Hi, all! My name is Karli, I'm 23 years old and I'm from the Cleveland area. I've lived here my whole life and I'll be graduating with my bachelor's degree in speech pathology and audiology from Kent State University next month. I've been to England three times since December 2008 and with that said, my boyfriend is also from England and we've been together for about three years now (he's made three visits here too). How we met is a bit of a long story if you like reading
When I was about 14-15, I used to go on chat rooms (early 2000s... era of chat rooms). One day, I saw an interesting screename pop up in the chatroom and thought "that's different," so I contacted the person- who eventually turned out to be my present boyfriend. We were flirty sometimes but it was mostly platonic. Over the years, we kept on keeping and losing contact. Then in August 2007, out of the blue I decided to e-mail him and ask how he was doing. A week later he replied saying that he actually typed me an e-mail a couple weeks ago but that I never replied (it turned out that he sent that e-mail to my old account, which I didn't check anymore), so it was strange that I had e-mailed him not knowing that he recently sent me an e-mail too. Yet again, we lost contact for a few months. In November 2007 though, we started contacting each other again and both found ourselves single. We had near-everyday contact (first webcam use too-seeing each other in the flesh versus just pictures!) until he was deployed to Iraq in March 2008 with the British Army. Throughout the time he was deployed, we stayed in touch through letters, e-mails, and I sent him a couple care packages. During this time, we also discussed meeting each other once he returned home. In late August 2008 just after I turned 21, he came all the way to Ohio to meet me and as they say, the rest is history! (my mom, being protective of her youngest child, insisted on being there when we first met- a bit embarrassing for me at the time but I'm sure I'd feel the same if I was a parent!)
If all goes to plan, I hope to move to England (in particular, Staffordshire in the West Midlands) sometime around October-December 2012. He's deployed in Afghanistan the majority of next year, and I hope to be accepted into a special education teacher licensure program in Cleveland which would begin this fall and run until August-December of next year.
I'm looking forward to hearing good advice from this forum! Even some of my close friends don't truly understand my situation, so it'll be good to hear things from others who have "been there, done that."
