I've been reading and occasionally posting here for a while. I don't ?think? I've posted an intro, but I may have done so a long time back.
I live in Maryland, outside Washington, DC. I studied in London in 1985 for six months with a US international student program and fell in love with the UK. I've visited a lot over the years, and about 5-6 years ago started looking for ways to move there. I got as far as acquiring an HSMP letter in 2007, but I didn't use it at the time (long story, involving looking after elderly parents and helping put a then-GF through grad school).
Since the change from HSMP to Tier 1, the huge jump in requirements for Tier 1, and now the ?abolition? of Tier 1, I've focused more on opportunities to study. I have my eye on a couple of taught MA programs in Edinburgh and Glasgow, possibly transitioning to PSW or doctoral study. But now with the proposal to axe the PSW visa, I'm rethinking again. Hopefully the changes for this year will be announced before too long, and I can assess my plans in light of those.
Outside of following UK visa issues
my interests include history and international relations, editing and technical writing, database design, football (or soccer as we call it in the US), walking/hiking, and any sort of messing about in boats. I read fiction and nonfiction voraciously and consume a fair amount of TV (UK and US) mostly of the costume drama or detection variety. I have three cats (and have spent endless hours and $ keeping them chipped and up to date so as to avoid leaving them in quarantine). I'm a fan of most sorts of music, but especially modern and traditional folk music.
Most of my visits to the UK in recent years have been to Scotland, where I have several friends, but sometime soon I have to go back to London, as my niece lives there with the nice young English chap she married last year and their lovely little toddler.
Jan (pron. "Yahn", a Dutch man's name given me by a genealogy-mad father who didn't anticipate that it might get mistaken for the more common woman's name for, oh, all my life
