8 years in England as an American (and why it ended)

A reflection on my eight years of living in England, plus I answer your questions from Instagram.

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I’m Jess, I’ve lived in London for many years, and this channel is a London travel guide for anyone visiting the city that wants to experience it like you live here. Beyond talking about the usual London attractions, I show you some of the cooler things to do in London, that most travel guides don’t mention. Watch my videos and you’ll feel like you’ve got a Londoner friend telling you the best kept secrets in the city.

I thought i could make this a a fun little video but considering i couldn’t stop crying while i was writing the uh outline script i don’t really know how this is gonna go so july 13th is my eight year anniversary of moving to the uk from the us and in the past

It’s been fun to reflect on how many years it’s been and the journey of getting over here and everything that’s happened since i’ve been in london in the last couple of years it hasn’t been that way some of you who have been watching the videos for a long time will

Know that i originally moved over to the uk because i married somebody who was british and um and then those of you who have listened to my interview on hannah witton’s podcast would also know that that marriage is no longer a marriage i don’t really know how i feel about saying this on

Youtube because at least when it was on hannah’s podcast it’s very difficult for people to comment on podcast stuff um and i got a lot of really amazing messages from people after they listened to that podcast but those people had to seek me out on instagram

Whereas on youtube any old tom dick or harry can just pop down into that comment section and write whatever they want about uh me and my situation even though they know really nothing about any of it but the thing is when i did that podcast it seemed like a lot of people really

Gained a lot from it um there was a lot of people especially women that reached out to me that were in similar situations and they were happy to hear it and i know when i was going through my divorce that i didn’t feel like there was enough people enough information out

There for people to be able to relate to going through that so here we go i guess i’m going to tell you just the really brief story of how i moved over here because this is a video about eight years being in the uk i don’t really know how to

Get around and talk about that without you know talking about this whole thing so when i was 23 back in 2013 i married another 23 year old who is british and we got married young and quickly because i need we need to be married for me to be able to move over here

So yeah then i moved over here and life was pretty great but as most 20 year olds do and people in their 20s do i grew significantly over the majority of my 20s i can’t speak for the person the relationship but i guess there was some growth there too

And unfortunately we grew in different directions for something that’s very difficult to compromise on impossible really and that is the decision to have or not have children i felt i did not want to have children and i was definitely not in a position to just try it out and see how it went

Because that’s obviously extremely unfair to that child and my ex felt he had grown feelings that made him feel very strongly that he did want to have children so in early 2019 uh we separated and then just before all the covid stuff kicked off is when the divorce was finalized i was

Very lucky in that i originally was in london on two back-to-back spouse visas and then in 2018 i was able to get my indefinite leave to remain which is basically a permanent residency visa so although we are not together anymore i can still live here and work here and do pretty

Much everything except for vote so this whole anniversary thing it’s a bit sullied at this point because obviously the whole move over here was for a reason that no longer exists and i don’t even ever speak to that person or 95 of the people that were involved

In my first few years here in the uk it’s a bittersweet thing however at this point my life is so much better than it was before despite covet ripping through my business all the things i had to deal with and obviously anybody who’s gone through divorce knows how difficult no matter the

Intentions of the two people who are getting the divorce so yeah i i am trying to look at it as putting all of the negativity aside and remembering that i’m now living this much better life because of that decision that was made and i’m so incredibly lucky

I’m in a really good position better than most people in this world right now and i still get to live in london which is the city that i have absolutely loved for the last few years and i continue to grow to love as i discover new areas

I’m living in a new area i’ve never lived in before that i’m loving and overall despite it all it’s all been good and i’ve ended up in a good place wow that was a lot of deep thoughts for what you thought was just gonna be a video answering your questions on instagram

About what it’s like to live in the uk okay i am gonna go through questions that people submitted on my instagram about moving to and living in the uk for eight years i’m gonna go through these questions pretty quickly because there are a lot of them so

Excuse the bluntness for some of the answers jaggedreaction asks who does the best food us or uk i’m gonna say uk because the uk is better at incorporating vegetables and the portion sizes are closer to what normal humans should be eating lucy my my auntie said how’s your health

Insurance i don’t have any because we have socialized healthcare here and i don’t need it it’s freaking great one of the biggest blessings throughout all of this covid stuff is no matter how little money i made i never ever ever had to worry about if i was getting to get into a car

Accident or if i was to get covered and had to go into the hospital i never had to worry about paying anything if any medical problems cropped up at all i hope i will appreciate that until the day that i die as an american that is so big for me

