How did I wind up here?

Almost 12 months ago I decided to transition out of my job as a commercial real estate lawyer in Los Angeles and find a new career--either a new branch of the law or a new field entirely. To kick off my adventure and energize me for the changes ahead, I booked a 5 week trip to Nepal and India for myself. The trip began with about 2 weeks in Nepal on a hiking trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp (about 17,500 feet), and then took me to Delhi to join a 2 week food-lovers tour of some of India's major sights, ending in Goa.

One of the members of my trekking group in Nepal wound up being a chivalrous Englishman near my age, we'll call him "D", and during the course of the 2 week trip we fell in love. We spoke on the phone every day for the rest of my trip and D flew out to California to visit me 5 days after I arrived home from India. Things went well, so I then flew back to England 2 weeks later for Valentine's Day to visit D in his hometown of Birmingham. I'd been to the UK a half-dozen or so times before, but only for very short trips, and I'd never been to Birmingham before.

It was February, and freezing cold, but D took me to visit the home of Shakespeare in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon (which is utterly quaint and cute, despite the tourists everywhere with cameras slung around their necks), and showed me around his favorite haunts in Birmingham. We went out for drinks in Moseley and Harborne, and went shopping at the new Bullring Center near the New Street train station. At the end of my trip we went to London for a night and met some friends of mine for a fancy dinner at a Gaucho, a popular steakhouse. I was loving it!

In March I came back for another 10-day trip, and during my 3rd trip back in April, we spent a weekend down by the ocean in Devon, in a cute seaside town called Brixton. By May we decided that I should move over to England for awhile so we could try out life together--my month-to-month apartment lease was becoming expensive since I was only working part-time, and my car lease was up, so I had a window of opportunity to leave the US without having to get out of too many obligations.

After moving all my personal goods and some furniture into a giant storage unit, I came over with 2 giant suitcases of clothes in the middle of June, and have been living here at D's house in Wythall (a suburb of Birmingham) ever since, aside from a month home in California during September to attend a few weddings. I'm still working as a lawyer part-time whenever I can get the work from US clients, because I'm not allowed to work here yet.

D and I are still happy as ever, but we're not quite ready to tie the knot, so now I'm looking for a way to get a work visa, and I'll address that topic on another post!