Hello everyone,

I hope it is okay for me to post on your board.  I went on the net in search of finding new friends in England.  My name is Megan and I live in Southern California, USA.  I am absolutely in love with England although I have never been there.  My husband calls me an anglophile.  I think it must be my ancestors calling me.  My entire family on my father's side is from England.  My ancestors reach back to the 15th Century in England and came over to America in the late 1700s.  Anyway, I really would love having new friends from your beautiful country.  I would love hearing about what it is really like there, what your lives are like, what your interests are, etc. 

Any takers?

~Megan 

Welcome to the board! I'm one of the community leaders for this board and it is nice to hear from you! We've had a few new faces appear on board over the last few days so I'm sure you'll get to know some friends soon.

Fascinating that you know your family history, wish I had time to look into mine.

Are you planning to visit England in the future? You should try one of those house swaps, I'm sure someone would love to spend time in California!

I really love England. I love the landscape, particularly the Lake District, Pennines and Yorkshire Dales. Beautiful, but also unforgiving when the weather sets in. And I'm sure you know, as a nation we are a little obsessed with the weather, but that is because it is so changeable.

I currently live in London. It's a fabulous city, I love living here, although it is very expensive. I'm a stay at home mum at the moment, so I don't really get time to go into the city at present but I love the architecture of the old and modern all mixed together. Art galleries are fab too.

Anyway, a bit about me - I'm 31, live with my partner and daughter, love football (soccer!), reading, listening to music and playing the piano badly!

Hi Megan,

I'd also like to welcome you to the board. I enjoy chatting to people from other countries. I like to hear how things differ for them to what they do here. I think the UK could leanr a lot from other countries.

A bit about me..... well I am 34 and have 3 children, 1 boy and 2 girls and am very happy to be expecting a baby boy in January. My oldest is 18 and my youngest is 3 so I have quite an age gap! My partner is a lorry driver who works away a few days in the week. I don't mind too much as it means the time we spend together is extra enjoyable. Do you have any children or any plans for some in the future?

I've never been to America but would love to one day. It's such a big place compared with here. I'd love to have the experience of shopping in New York, to see the lovely beaches, to visit the casinos and well just about everything really! My dad went a couple of times on business and thought it was a wonderful place. He was in the bowling industry which is so small here compared to the bowling centres you have over there. His centres had 16 lanes where as I can't remember the exact figure but I know the ones he visited there were huge. My dad thought it was great and was amazed with the place.

Do you have any hobbies?

Look forward to chatting to you.

Hi Sunshine,

Thanks for the welcome.  Congratulations on the new baby boy on the way!  My goodness, two of each!  You are very blessed indeed.  You definitely have a large age gap, but I think that is wonderful.  My husband is 19 years older than his youngest brother and he tells me it was so great to have a baby brother when he was an adult.  He feels very fatherly towards him.  I just mentioned to my mother-in-law yesterday that next year she will have children in their 20s, 30s and 40s, as my husband with be 40 next October.  Her youngest just turned 20, today actually, and she has a middle son who is 35.  What day in January is your son due?  My birthday is January 24th.  I wonder if your baby will be an Aquarius?  Oh, by the way, you mentioned that your partner is a lorry driver.  What is that?  I have never heard the term "lorry" before.  Just curious.

 A little about me.  I am married and we are hoping to have a baby this next year.  We moved from Newport Beach, CA to a town called Temecula, CA about one year ago for my husband's work.  He is a systems analyst, which just means he's big in the computer field  We now live in the country, on five acres, surrounded by vineyards.  Temecula Valley is a big wine country.  It is quite beautiful here and very quiet.   I can't see any neighbors (neighbours to you) at all so it feels as if all the miles and miles of vineyards are ours.  I do miss the beach though.  In Newport we lived 1/2 mile from the beach.  Beach living is very different, as you live very close to your neighbors and you don't own much land.  We didn't have a big backyard there, just a patio and a bit of grass for the dogs.  It's a trade off I guess.  Now we have tons of space for the animals, but we don't have that lovely sea air and gorgeous shoreline.  My dream is to live in England though.  I have no current plans to visit, but I would be there right now if I could.  I devour everything I can about anything British.  I love any movie that is set there, books by English authors (reading is a big hobby of mine), and I love watching BBC America where we get some of your TV shows and BBC news.  I am hopelessly in love with "my England" as I call it.  Oh how I dream of even just visiting there, but it is not possible at the moment.  I will just have to settle for what snippets of English life I can gather and hopefully now, I will have new British friends.

