It's so funny, I got that on both sides of the pond, the "So why did you move HERE?!?!?"/"What brought you (back) HERE?!?" question, with a look of horror, disbelief and distaste for my life-choice!
When I was living in Austin, people there would be amazed at why on earth a London girl would end up there, (looong story) and now that I'm back in London, people are amazed at how or why a person who had been living in "the land of milk and honey," liberty and wide freeways, would trudge back to "boring" old Blighty!! ('Nother loooong story.....)
I feel like I can't win because I get the same horrified and puzzled questions no matter which country I would be in, lol.
I also got the "But it's so COLD and so GREY!!!!!" thing ---- from an Arizona woman in Austin!
(And by the way, here in north London we have just enjoyed a least a couple of weeks of almost daily sunshine, blue skies and fluffy clouds, and beautiful temperatures -- it's been a GORGEOUS English Spring in my particular spot here).
When she heard I was moving back to England, even though she has never been here herself and knows absolutely nothing about England except a passing PBS drama or a Sherlock Holmes episode shrouded in Victorian smog, she launched into a rather blunt whinge full of insulting stereotypes about the weather and other matters, as if it was perfectly okay to inform me of what miserable place I was heading to......even though she was ignorant about this country and I in fact came from here and know it prrrrretty well already............
.......people..........