Let’s just move to England! How hard can it be?
Today my UK passport arrived. This is very exciting because it means I actually am a British Citizen. It says so right on the passport! It also means that when I arrive in London they have to let me in for as long as I want.
On the other hand they don’t have to let Sue and the kids in. For that we need to prove that they’re worthy of that privilege. Unfortunately, several aspects of this whole move are suffering from a chicken and egg problem.
For example, We cannot rent a house without a bank account in the UK, but we can’t get a bank account in the UK without a permanent address!
Here’s another: We cannot apply for visas for Sue and the kids unless their sponsor has a permanent address in the UK with a house or apartment big enough to hold the entire family. Unfortunately I am their sponsor! So this kinda means we have to figure out where we’re going to stay in time for applying for and receiving our visas. But we don’t know where we’re going to live because we don’t know where the kids are going to school.
Which brings me to a third: We can’t figure out where we’re going to live until we figure out what school the kids will go to. But we can’t even get on the waiting lists of the schools in the really good, Palo Alto like districts until we have an address in that district. And get this - they sort the waiting list by the number of paces to the front door of the school! Anyway, how can we commit to a district that cannot commit to us at the same time?
Luckily this kind of thing doesn’t phase Sue one little bit. She is heading out to London again in a couple of weeks and I am fully expecting her to come home with the problem solved. Why? Because that’s the kind of girl she is.
If it were me we’d still be considering the option of perhaps moving to London some day before the kids leave home for college. Why? Because that’s the kind of guy I am.
Still - Sue and I did a little dance in the garage when the passport showed up. Only yesterday we were led to believe that it would be another three weeks, possibly more, before we saw it (due to technical difficults at the Embassy).