How to meet & keep new homegirls??

My previous job was like that - we had to choose our vacation weeks for the whole year in one go... we had to give first and second choices for the weeks we wanted and then hope we got them.

yep... that's exactly what we have to do!

That is much easier, and with a spousal visa, you could work and use the NHS for 'free' immediately, neither or which are allowed on a fiance visa.... though you would need to get married in the US or a third country, as you need a visa to marry in the UK.

Just to clarify though, a marriage visa IS a fiance visa. Once you are married, you apply for a spousal visa. There's actually no such visa officially called a 'fiance visa' - that's just what we call it on the internet .

The actual visa names are:
- Marriage visa... valid for 6 months, for the purpose of getting married in the UK. No work or study allowed, no NHS access
- Spousal visa... valid for 33 months, for people who are already married to a UK citizen. Work and study allowed immediately, and full NHS access.

Thank you so much for clarifying all of this. So much vernacular to learn and of course, want to get it right the first time!! LOL!

I work for a bank, and they ask us to choose our holidays for the following year in September. Like, in a couple of months, we have to say what days we want off for 2018!
 

Wow!!! That is so...different! 

Think way way waaaayyy ahead!

Tennis is huge here! Wimbledon?
Haha. It just depends on where you are. We have courts near us, we just need to get some racquets. ☺

Well, I am in the North. There are a couple of tennis clubs which aren't too far away. A quick 15 minute train ride or the bus are options. There is a park nearby but of course, we're gonna need some dry days for me to be able to play outdoors. I played 5 days a week in LA so I'm definitely missing it. I sure so hope I can get back to it soon. And yes, I will ABSOLUTELY be trying to go check out Wimbledon next year. This year was a bit too busy and low on spending funds as we went to three concerts in one week!
 

And there's the Tennis Tour Finals in London in November.

If you become involved in planning for the 9 year old's life, that will give you plenty of chances to get to know more people socially.  Schools have quiz nights and social events for the parents.  There's also a lot of standing around while the little darlings do sports. 

Was it Ksand who explained the very important rule that you are never allowed to speak to anyone on public transport?  There's one important exception- when it all goes wrong.  When there's a giant failure, everyone comes together and rolls eyes and moans.  The next day, when everything is working again, you are permitted to make eye contact and nod, but no talking allowed. 

It makes sense really, the last thing you want on your commute is an obligation to make small talk the whole way.   Every day. 

All of my friends that are not mutual friends with my husband, are from my job.  Will you be working here?  I have found that a particularly bad day at work creates an exception to the rule of having to plan things well ahead of time: if sh*t really goes down, we go across the street to the pub as soon as work is done. 

My coworkers also plan things well in advance, which is nice because when the activity is clubbing I have a long time to come up with a reason to not go. 

Was it Ksand who explained the very important rule that you are never allowed to speak to anyone on public transport?  There's one important exception- when it all goes wrong.  When there's a giant failure, everyone comes together and rolls eyes and moans.  The next day, when everything is working again, you are permitted to make eye contact and nod, but no talking allowed.

But the next time you see those people, you must pretend to have never spoken!

And there's the Tennis Tour Finals in London in November.

Oh, now that's a definite possibility then! 

All of my friends that are not mutual friends with my husband, are from my job.  Will you be working here?  I have found that a particularly bad day at work creates an exception to the rule of having to plan things well ahead of time: if sh*t really goes down, we go across the street to the pub as soon as work is done. 

My coworkers also plan things well in advance, which is nice because when the activity is clubbing I have a long time to come up with a reason to not go. 

Ha ha ha! Then you and I need to hang out while everyone else goes clubbing. I did waaaayyyy too much of that in my twenties. Only club I like to frequent now is Club Bedtime.

Yes, I do plan on working... actually wanting to start a business of my own but I'm still learning all the ropes of this land and need to know where and if I can fit in when it comes to business.

CLUB BEDTIME!!  omg.

Where in the country will you be?

