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Our Story (so far)

Nice to meet you, and thanks for joining us (now insert a warm smile, and an offer of some Yorkshire tea!). Us three ladies originally met in Yorkshire, and bonded over clotted cream and tales about what its like to live in Britain as an American chick, late twenties, no kids, and homesick on occasion. Through lots of Cadbury’s consumption, cheap wine and bitching about visa costs, we found that we shared a lot of the same ideas about British life!

 

Peaceful Yorkshire

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Allow me to introduce myself! I am Ms. Peaceful Yorkshire, and I live in England  ‘up North’ in Yorkshire. I live with my fiancée,  Mr. Chill, a laid-back Northern guy. We live in a sprawling Victorian  terrace house where I am usually freezing. I make him his steak and ale pie with one hand while typing my PhD thesis with another. He faithfully brings me Betty’s tea in bed every morning while I complain about the damp and the dang heating bills. You can’t get more classic then that, right?

I am a lady doing it for herself, working hard to make my council tax, sometimes too bold, a bit brazen, sarcastic,  and always offending the English Genteel folk (unknowingly, of course). I bring to you my experiences of understanding your controlling English sister-in-law,  Yorkshire chav dating, and the debate if you should attempt sex at a Band B. Oh and in these credit crunch times, don’t forget Aldi shopping! I am sure you can relate to it all too, or at least laugh with me about it.

As you might know, living in the UK as an American woman can be delightful, but frustrating and confusing all rolled into one. I love Mr. Chill, my charming, delightful British man,  but honestly, there are days I long for the heat of mi familia and my hot American climate. Rain again? Oh, for cryin’ out loud…!

Yankee Bean

yankeebeanIn 2000, I met an awesome English guy and never looked back.  Now, after braving it through a long-distance relationship, going through Visa hell, and adjusting to some of the hilarious differences between England America, here I am!   So I find myself down South living, working, playing and blogging.

Most of the time I love it here, sometimes it drives insane and sometimes it just baffles me.  Even after all this time, there are still things that take me by surprise about  the UK.

I’m a web designer, a pianist and voice over artist (but never all at the same time) – so I spend most days either buried in a computer or up to my neck in sound.

I lived in Yorkshire for the first 4 years of my time in the UK, but moved South when opportunity came knocking.   I guess that makes me the Southern Correspondent – for all your yank in the south p.o.v. needs.

Oh, and my fellow American-women-in-Yorkshire and I are going to stay anonymous.  When the three of us get together is one of the only times we can rant and rave without worrying about offending someone… it’s like cheap therapy except with wine and home-cooked food.  We’re staying anonymous so we can stay brutally honest!

Pacific Yorkshire Bird

pacificyorkshirebird2010Okay, so one of the first things I had to get used to when I starting seeing my British man and getting to know his ‘mates’ was the use of the word ‘bird’ to describe me and various other women hanging around.  I didn’t know whether to be offended or endeared.  Love it or hate it, I now accept that it is part of who I am.

I was born in the Pacific Northwest, lived in Yorkshire for 4 years, and moved back to the Northwest in May 2009.  At the beginning of this blog I was writing from the perspective of an American woman living in Yorkshire.

Now, I am sort of the Stateside correspondent sharing my experiences of coming home and bringing my lovely new husband with me.  In terms of my own personal culture I live somewhere between these two worlds.  And this is what She’s not from Yorkshire is all about.

Navigating differences and similarities.  Discovering things about the UK and the US that would have never occurred to us if we’d never got to live in England.  Celebrating the things that we love and hate about each place.  Fostering a sense of camaraderie.  Finding our own way in occasional awkward situations.  Overcoming being ‘his American bird’.  Fitting in without losing who we are.   So this is me: Pacific in origin, Yorkshire in location for a time but now returning to my roots, and to some I am ‘our mate’s bird’.

Update:

Pacificbird, one of our closest friends and fellow expat blogger no longer writes for SNFY…. she has  returned ‘home’ back to America with her British man and is now happily ever after…we say farewell to her with much sadness!

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  • http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com yankeebean

    Hi dragonflysky – thanks for stopping by!! Good Lord, I remember it well – it’s not easy jumping ship to a new land. A big turning point was when I met the other Not From Yorkshire ladies and finally had a place I didn’t have to keep my voice down :) The phrase ‘letting off some steam’ comes to mind…

    So welcome, I hope your move goes smoothly – keep us posted with how it goes!

  • http://www.iloveyouraccent.com Rochelle Peachey

    Hey Ladies, I have started a website http://www.iloveyouraccent.com
    Its for UK/US dating.
    Please check it out. I love your site, its very amusing and informative.
    By the way, I am an Essex girl now living in Florida.

    rochelle@iloveyouraccent.com

  • katieseattle

    Hey Ladies! I need your help!!!!!! I will be meeting the British parents for the first time fairly soon. Terrified doesn’t even begin to describe it! Are there any tips you can offer? Hugs vs. cheek kisses, handshakes, conversation topics? Any thing will help! Thanks! Wow, I just realized how many exclamation marks I used :p sorry.

