Plan B

Mike spoke with his adviser this past week and she basically reaffirmed what we had learnt on our own:

1. The Post Study Work Visa has been eliminated and no existing students are being grandfathered into the programme, and
2. If we want to stay in the UK, our only option is the Employer Sponsored Work Visa (aka indentured servitude).

Happily, she did have one piece of good news for us: the UK gives us 6 months after Mike's graduation to get our shit together.  We had thought we'd only have until October, so this is actually quite helpful.

We're moving to London on 2 July.  Our plan is to duplicate last summer's success and, if we're lucky, find an employer willing to sponsor one of us.  However, unsure of the difficulty involved, we're not expecting to stay in London past December.  Come January 2013, we'll be calling New York City home.

We had hoped to live in London for at least two years, travelling Europe whilst earning British pounds to help replenish our completely exhausted savings.  Now, we'll have six months in London before moving to one of our favourite cities in the world.  Definitely not on the same level as Plan A but not a terrible alternative either.

We're disappointed about not getting to see as much of Europe as we had hoped but we're oddly excited about returning to the States.  Even with every decision we've made since 2008 having been in support of our plan to live abroad for the foreseeable future, we've been able to formulate our Plan B rather quickly and without too much anger or sadness.  Of course we'll still try to wring every last bit of adventure from our remaining months in the UK but we're also looking forward to living a more permanent existence back in the States, without fear of deportation or visa revocation.  Surprisingly, we're really looking forward to coming home.