Boardsies Abroad-What is your story?

Ruu_Old

Just interested to know (ok, ok I'm nosey!) how you all got where you are right now.

My story started in May 2001 when I met a delightful girl who hailed from the interweb. After many, many trips back and forth from the US, we got married in April 2004. She came to live with me in Ireland for a while but we both decided we wanted to up and leave for America. Then came the long and expensive US visa process which actually didn't take that long. It was about 6 months from start to finish and we processed everything ourselves and had no lawyer involved.

We travelled with our 8 suitcases in April 2005 and never got charged for any of the extra bags which was good fortune and probably just coincidence but I'll take that. We stayed with Marie's (wife) parents until December of that year when we found a nice apartment and same time the next year, we found a beautiful house. Luckily we both had settled into our jobs at that stage as well. I also get back to Ireland whenever I can as my folks are getting old and I do worry about them at times even though I should be getting on with things.

My immigration status is pending at the moment, since I married an American citizen, I have to remove the conditions and basically show the USCIS that the marriage wasn't just a fraud. I had my biometrics appointment last month and am just waiting to hear back from the terribly slow Nebraska Service Center. Anyway, that is me, what about you? If you feel like telling.

Faith

When I was about 15, a friend of the time said to me, "I'd love to study in Edinburgh. It's supposed to be an amazing city!". The idea got stuck in my head, I researched it and finally applied to a bunch of Scottish unis. I was sick of Ireland and didn't want to stay there, so I was delighted when I got accepted by my uni. I panicked at the 11th hour, but my mum wouldn't let me back out. I settled down there with 3 flatmates in University accommodation, and then my parents bought me a flat in a lovely area for the next three years. That's where I'm living now!

The Sweeper

Ooo lemme see...

I come from a long line of roaming migrants - both my parents were very well travelled before settling down. My siblings both moved out fairly young - one's in England, one in Scotland.

Five years ago this year, I moved to England because I felt like I needed to get out of Ireland and see more of the rest of the world. Didn't get far - though have been all over England, to Holland, Germany, Madeira, China and Australia since then.

Moving to Australia in... erm (/counts) three weeks time for good.

As Ruu says - my parents are spritely septuagenerians by now, so moving 12,000 miles away from them isn't easy. Has to be said - I had the conversation with the husband. The one where you say "if I get 'the call', I need you do sort out my travel arrangements while I disappear off into a corner and dissolve". He's vowed to organise it.

Travelling is great.

Leaving people behind you isn't.

Love2love

Finished up college for the summer and decided to visit some friends in France for a couple of months and as the old story goes, girl meets boy, falls in love and never returned to her native land. In Germany now with the boyfriend and a baby but coming back in September for good and I cannot wait!!! There is just something about Ireland

galwaydude

I met my now wife back in 2003 in dublin on a nightout on the town. It didnt matter that she was american, made it more interesting.

We both realised that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together so fast forward to 2007. We will be married a year in april and finally things are working out for us both here. Going through the immigration process sucked as it wiped away our life savings and any money we got from our wedding. Not been able to work for 6 months pretty much sucked big time.

In saying that i made the right move to move here with my wife. She has family here and wanted to be near them and i fancied a change after 5 years living in dublin. I love the states but its not Ireland.

Thats our next dilemma, my wife is due in the fall. All my family are back in ireland apart from a brother who is moving down under in 6 months. Ideally if possible we want to float between ireland and the states.

Rabies

I had enough of my job and Ireland in Oct '06. Handed in my 4 week notice to my dad. Told my parents I was moving..... to New Zeland for a while. Shocked reaction. Left the first week of Nov. Loving it here.
I was offered a job in America and nearly went back, but decided to turn it down about 1hr ago. Gonna stay here.

Skittlebrau

Born and bred in Dublin. Met an Aussie girl in Jan '04. She decided to move home in Nov '05. I followed. Been here just over year now. Visa application is pending. Hopefully it will all work out. Don't really miss anything about Ireland (except family and friends of course).

