So you're thinking of living in London

I get emails on a somewhat regular basis from Americans who are thinking of moving to London. They've found my blog via a Google search or a link from an expat site and they're looking for advice or information or maybe just some kind of a cosmic sign that will tell them whether they should pack their bags or abandon this silly idea of living abroad.

I recognize these people because they are me -- or at least the me who spent all of last summer trolling the web for real estate listings and school information and practical advice about an undertaking like moving to London. When we were in the process of making our move, I reached out to anyone and everyone I could find who could give me some sense of what it would really be like to live here. The more people who told me what had worked or not worked for them, I figured, the better chance I had of making this work for us.

I'm incredibly grateful to the strangers who were willing to take the time to answer my emails and my phone calls and my endless stream of questions. Some of them eventually became my friends and others were simply short term correspondents, but all of them impressed me with their willingness to help out someone who they didn't even know. "I've been there," every one of them told me. That sounded a little simplistic to me then, but I get it now. It is because of the difference that all of those people made in my own move that I am always willing to return those "I hate to bother you, but..." emails which show up in my inbox periodically. What goes around comes around, and now it's my turn to be generous with my knowledge and experience.

Sometimes, however, I feel like I'm answering the same questions over and over again (probably because I am!). So if you're thinking of moving to London and you're looking for some information, here are a few links in which I may have already said what you want to know.

My family moved to northwest London in September of 2006. You can read about our experience with renting and furnishing a flat here and if you're curious about the place we ended up renting, you can see pictures of the outside and inside of our flat on the blog as well. We love the area we've settled in and feel fortunate to call it home, but I must admit that there's a flip side to our expat housing stipend that I hadn't anticipated which still sometimes throws me for a bit of a loop.

If you're a parent wondering about how your kids will fare in London, I've documented my early impressions of British education here and my thoughts about the differences between American and British children here and you can start brushing up on the British version of nursery rhymes here. My kids are relatively young, but on the whole, I've found them to be remarkably adaptable... often more so than me.

If you're interested in how your household might run over here, you might want to read up on the things we eat here or our laundry challenges. If there are certain American items that you simply can't live without, you'll certainly want to be forewarned about the wrong way to get them here. And you can also read about how we solved the car dilemma (though I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that despite my bravado when I wrote that post, it's my husband who does all of our car club driving these days... I'm still too damn chicken to get behind the wheel).

I was pretty lost and overwhelmed when we first arrived in London a year ago. I floundered for a while, wondering if this place would ever feel like home. And now it does... not a forever kind of home, but a place where I'm comfortable and happy and one that I know will always be a part of me. I love living in London and I wholeheartedly recommend this experience to anyone who has the opportunity to do something similar.

This is a personal blog. It's filled with stories about my kids and recaps of our travels and musings about life which are probably not interesting to anyone other than me. I'm certainly no expert on expatriation or life in London and I only know the ins and outs of my own small section of this huge city with any degree of confidence. But if you know where to look in my archives, you can get a decent sense of this one family's London experience. If you showed up here hunting for that kind of information, I hope that you found some of what you were looking for. And I hope that your London experience will be every bit as life-altering and wonderful as our is proving to be.

Cheers!