Working In Europe vs. America

So, I have a little over a year now before my current UK visa expires (it's based on Grace being a student and me being married to her). For awhile now the rough plan has been to stay in the UK, as my employer would probably get me a work visa (they've done it in the past for other employees at my level). Grace thought she could get some good work experience while here and I could as well - plus I thought I might take a part-time master's degree course.

Trouble is, they're ramping up the requirements for a work visa now and things are starting to look not as promising. This guy in my office asked me why I would even want to work in the UK and not the USA, where I wouldn't have to jump through all these work permit hoops and I could be in my home country.

I thought about it and mostly it comes down to wanderlust in me. I don't actually want to just take a gap year and travel exclusively for a year, but I definitely want to live in new and interesting places. I still am really curious about the wider world and the idea of returning to America at this point seems like a big let-down to me. My favorite store in London is Stanford's the three story travel store. And I asked for (and got - thanks!) "The Travel Book" for Christmas, a book where each page is a different country and it's full of big pictures. I really like looking through all those pictures.

So, in satisfying my desire for a little adventure, London has several advantages. First, it is a little adventure, being a foreign country. Second, it's so much closer to other countries, so much easier to visit Europe, Asia, and Africa from this base point. Third, it's normal to get plenty of vacation from work to permit heavy traveling (I get five weeks off this year). Finally, traveling to very unusual places is extremely common here. In my office, normal people took their Christmas vacation to visit Singapore, Namibia, South Africa (and probably more). In America, it's not so normal to do that. You would be "the traveler guy." Here you can be you, and also do a lot of traveling. Of course, with no money, I'm not doing a lot of traveling - still, I feel like I fit right in over here in that regard.

That said, I definitely plan to move back to America. Just not yet. I consider myself an American, and I consider America, and Iowa City, my real home. But they can't be your home if you don't intend to move back there someday.

Anyway, that's why I hoped to stay in Europe for a few more years. If I don't get that work visa, we'll see what happens. I've also applied for Grad schools in the UK and I might stick around here to get my masters.