Yes, America is a very big place.  I have traveled to many of the states.  I was born in Texas and have only lived there and in California.  My favorites (favourites to you) are New York City and New England, but these places are 3000 miles away on the east coast.  We are only four hours from Las Vegas though and I've been there several times.  Los Angeles is two hours away, depending on traffic, so that is a great place to visit.  There is theatre there and lots of Hollywood things to see like the movie studios.  My husband jokes that everytime I go to LA I see someone famous.  I don't know why really, I just seem to see famous people in restaurants or bookstores etc.

What part of England do you live in?  What is it like there?  What is the weather like there right now?  We are finally getting fall weather here.  Daytime highs are around 70-75 degrees and this past week the lows were 39 degrees at night.  We rarely get snow here, as we are only 75 miles inland, but I've been told it snowed here four years ago.  All in all we have very mild weather here.

Well, thanks again for the welcome & I too look forward to chatting with you.

~Megan

Hi Jools,

Thanks for the welcome.  How wonderful that you live in London.  I love London.  I've read and seen so much about it.  I too love the architecture.  I love how much history there is in your country also.  Here in America we have practically nothing compared to you.  I like to feel that your history is my history after all of the relatives I have reaching back to the 15th century.  Yes, I am lucky to know about my ancestors.  My uncle researched our family about 15 years ago and sent us all the huge compilation of our history.  You know, he found out that we are directly related to Tom Hanks.  Isn't that funny?  I'm sure thousands of other people are too, but it's interesting to find that out anyway.

I am married and we are planning to start our family this next year.  We live in Temecula, CA.  We live in the middle of the wine country and our five acres is surrounded by vineyards.  It is very beautiful this time of year.  Last month all the grape pickers were out in force and we could hear their singing and humming all day long.  It was very sweet.  We have lived here for one year.  We moved here from Newport Beach, CA.  I really miss the beach and living in the city.  It is very different here, much quieter and the summers are hotter.  I am glad that fall is finally here.  We have very mild weather compared to you I'm sure.  We currently have days in the 70s and nights in the 30-40s.  We finally got some rain last week for two days and the rest of the week was grey and overcast.  We need the rain here.  I imagine you have tons of rain!  What is your weather like now?  What are your winters like?  I would love to have a white Christmas but chances are that will never happen here.  I heard it snowed here only once, four years ago.  My dream is to have a white Christmas in England some day.  Oh to dream!

I have thought about doing a home exchange one day.  Have you seen that movie The Holiday with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz?  That would be an ideal situation for us in terms of finding a lovely little cottage in the countryside not far from London to spend Christmas and New Years.  I don't know if anyone would jump at the chance to spend time here in the wine country, verses if we still lived at the beach.  It is beautiful here though and we are fortunate to have a large house on five acres surrounded by rolling hills.  Maybe someday we'll do it and maybe we'll luck out and find someone who has that fairytale cottage I dream about.

Those places in England that you mentioned sound beautiful.  I'm going to look them up & search for pictures on the web.  Isn't the Internet amazing?  It is just incredible that we can communicate the way we do with people from other countries and find any information about the world at the drop of a hat.  One can barely remember what it was like before the Internet.  I mean, what did we do in the 80s? Lol

Just a bit more about me... I love to read, especially English authors.  I love writing and hope one day to write novels and screenplays.  I love beach volleyball and tennis, though we have to travel a bit nowadays to enjoy the beach volleyball. 

That's all for now.  I look forward to chatting with you and all the new friends here.

~Megan