I just stumbled across this thread and I’ve really enjoyed reading it!
I came to California as an exchange student in 2005, met my now husband and got engaged. Returned to England to finish uni and applied for K1 and then came back and we got married. Fast forward to May 2007 and our first son came along and we decided to move to England to be closer to my family (he’s not close to his) and to get ourselves more established and supported. We always planned to move back to Cali. We bought a house in England, had another baby and decided to move back in 2016 before our oldest left primary school (now it’s so weird that English kids go to high school at 11!). My husband got his uk citizenship too.
We moved back in November 2016 and just hit the ground running. I was pregnant when we moved (a ‘surprise’) so that was a bit stressful but we’ve settled now, bought a fixer upper and we love our life here! I personally feel my children have so many opportunities here - my oldest is 14 and an athlete, he’s been accepted at a great school (both academically and one of the best in the nation for football) and I just feel like he’s not had to grow up as quickly as they do in England. His friends from there seem to have such a different life than he does and I’m just grateful for the opportunities he has here to stay busy and focused.
I missed certain things at first like walking to town to do some shopping, cheese, crisps, a good chippy but I barely think of it now, I’d for sure miss more US stuff if we went back! I dislike the amount of grape flavored things, blackcurrent is just better!
The health care was stressful but we opted to go with Kaiser which is a HMO and that’s helped me figure everything out and I think we get great care which is much more thorough and way faster than in England. We are healthy though so I can’t speak on it from any other angle - I just appreciate that I can go to urgent care, get treatment, X-rays, prescriptions etc and be home in an hour!
American drivers are just terrible but I appreciate the big roads and ease of getting around. LA is a different story but at least you can get to it from two major freeways. I mean they just won’t let you switch lanes even when indicating in advance and they’ll just block the exit rather than let you out - what’s with that? Lol
I think living in both countries has been amazing and my husband knows the English culture and so do my older kids. My parents are moving out to live with us (MIL suite) within the next month so then there’s not much else to miss. In the future I’d like to buy a small flat there so we can go back more often but that’s a dream right now, maybe when the kids are out the house!
Oh and everyone thinks I’m Australian because I’m Northern!