaping and walking dogs, and the book makes a point of saying Eric doesn't make as much money as his law school peers because he's an immigration lawyer taking on non-lucrative cases. They're likely sidled with school debt, as Bee went to an Ivy League school and didn't come from a wealthy family, and Eric went to law school; they also live in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. and their rent is stated to be nearly $2,000 per month. That they're getting by is hard enough to believe in itself; that Eric randomly has $10,000 to give to Bridget out of the kindness of his heart is a whole other level of disbelief.
• Why does seemingly no one, particularly Brian, make an effort to inform the Rollins of Tibby's condition, or any of the circumstances surrounding her death? The matter is brushed off due to Brian being in Australia, but not only is this sometime in the late 00's/early 10's and Brian is not limited when it comes to how he can contact people in the U.S., but he also is able to phone the coroners/investigators in Greece early on. Hell, even if he was truly limited in his technology, he could do as Tibby had done and written a letter (and on that note, it's either a head-scratcher of massive Jerkass behaviour that Tibby chose to write beautiful good-bye letters to her friends before her death that she knew was coming at some point soon, but not her parents). Tibby has a genetic disease that could possibly affect her siblings, and no one seems all that concerned about Tibby's actual family either thinking she died a horrible accidental drowning death or took her own life, nor with Tibby's younger siblings potentially having the same disease she did.
  • Furthermore... what massive, lucrative opportunities in the tech sector are there for Brian in Australia that aren't available in the U.S.?