Lisa bender asks so did you have friends over there and when no where did you find friends uh no i didn’t really have any friends over here i ended up making friends with my ex’s friends um they were some of my closest friends and then we’re not friends anymore

Because of everything that happened well a couple of really lovely ones um we’ve stayed close but everyone else we are not friends anymore um but also because the majority of my time i’ve lived here i haven’t worked in an office setting or i’ve just worked on my own really

Working from home it has been difficult to make friends but i have made some amazing friends mostly through what i do so meeting people in the industry through events and even just like chatting through instagram and then planning to meet up and having lunch and

Getting to know each other so i have a really amazing close-knit group of friends that i really cherish and love but you have to put the effort in to make friends like that here like a lot of effort mr billy sanchez asked at any point did you feel isolated

If so when did you feel it most yes i mean covid stuff i i definitely felt isolated just like at some points not being able to see my family um but actually oh and also i think obviously like in the beginning of when my separation happened

I felt very isolated and i like i had weekends where i was just not seeing i didn’t like speak to a single soul because none of my friends were around to do anything and then i was just living on my own the times that i felt the most isolated were i

Think it was about four or five years into about four years of my time here into it i think everyone thinks when you move abroad that you are going to feel lonely and isolated in the beginning and you absolutely can but what people also don’t understand is

That as you’ve you’ve started to make a life away from your family and your original friend group in a foreign country that those connections can really start to slip away and then so you lose friendships because you’re not together anymore and you can’t see each other all the time

And that’s for a variety of reasons too and that’s both good and bad that stuff like that happens but um so basically what happened for me was i was getting to like four year four into year five and i was feeling like my life back at home was

Disappearing not my family my family’s always been amazing but and then i was feeling like i wasn’t connected here because i was trying really hard to be part of a group of friends actually i didn’t really have anything in common with um and i had people in my life that truly would never

Be able to understand what it’s like to live abroad because they’ve never done it and they were not able to provide any support for me either so i did go to therapy a lot to try to get through that and i did come out through that which was good and

I learned what i needed to do to be able to feel more connections and to feel less lonely jumbo asked coming from the u.s was easy to adapt culturally we are very different when you say um so i don’t know i so before i moved here i lived in italy and obviously the

Culture difference there is significantly different than the culture differences between here and the u.s so i would say like culturally it is different but being in london is not that different from like being in new york and that’s where i would have been if i hadn’t moved here

So i wouldn’t say that like there was huge cultural differences just small things obviously language things that were different service at like restaurants is different but i wouldn’t say there’s anything like that was really difficult to deal with magikey devops asks what is different in your life between the first and

Eighth years from point of financial personal well obviously there is a pretty significant difference of i’m single i live i never thought i’d be living on my own in london but i gotta tell you i’m loving loving living by myself talking about like coming through

And getting better at being on uh my own and feeling less lonely living by myself is awesome i love it oh except i’m fully responsible for all the decor stuff which is why you’ll see my half-finished gallery wall over here i’ll finish it one day financially that’s been

I would have i feel like i would have been much better off if covet hadn’t happened i’m sure a lot of people can relate to that but i’m still in a really good a very privileged and lucky position so um i i’m okay with that and personally

I’m at this point with my friendships where i live really close to a lot of my friends that i spend the most time with and that feels really nice that we can just meet up on a whim when we’re bored after work or

If it’s a sunny day and we want to go to the park where i’ll live close enough to each other that we can go meet up for an hour or go get a coffee or a drink or something and i’ve always wanted that out of london i

Had that in florence when i lived there i loved being close enough to people to walk and meet up with them for just a little bit of time and not have to go all the way across the city to see them so i’m loving um yeah i’m loving that

Part of my personal life i would say i’m sure other other things have changed too i mean i was 23 when i moved here i’m 31 now so i’ve matured significantly i have different interests and different passions i feel very passionate about climate change um what else am i

I feel very passionate about climate change and environmental sustainability a few other political issues and i’ve definitely grown in that aspect too mr ash tim asks what is one thing you still get can’t get used to i don’t really know if there’s anything i can’t get used to i think

For example um not having air conditioning in the flats i don’t really find that that difficult i have a very good fan that keeps me cool and i just do what i need to do to keep the flat cold and i don’t complain about it i don’t think i think eight years is

Long enough that if i’m not getting used to something like i need to figure out what’s going on with me because there’s nothing that difficult in my life that i cannot get used to it lucy and asked how long was it until you felt settled in