  • GingerGirl

    katieseattle,
    I was so nervous too! Things went really smoothly, but his parents did go in for the hug and a kiss on the cheek. Conversation topics were really very simple, we talked about places we had visited in common, some of the places we most enjoyed in the respective countries, our favorite places in our on country. They seemed very interested in letting me talk about what I was doing here, how I enjoyed it, and also wanted to know more about where I was from, what I had done that brought me to the lovely UK and what I thought about things that were going on in America from an expat point of view. And of course wanted to make sure their son was treating me right! I have mentioned this on here before but when I was done visiting, my British beau told me his parents loved how “American” I was. Unsure how to take this statement, he explained that they like my enthusiasm, and my positive attitude. So I guess above all else, just be yourself! Good luck, I am sure they will just love you! let us know how it goes!

  • Brooke

    I have to say, I LOVE THIS SITE. I stumbled across it and I am thrilled. I am 27, divorced (eek!) and working on getting my documentation together for my visa in February 2011. It is so great to meet others like myself. If you ever need a fourth correspondent, I’m the Texas advertising exec that visited London on a whim for 4 days and fell in love with the place and hasn’t looked back since. I’m actually spontaneously going to London for holiday one more time (just because I can’t wait until the spring, soooo impatient) to celebrate New Year’s in London and I’m over the moon. Anyway, thanks so much for sharing your stories, I will bookmark the site and keep updated as it gets closer to visa time. Thanks again!

  • Red Slippers

    I am so glad I found this website! I have been living in England for 14 years and at the moment feeling very homesick. I am orginally from Kansas came over to work for a year met the love of my life and stayed!
    It is great to read what some of you miss from America and how those of you feel once you have moved back. At the moment I do not know what to do. I do feel a huge urge to move back but I do not even know where to start and where I would want to go. All the things about little holiday and the health care scare me and my husband even more!!

  • justAmericandesigned

    All of your stories are so inspiring! After one long year of long distance and missing England, I have finally gotten my break: a basically unpaid internship for 6 months. While it is DEFINITELY NOT ideal, I am crazy enough to accept it! For me, and my romantic self, being back in the country I love with the man I love is worth every penny I lose. To hear all of your stories about struggle and visa issues and attempts to stay… really makes me think that all of my hopes and dreams are possible!

  • SouthernBelle

    I just found this blog today and I LOVE it!!! I’m From Texas and my fiance is British. Wedding in Oct and moving to the UK in January (hopefully the Visa will be approved by then, it all depends on that really). It’s fun to read about your experiences. Also making me a little nervous! lol

  • Yoshi

    3 months into my transition to England and less than a month away from my wedding I am very happy to discover your blog. Like many of you I am here because I have fallen in love with an English man, and getting married. Living outside of Manchester as oppose to London, I haven’t run into many Americans… in fact I think it’s very rare here because I keep getting this annoying question from every new British person I meet, “You left New York City to live here? WHY??” It’s infuriating, probably because at times I ask myself that same question, but the truth is that my adventures in New York are finished and now I am ready to begin a brand new Chapter. It’s just refreshing to know there are others who are going through similar experiences.

    This blog just replaced “pandora radio” on my bookmark bar because as we all know, it’s useless to have that here…

  • Ms. Lovely

    It is a coincidence that Peaceful Yorkshire calls her love Mr. Chill… this is the reason why I decided to write, I just had a feeling of understanding where she was coming from.

    I met Mr. Frost back in the summer of 2009. We met in Madrid, while we were both there on vacation. I never lived in England, but spent a while there with him during the summer. Right after Madrid I decided to take a flight there before returning to California. We tried the long distance skype dating… haha remembering it makes me laugh, which didn’t last for more than 4 months when we decided we couldn’t be apart anymore. Then he came here. We have lived in a small university town for the last 2 years.

    Being with Mr. Frost has been an amazing learning experience, a defiance to both our realities. I never thought I would meet, much less utterly love and adore, a person who was the complete double and yet opposite of me, the parsley to my cilantro…

    But more elements have added a twist to this relationship.
    1) The speed at which it all began
    2)We are both from big cities and we are now in the middle of nowhere
    3)I come from a well to do family and he comes from lower middle-working class family
    4)I am a PhD student and he is a self made man.
    5)I am a gemini and he is a capricorn… and we fit the profiles for these signs to the T, when we checked we thought it was funny and eerie, they are in opposites sides to each other on that horoscope wheel.
    7)When we met I had lived in at least 5 countries and traveled around the world non-stop since I was 18, Mr. Frost had only been to a concert in Croatia and Euro Disney when he was a “young lad”, since he really prefers to stick to his own thing…
    6)And last but not at all least, I am of Mexican ancestry, as Mexican in my ways as you can get. I will also add in that I come from the north of Mexico from a very outspoken, friendly, open and affectionate family, and from a city where the climate is, as he says, “lovely”.

    So you must imagine what that is like… I have thought about writing my own blog about the mishaps and misunderstandings we have been through… and how yet I now prefer to have english pancakes with my coffee for saturday breakfast and he prefers to have a breakfast burrito with his tea.