WexCan

Got a bit bored with Ireland, fancied a change, moved over to the UK last year to take up an airline job, no regrets at all.

pow wow

Went to England to finish secondary school - ended up staying 6 years! Got major cold feet about staying there forever so came back home to go to uni (I was offered a great job at the end of secondary school which I stayed in til I got back) and am away in America on an exchange year. Due "home" in about 2 months, trying to find a job for the Summer and figure out what my next adventure will be!

Ireland will always be home but the longer I am away the less there is to come back to.

Murtinho

Got a young lady in trouble, we fecked off to sweden and the excellent childcare facilities. Were now married and the kids are finished with daycare so were moving back this July

iarlaoha

I'm currently living in Toronto, Canada.

I lived in Dublin for most of the last few years (I spent a bit of time in Galway), and like Ruu and Galwaydude, fell in love with an American girl at the beginning of last year. As a result of that, I spent most of last year yoyoing back and forth to the US, managing to blow my savings just to be with her, between flights and keeping myself afloat while I was staying with her. She's been to Ireland too.

It became very obvious very quickly that this was the one, mutually and so we got engaged about a month ago. Neither of us really want to live in Ireland right now, although it's a possibility further down the road, and so we've been trying to decide how to proceed.

With all my transatlantic ping ponging, I haven't really had a settled life for most of the last year, and while we're setting a date and figuring out the immigration stuff to allow us to get married, I decided to take advantage of having Canadian citizenship, and have moved to Toronto. She's coming up to see me in a fortnight, and I'm going to see her for a few weeks at the end of May. We're now looking at the possibility of her moving to Toronto rather than me moving down to her, as the Canadian immigration system seems to be a bit more friendly than the US one.

I'd be interested to find out more from Ruu and Galwaydude on how their whole process went moving to the US through marriage.

Ruu_Old

I'll be honest with you when I say it was heartbreaking at times not to mention the expense. There was little support in relation to getting your paperwork filled out correctly. Either you go it alone and be extremely careful (otherwise you are back to square one) or you pay for a lawyer.

The USCIS are also increasing the charges considerably (see if any of this may apply to you) for visas so that is something to look into. If I had the choice, I would stick with Canada. I'll gladly help you out in any way I can as it was hugely stressful on me and I would be able to relate to some of what you may have to go through. The whole system needs a change from top to bottom.

r3nu4l

Well I met soon-to-be Mrs r3nu4l while I was doing my PhD and she was an undergrad at NUI Maynooth. She proceeded to do a PhD while I worked as a laboratory post-doc.

She was doing really well and had published in top journals and was one of 6 PhD students from Britain and Ireland shortlisted for the Royal Institute Postgraduate student of the year award. She saw how terrible life as a post-doc researcher in Ireland can be (poor pay, no career track, no benefits and no permanent positions, all short-term contracts with no gaurantee of a pay increase in your next contract!). She decided that when she finished her PhD she wanted a permanent job. So we looked all across Ireland for permanent jobs in her scientific area and lo and behold, there are none. ZERO.

So she applied for a job in a well known, world famous scientific institute in England and was offered a job straight away, beating 135 other candidates. So we moved over in July/August 2004 and have been here since. We rented up until December last year when we decided to buy a house. We found a great place and thankfully the process went smoothly and we moved in in December.

I'd love to move back home permanently today. I like living in England but it's never going to be home for me, Ireland really is in my blood, I didn't want to leave and I don't really want to be here but that's the reality of it so I get along with things. My parents were over this weekend, it's the first time they've visited me since we moved to England so I was really happy to see them. I guess that if I want to move home permanently we have to do something to give us both financial security so we are putting an (initially) web-based business plan together and want to be up and running by Q1 2008.

Ajos

I had a short holiday in NYC back in June 2001, and a friend there I'd worked with while a trainee at Sony studios in LA back in 1997 basically told me he could get me a job no problem, even without a green card. But I wanted to be legal - being illegal seemed really heartbreaking if you didn't have a pressing financial reason to do it, and I didn't. So I applied for the Lottery.