Um i don’t feel like i felt settled in really until i moved into actual london so when i first moved to england i the first like year and a half or so i lived out in surrey which is a suburb um and it’s not in london it’s

In like the home county so it’s on the outskirts and lots of people commute in from there but i didn’t really feel like that’s where i belonged i knew i needed to be in the city so once i moved into the city and then i felt more settled because i also was

I didn’t have to get someone to drive me around places i could get anywhere i wanted to go on public transportation maricol asks most people you hang out with are from the uk or not necessarily so mostly not from the uk i have quite a few friends that are

American not by choice just because we meeting friends of friends and stuff i do have a pretty good group of friends who are english but uh i think at this point it’s more people who are not english like one of my closest friends is lithuanian you guys know my friend taylor fuller

She’s american and then yeah i have just kind of like a residual group of friends who are from all different places around the world oh i have a lot of australian friends too my friend elle that you she’s been around the channel she’s australian her husband’s australian

So yeah mostly not english connie musso said something you wish you had known eight years ago i think like a piece of advice i would give myself is to work harder to have a group of friends um that is not affiliated with my ex-husband that was obviously a very difficult part of

Dealing with the divorce uh is losing like a huge group of friends that i have worked so hard to be friends with so i was so lucky i did have a small group of close-knit friends outside of that circle that we have become so much closer because of everything that happened so i’m

Really happy that i got to like nurture those friendships and now i’m starting to build a bit of a bigger group of people who i’m really close with who are just my own friends and it’s really nice trip hacks dc asks do brits dig the u.s accent

Okay so it’s not like how you know how americans love the british accent for either because they think it’s like really cool or because it’s sexy or something um so i don’t think brits think american accents are sexy at all some occasionally people will say to me oh i really like your accent

I don’t know why i feel like sometimes american accents even like grind my gears and sometimes i i like hear myself and i’m like oh my god just stop talking mary nico asks do you see yourself living in the uk for another eight years or move back to the us

I plan to stay here for the longest term obviously my business is based here and also i’ve lived most of my adult life here so i really don’t really want to start over again um only if like some crazy cool opportunity came up but then it gave me the option to come back

As frequently as i wanted so no i’m staying here and i also can’t don’t want to leave the free healthcare and i like that there’s no mostly no guns here michelle rodriguez asks do you feel like you can call the uk home yes this is when i say sometimes i still

Call new york home just because it’s like out of habit but for sure when i refer to home this is what i mean is here in my flat in london mary cecilia asks what is the most difficult part of living in london and that is absolutely the cost of it

Especially as someone who owns her own business and that the income from that significantly fluctuates even at the best of times so um dealing with especially now that i’m living on my own and i really really would like to continue living on my own it’s very expensive

To do that for me personally some people probably don’t think it’s expensive natalie asked were there places you love to go since you first moved to the uk that closed because of covid i think the only one that’s definitely closed so far is a restaurant called cub and we

Actually just before kobe kicked off we went and filmed a whole video about that restaurant and it’s a low waist restaurant that was started by mr lyon the famous mixologist and also doug mcmaster who is the guy behind silo which is the uk’s first fully zero waste restaurant

Um so they were doing really cool things the food was amazing the chef there matt was fantastic all the staff were were so great there and i was really looking forward to like sending more of you guys there to support them into just going to visit myself

And um they did shot early on in during covid which was sad but i’ve seen matt the chef a couple of times he has um he started a new business and he’s at a different pub and stuff so i’ve seen him a couple times so that’s been nice

Val springer asked do you ever speak with a uk accent no can’t say never someone did ask can you speak in and out no way um i usually have to have quite a few beers in me for that to happen and it’s usually like when i’m imitating somebody being like

Annoying and posh i guess i would say like being the only thing when i do speak differently now in terms of my inflections of the end of my sentences tend to be a bit different obviously i use british vocabulary now over american vocabulary so saying words like jumper instead of sweater

And pants instead of underwear because that gets confusing if you don’t get that right fresh seaside ass what irritates you mostly in the uk i don’t know if you’re it’s not irritate that’s the right word but i really miss having like really nice beaches that you could go to most of the summer

The uk obviously has beaches england has beaches but i’m from new york i grew up on long island i was literally surrounded by fairly nice beaches on the ocean and you could just drive there and pay like five bucks to park and just have spend a day

At the on the really nice sandy beach and that’s not really as common here it’s just like a whole different vibe really so i do miss like being able to easily get to nice beaches kepner asked any other businesses that you’re currently working on well i have two ideas i really want to

