Hi & WHY? :)

Hi every ne!

I'm so happy I found this forum (your thread about what does it mean 'purpose built' appears on top of google).

I wanted to go and live in America for so long... no luck with the green card lottery so far

Given the chance to go and live there I would stand up this very second and do it.

So - why have you came to live in UK? What is better here compared to USA?

Hi every ne!

I'm so happy I found this forum (your thread about what does it mean 'purpose built' appears on top of google).

I wanted to go and live in America for so long... no luck with the green card lottery so far

Given the chance to go and live there I would stand up this very second and do it.

So - why have you came to live in UK? What is better here compared to USA?

Well, healthcare is a right for everyone here. You can't go bankrupt due to cancer or an accident. You don't have to weigh the option of whether you can afford to go to the doctor for something or if an injury requires stitches or if you could get by with bandaids.

I came for a work assignment and "met someone".

Neither country is better than the other.  Both have strengths and weaknesses.  People often glamorise living abroad but I assure you, it's far from glamorous in either direction!

I loved the idea of a European Union. Finally a way forward from the darkness of the past.

Sadly....

I'm a Brit who grew up dreaming of living in the US - growing up, I was hooked on US TV shows and books, and I had relatives in the US who I would visit every couple of years as a pre-teen and teenager. I loved it there and would get 'homesick' for the US every time I came back home.

When I was about 15, I looked into how I could live in the US... I considered trying to go to university there for a full degree, but decided against it as it wasn't practical. In the end, I studied for a UK degree that gave me a study abroad year in the US (New Mexico). I loved that year abroad - it was the best experience of my life up to that point.

So, 4 years later, when I was doing my masters, I decided to apply for a PhD at the same US university (one of my US professors said if I was interested in coming back for grad school I could contact her), and so I moved over for a more long-term basis on a student visa.

However, the second time around, I hated it. I realised that my previous visits and the study abroad year didn't really give a proper taste of living in the US. They were more like just vacations and not real life and so I had been viewing the US with rose-coloured glasses.

In the end, I was so miserable there as a PhD student that I only made it 8 months before I packed up and moved back to the UK. I didn't really have any friends there and I wasn't enjoying the research... which meant that the enormous workload didn't seem worth it for me to keep going.

The things I didn't like or which annoyed me about the US were:
- the 'work to live' attitude (I was expected to teach 20 hours a week, take 4 lecture courses, and do full-time research)
- the healthcare system (or lack thereof)
- the politics (I was in the US for 2 election campaigns - Bush and Obama)
- the food (I couldn't figure out how to cook with US ingredients and measurements, so I basically just lived off frozen meals)
- the TV commercials (both the frequency and style of them)
- the high cost of digital TV and broadband (about 2-3 times more expensive than in the UK)
- not being able to walk anywhere (I didn't have a car and a 20-year old used car with 150,000 miles on the clock was still over $4,000)
- the crime - New Mexico has some of the highest poverty rates in the US (ranked 50 or 51 out of 51) and the 2nd highest crime rate in the US
- lack of gun control

It's been almost 9 years since I left, and don't get me wrong, I love to visit the US, but I don't think I could live there again. Especially not in the current political climate (not that the UK is doing much better right now though).

For me, the UK is where I belong and it's home is for me (even though I travel a lot for work now and live overseas 3-5 months a year ).

So - why have you came to live in UK? What is better here compared to USA?

Why is the UK better? The UK has my husband. But he's mine, so no one else can use him as a vote for the UK, although they're free to use their own partner as a reason for preferring the UK.

Most of us here on UK Yankee came to the UK for partners so we moved to the UK for love, not because it's better or worse compared to the US. Both countries have pros and cons and they vary person to person.

Well I came for work. Still working at the same place 9.5 years later, though doing a different job. It's a good company on the whole.
I fell in love with Scotland.  Such a gorgeous place, friendly people, and very specific for me, a great local, varied music scene.
And then fell in love with my now husband.   We built our house in 2015, got married in late 2015 after 7 years together and the rest they say is history.   
I can't see myself going back, though I never say never with anything.

Why did I move here? I was on a dating website in the US and was looking to come do a study abroad semester at uni over to the UK as I've always wanted to visit and been in love with British Culture (when I was a kid, I would tell my mom I was moving here when I got older and she would just do the "okay, honey.." response LOL and I realised as I got older how difficult that was). I was undecided between two places and was checking out what the "guy" situation was like (because that's OBVIOUSLY the most important part of a semester abroad!) and also was looking to see what people - Male or Female - were like to see if I would fit in one place more than the other. I ended up finding my (now) husband's profile and we were literally so alike it was scary. I messaged him knowing we'd probably never meet unless I was accepted at a program for a semester over there, and we just became best friends who played xbox together and spoke to each other daily on kik. He asked me to visit saying I could "sleep on his couch" and a month or so before I was leaving to see him, I told him I didn't want to just sleep on his couch as I was really interested in him. The rest is history.

Long story short, I married my best friend and have been here for almost 4 years now!