    I am glad you girls have put the word out there and hopefully I will contribute to you as much as you are now contributing to my experience.

    Thank you

  • Lucky Ladybug

    Add me to the list of American ladies who have fallen for a Brit and is making her way to the UK! No doubt I’ll be on this site often – and I’d love to meet some of you all sometime!

    The journey of me and my Brit has not been – on the surface – a particularly easy one, but at the same time, it has been magical! We have known each other for 4 years, meeting at a conference in New York. We both have our own consulting firms, doing similar work in the US and UK respectively. We became fast friends. The attraction was undeniable but we remained friends only – we were both married at the time, him with kids.

    Over these few years we have stayed in touch for business. Then last spring came an opportunity to work together on an international project. At the same time, our previous relationships were both coming to tumultuous endings. We supported each other throughout difficult times, and last summer when we landed (together!) the contract for the international contract we’d been working so long to get, we celebrated together!

    So as I dealt with an angry ex, a disappointed family, a house unsellable in the present economy, all the while supporting myself and my young company… and he dealt with the financial challenges of separating from a wife who doesn’t work and the 4 kids he supports… we took gentle, loving care of each other. Though I still ‘live’ in the US and he in the UK, we have not gone more than 2 weeks without being together. We have set our priorities, maintained our responsibilities, and found – in each other – the other half we’d both been looking for.

    And now, I’m so thrilled to say that we’ve decided to move forward with formally living together, and sharing our lives. I’m renting my home here in the US and am going to stay with him in the UK. We’ll base ourselves there for our international work, which takes us to Europe and Asia, and still on a regular basis the US. The decision for us to be in the UK is also very important in that he is, and I hope to be, a very important part of his children’s lives.

    There has been nothing easy about anything either of us have done. Going thru a nasty divorce only to contemplate one more ‘upheaval’ to move to the UK was a decision I had to think long and hard about. But I lived for 10 years with a husband who didn’t give me an ounce of what my Brit gives me every single day. I am unable to even contemplate life without him by my side. He is my partner in business, in love, and in life.

    So cheers to the UK, and to all of you who have pursued love and opportunity fearlessly! :) I can’t wait for the adventure that lies ahead!

  • Anonymous

    You’re not alone – there are plenty of rocky-road-to-get-here expats. Welcome!

  • Florida Gal

    So I don’t live in the UK, but want to! I’m a therapist and am just in the beginning stages of trying to figure out what I need to do and what sort of culture shock to expect. I studied abroad in Scotland my junior year of college and loved it! But we all know that college and real life are totally different :) I’m looking at current job openings, and wonder about the salary. Do you pay taxes there like we do here? What is the national healthcare system like as a patient? 

    Thanks so much for any advice you can offer!!!

  • peacefulyorkshire

    HI Florida gal,
    Welcome to SNFY!
    Yep, you said it, living as a student is completely different than you might experience if you return to Scotland as a job hunter.

    We’ve written some posts in the past about some of the issues you raise, they are important ones– hope this is a start for your quest and good luck in this. :)
    For taxes
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2010/01/07/am-i-supposed-to-pay-taxes/

    For healthcare
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2010/03/27/healthcare-reform-from-an-expats-point-of-view/
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2010/08/12/the-nhs-lets-people-die-and-other-insane-misunderstandings/
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2009/03/12/this-american-in-britain-revels-in-free-nhs-contraception/

  • Anonymous

    HI Florida gal,
    Welcome to SNFY!
    Yep, you said it, living as a student is completely different than you might experience if you return to Scotland as a job hunter.

    We’ve written some posts in the past about some of the issues you raise, they are important ones– hope this is a start for your quest and good luck in this. :)
    For taxes
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2010/01/07/am-i-supposed-to-pay-taxes/

    For healthcare
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2010/03/27/healthcare-reform-from-an-expats-point-of-view/
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2010/08/12/the-nhs-lets-people-die-and-other-insane-misunderstandings/
    http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2009/03/12/this-american-in-britain-revels-in-free-nhs-contraception/

  • CO Girl in AZ

    Reading your blog already brings to mind laughs and horrors of mine and a girlfriends current experiences. We met our British men a year ago in the states are are currently doing the long distance tango and attempting to figure out who is moving which way and how. I am an occupational therapist and he is a pilot, and when considering both of our careers, it is looking 99% me to England and about 1% chance that he will head stateside. I am excited and mortified at the same time when considering a potential life abroad ‘forever,’ but at the same time our biggest concern at the ‘mo’ is how to get me there without being forced into a marriage visa to do so. A year ago, it would have been easy for me to get a job and a skilled worker visa, but since the changes in the immigration laws, it’s looking bleak to impossible. I am currently looking into therapy work on US military bases as a civilian, but would also appreciate any insights and words of wisdom you can send to me in regards to the entire process of paperwork, finances, and legal hoops to jump through! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, wisdom and humor (no ‘u’). ;)  

  • DAS

    What an amazing story!  Thanks for sharing…  I’m 8 months into my transition to the UK and everyday I come across a different kind of hurdle.  It’s nice to know that others are experiencing similar if not the same things as me.  

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