Kick off but um i the plan is i need love in london to get back to a stable level of revenue and then that means i can get people i had hired freelancers before kobe and i had to let a few of them go but i want to get freelancers

Back in to take over a lot of the work that i’m having to do again and then once that’s kind of running a little bit smoother i want to invest and start building these other businesses so watch this space kebner also asked after eight years did you get used to the weather um

Yeah i’m used to it it doesn’t i’ve said this in other videos recently it doesn’t rain as much as everybody says however ironically it is pouring outside right now and it’s meant to be like this for the next like nine days um but i actually quite like that in the

Summer it doesn’t get blistering hot and the winter doesn’t get as cold as it does like say in new york so that’s nice donna asked do you ever feel the urge to move back to the states no i think i kind of answer this but no urge to move back

Maybe at some point if like my family my parents start to get unwell or something like that then maybe temporarily i would go back to help them but no i really don’t my my life is here and i think my life is better because it’s here s robinson asks are there

Things you miss from the states that you can’t get or do or eat in the uk the only thing really that i miss consistently which is kind of weird but is frozen yogurt where you can go and put the toppings on yourself we have a lot of frozen yogurt here

But you tell the people what toppings put on no i don’t want that i want to go in i want to have the cup i put as much frozen yogurt in as i want usually what i do is and tell me if you guys know this trick if you don’t

Game changer you do some of the froyo then you go get toppings and then you do more froyo on top and then you get more toppings because then you you aren’t like you eat all the toppings at the top and then just from you at the bottom then it’s

All layered and it’s all mixed together but i want to be able to do that and then i want to go and i want to weigh it and see how heavy it is and i want to pay by the weight i have not found a place here that i can do that

If you know some place in london i can do that please please tell me in the comments passporting to can’t read the rest before covet how often were you able to travel to other countries so um before kovid i was traveling a lot for work mostly also some fun and i was

Traveling like once a month for the months leading up to covid um when all this stuff goes away and we can travel again i will not be traveling that much because actually i love being in london and i kind of feel like i travel sometimes when i’m in london

So i don’t feel the need to go to a bunch of different countries around europe on the weekends i also am now aware of like how much of an environmental impact that has if i was to fly to do that to go to all these places

So i’d rather save up and do like longer trips um so i can just fly once every couple of months or once every few months that being said though i think i have seen a lot of europe already from my many years of traveling through various ways so

I’ve seen a lot that and i don’t feel compelled to like go to a bunch of places the only place i really like to go to is i like to go to italy obviously and i just like going to places down south where it’s warmer and it’s by the sea and stuff so

Sazdova asks do you regret moving to the uk or if you could go back would you do do things differently um i don’t regret it i don’t know it’s a tricky one i’m not really at that place where i’m like everything happens for a reason you know

It’s um the like i look back on that time where i was married and and you know i’m thankful for it i’m not really like in that mature position yet however i’m really happy where i ended up so i don’t re no i don’t regret it as the answer

Charles shuffy asked do you ever consider moving back to be closer to family i kind of have answered my family i have lived on another continent from them for even before i moved here so almost for a decade i have learned to live far away from them and

They have learned to live far away from me i’m also quite lucky in that my parents have my sister who lives like 20 minutes away from them so they aren’t on their own or anything but that being said my parents are still fairly young and in okay health so

This might change if that changes solan asks what did the english lifestyle teach you i think um it taught me to appreciate smaller spaces and having less things consumerism is a thing here but not as much as it is in the us so people are used to having smaller houses but they still

Make them work and they just have less crap in them to be honest i’ve also learned to be a bit slower with things and to appreciate cutting the end of the day off especially as somebody who works for herself i have to have a hard and fast like 6 30

Ish i should be stopping work because i’m gonna go meet friends at the pub because that’s what you do it’s the evening you’re finished working now um so i feel like if i were to live in new york i would not feel that way and i’d probably just work

All the time it’s also taught me that you don’t really need a dryer for your clothes or your sheets or your towels and anyone who tells you otherwise that lives over here don’t listen to them they’re just being cranky my electricity bills are so low because i don’t have a dryer

So i air dry everything and towels are a little bit crunchy but you know what i get over it it’s fine thank you for watching this really weird and strange video and probably not at all what you expected i hope you’re hanging in there and doing okay during what is still very

Difficult and crazy times and yeah thanks for being here and watching to the end stay well cheers to another eight years hopefully