There's a lot that is better. My personal opinion is that the healthcare system (though it's obviously not perfect because it seems to be suffering at the moment), as a patient, is excellent. Far superior to the US in that people don't have to choose death over debt. Also, I like that guns are illegal. In the US, before I left we had the Boston Marathon Bombing (this was right before we left and I was living 15 minutes outside the city) and reports of all those different movie theatre shootings and stuff. I didn't think about it daily or anything, but there was always the knowledge in the back of my mind that I could go to the wrong movie and end up in an Aurora situation. Here, I don't think twice about that stuff. I know terrorism happens and you can't prevent that, but I'm not second guessing if I will go to the cinema and end up shot. Stupid, I know, in light of the terror attacks in Manchester and London and I have enjoyed going to a shooting range in the past with my friend in the US, but I just feel more safe in that aspect.

 
I can't see myself going back, though I never say never with anything.

Same here. I miss my family and friends in the US. I wish I could just pack them up and take them over here with me like they were other inanimate objects I moved over 4 years ago....but we have skype and whatsapp and iMessage/Facetime so we can still talk and videochat. I miss them and love them, but I love it here more than I miss home. But, as you said, never say never!

- the food (I couldn't figure out how to cook with US ingredients and measurements, so I basically just lived off frozen meals)

Subway tuna sandwich?

 I moved here for love ❤️❤️.  My husband has a six year old from prior relationship so him coming to me wasn't an option.

We met by what I'll call fate on a holiday I was on.

We now have the freedom to move back as we have my stepdaughter full time. Part of me is dying to go back because I truly miss my family and hate not being around them. But I can't even imagine thinking of an another international move again for a while.

Both places have their pros and cons honestly. I think it's just about making the best of your situation.

I do love the healthcare here.  However, my employer back in the states had really great insurance so I can't say I ever suffered(though I've seen my family suffer from it).

So we have the scary healthcare problem in US, but on the other side, for the Kiss Of Death it was a dream come true to live in Britain... I'm not sure which one scares me more...



Thank you all for the replies. It was both interesting and useful to read em all.

To sum it up - Love and work  with a bonus healthcare and British lifestyle, with a pinch of shattered EU dreams to finish the recipe brit style.

I could use a good dating site btw

I'm sorry for the delayed reply, it's a bit of a mess my life right now...

Read you soon

The hive mind here - that's a real plus. Hard to explain, but there is a sense of inclusion and "everyone has a place" that we've encountered here that's really nice.  Also, if anything happens to me, I think my daughter is in a better place here - she's physically safer, will have medical care if she needs it, should be able to not end up homeless.

The US has a lot of great things going for it, but you're on your own. If  you make it, you do so by your own wits and, quite often, dumb luck. You can have a really, really comfortable life if the cards all land in your favor.  If not, you can work like a dog, and are pretty much considered less "worthy" - and somehow it's your own fault if you don't get ahead.  My 60+ years of experience informs that there's not really an intrinsic sense of fairness there anymore. There once was.

There's a sense that you don't owe anyone anything in the USA. People have finally accepted taxes for free basic education, but originally there was a bitter fight against paying for "other people's" children's education. Social Security (the buffer for the aged and infirm) met similar resistance when they brought that in. Obamacare is still in the initial stages of the same scenario - why should we pay for someone else's healthcare, why should the government tell me what I have to do, etc.  There is no sense there that making sure everyone has basic needs met strengthens the society.

The general "me" culture in the USA is not pretty. There's an obsessive "what's in it for me" with almost no sense of civic duty (worse in the last 20 or 30 years).

The guns - people here are horrified if there's a single shooting somewhere in their country. In the US it's just gotten so common for there to be mass shootings that it's not "oh how awful" - it's gotten to be "oh, another one? Anybody we know?"  Literally the week before we left some guy was annoyed, down the block from us, with his girlfriend jilting him, so he sat out by the apartment complex's swimming pool with a beer, a handgun, and spare ammo, and just started shooting. Several people died. It made the news for a couple of days, and then there was something else ghastly elsewhere that replaced it.

The enthnocentrism  in the US is such that (and this is generalizing, of course) the majority of people not only don't "get" that people elsewhere have different mindsets and lives, but they couldn't tell you anything much about what was going on in the rest of the world.  Then again, that is probably more about the socioeconomic strata of the people we're meeting here - they seem much more aware of world events than their counterparts in the USA would be.  It's refreshing.

So, I feel safer here, am not worried about ending up homeless/dead for lack of care if I have a serious illness, there's no GMO in the food, and the climate is great. The people are also extremely friendly and welcoming. I felt like I was "coming home" when we moved here. I still feel like I belong here, everything seems so familiar....

So, I feel safer here, am not worried about ending up homeless/dead for lack of care if I have a serious illness, there's no GMO in the food, and the climate is great. The people are also extremely friendly and welcoming. I felt like I was "coming home" when we moved here. I still feel like I belong here, everything seems so familiar....

I agree with everything you posted, but your last paragraph in particular sums up the way I feel. This is HOME, and I love being here!

the climate is great

Ninety degrees here in the muggy fen!

/I know climate ain't weather