It's rough because looking at a lot of my British friends/in laws, a lot of the people they hang out with are relatives.  My MIL has a couple friends from work, but other than that she hangs out with her siblings socially.  She's not the only one.  I have no family here and even if I did, I'm an only child.  So it is hard! (I definitely know to have more than one kid now though so they can hang out with each other.)

Also what's weird is that in the US the vast majority of my friends were women.  Here there's a good mix.  I don't know if British men are easier to get along with as friends than American men or what.  Literally no one to compare it to back home.

I work for a bank, and they ask us to choose our holidays for the following year in September. Like, in a couple of months, we have to say what days we want off for 2018!
 

The last job I had in the US (back in 1995), I worked on the production side of a newspaper where we MANUALLY built a paper from scratch. We were a department of 27 and my job title was "page builder". Seriously, we "built" a newspaper out of display ads and text for 15 weekly papers. In 2017, it's all computerized and the department has been scrapped to four. Anyways, newspapers are daily so getting time off was rough. We had the "seniority rule" every November 1 when the department head would bring down the newly printed calendar for the following year and we would "pick" out holidays for the following year but in order of seniority. I was generally #23 or so. I never got a holiday off. But seriously, who knows what's going to happen in a year?! That's one of the many reasons I became self-employed from 1997.


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The last job I had in the US (back in 1995), I worked on the production side of a newspaper where we MANUALLY built a paper from scratch. We were a department of 27 and my job title was "page builder". Seriously, we "built" a newspaper out of display ads and text for 15 weekly papers. In 2017, it's all computerized and the department has been scrapped to four. Anyways, newspapers are daily so getting time off was rough. We had the "seniority rule" every November 1 when the department head would bring down the newly printed calendar for the following year and we would "pick" out holidays for the following year but in order of seniority. I was generally #23 or so. I never got a holiday off. But seriously, who knows what's going to happen in a year?! That's one of the many reasons I became self-employed from 1997.


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Hey, I was a page builder & copy editor for my college newspaper! So much fun because it was just a hobby. I've also had a lot of jobs where they made you book the following year's holidays a year in advance, and I hope I never have another one like that!

I'm definitely worried about the friends issue. I have a lot of music acquaintances from over the years scattered around the country, but I don't really "go out" any more because of my health. I'm an introvert and so is my husband, and I guess that's part of why we work so well but I do need people to go do things with occasionally! I actually went on meetup.com and used that as part of the basis for which towns/cities I'd be ok moving to initially because I wanted to make sure there were some professional and social gatherings that match my interests. I figured that would probably be the best shot I have at making friends, because it's what worked best here in the states too.

SUPERRRR late to the party as I was in the US so only catching up on all the threads I've missed now, but all I can say is that it's been almost 4 years for me over here and I am only just now starting to become independent in terms of building friendships. Everybody says to make friends at work but I can tell you that - depending on the situation - it's not always that easy. It took me two years in one role of people older than me who I had very little in common with before I moved to a new role where there was somebody in my age group that I have now (a year later) started hanging out with outside of work.

What I will say is that I started getting more involved in hobbies now that I can drive (independent mobility has been BEYOND amazing!). I have started slowly speaking more and more to the people in the classes I've taken. Maybe some of those will eventually develop into friendship, maybe they won't - but the point is that if I've increased the chances by putting myself out there in the form of picking up hobbies after work/on weekends where I now have the potential of meeting people. I would strongly suggest doing this early on if possible!   MeetUp could also become your best friend. I know it's an amazing way to get out and do new things with new people, but I've not actually done any of that yet because I personally can't get past the roadblock of being the "new person" in a group that may have been already meeting for months or years prior to me. That is something that I have to work on as I think some of the meetups could be really cool if I could get past my own anxiety about that, but if you think you could jump into activities like that, I strongly recommend it as I've heard some success stories there! If there's a local "Expat" group where you are from, that might be another good resource. We started a book club in the one closest to me and it's nice to get out with other American's every so often as these are people that can relate to your particular way of thinking on certain topics based on cultural background.

Where is it that you are located over here? Apologies if you already mentioned it, I was just skimming and I only read through some replies n the first page (I'll go back and read the rest but figured I was late enough replying that I would just reply first and read the rest later hah)