September 11th happened, and the film industry in New York basically shut down and retreated to LA. My friend moved to Paris. I got a letter saying I'd won the lottery. Hmm. I went ahead with the next stage of the application anyway, not knowing if it was still a good idea.

In 2003 I got my interview. By this stage I'd becaome disillusioned with Dublin. I felt my career as a sound editor was in a bit of a rut, and I was just generally getting bored and frustrated with my life there. NYC seemed to be bouncing back slowly, and in the end I thought "what the hell". It seemed the kind of thing I would regret not doing more than doing, even if it was a dismal failure.

Which it was, for a while. I eked out a living for nine months sound designing NYU students' short films, one deeply low budget feature, teaching part time at the NYFA, sound designing an art installation and even doing rewrites on a DTV science fiction movie starring Ted Raimi.

It was torture - there was always something big about to happen if I could stick around long enough, but it never did. I actually won an award for one of the student films, but I just wasn't making rent. I had maxed out all my credit cards and borrowed as much (and more) from my parents as I felt I could.

I gave up and called my Dad to get him to buy me a ticket back to Dublin. Literally three hours later a former roommate (I'd been moving into succesively cheaper apartments) called me and told me about a quick job at a video game company. Well paid. It would allow me to stay another month, maybe something would click in that time.

That one week stint dialogue editing for a video game turned into six, then another six, then another until eventually they hired me as the Production Audio Asset Manager. I've been here in NYC three and a half years and this morning I signed a contract to buy an apartment in Brooklyn.

I love it. And no women involved! Well, not in my decision - there have been a couple since then.

BEAT

My story is a bit opposite I'd say I found boards through Phantomfm online...
I joined boards in 2001, I forget that user name now and didnt post for a few months when I found the site again I re-registered as BEAt and made a load of friends. I had already been over to Ireland and Loved it so was at that stage making plans to move there.
I ended up in Dublin and went to a fair few boards beers in Dub and Galway and met loads of great people, wonderful friends
I was forced to move back however because of my citezenship status I wasnt able to find work, legally
I had 2 guys willing to get married so I could stay and I was going to do it, i moved in with him on a complete friend only basis and got our stories straight, registered to do it and then ... I decided it wasnt fair to him to make that kind of sacrafice.

If I had dont it Id now have been there long enouf to apply for citezenship and get the divorce etc... and I miss it there so much so I go back every year for a visit but in the long run I couldnt let my own wants and the fact that he was young and naive make it easy for me to get what I want.

There are other ways, and besides what would have happened if I had met someone or he met someone in the meantime and wanted to marry them?
So I did the "moral" thing and went back to the states where I sit and rot
hahaha

No guy involved in my move, I just love it there and hope to someday move back

Willymuncher

Met a lovely American girl on the Oceanfree chatroom back in December 2002, started out as something harmless, someone to talk to every now and then but quickly developed into something more serious. We managed to meet for the first time when she flew to Ireland in December 2004, we got on even better in person than we did online and thats when the heartache began, leaving each other each time over the course of the next two years was a bitch as we both flew back and forth to visit one another.

When she finished school in June 2006 she flew to Ireland to be with me, we got married in November and decided to come back to the US to visit her family as they weren't able to attend the wedding, we then decided that we wanted to stay, so here I am living in her parents house waiting on my green card.

I had my interview for it today which went really well, even though I came in on the waiver program (which I figured would be a problem), the whole immigration process so far has been surprisingly easy, although we do have an attorney...so that definitely takes a lot of stress out of it. Should have it sorted within 90 days so I'm told.

FatherTed

I worked for US company that was closing it's Irish office, and they offered me a position at their headquarters in White Plains, NY. Though I had never thought about moving before that, I was young and unattached so I decided to give it a whack for 6 months. Tomorrow(April 10) will be 15 years to the day I came here. Of course a few things have happened in the meantime, meeting my wife, having kids, changed jobs etc.