Real Estate in Barrington & The Northwest Suburbs: International Relocating to the USA- after 14 years I still get my dates mixed up.

International Relocating to the USA- after 14 years I still get my dates mixed up.

When you relocate to a different part of the world and sometimes just a different part of a nation, you will need to make adjustments. From country to country there are so many differences and yet it is unlikely you will know what they all are until you have arrived.

I came here from the UK in 1996 on a 2 year assignment with my husband's job - at that time and for many subsequent years he worked for Motorola in Schaumburg. So we packed up the household - parents kids and pets and hopped over the big pond. Well at least we knew language was not going to be an issue. The short version of the assignment was that we ended up making USA our permanent home.

One of the first things we had to do literally the day after landing was to get social security numbers.  If I recall it was January 8th. So I dated my application 8/1/1996. First mistake - apparently we are not in August but in January? Yet I dated my forms August 1st. You see in the UK we always put the number of the day first, followed by the month and then year. My birthday is September 11th yes really! To this day I stumble across places that have my birth date as November 9th. 11/9 or 9/11 You would think after 14 years I would have got this down pat? Apparently not. I do all our family accounts on my computer and last weekend entered the grocery bill on 1/2 or to me 1st Feb. When balancing the account I just could not find that entry. So I entered it again thinking I must have deleted it. My brain is telling me I am not that stupid, I hit the enter button so where was it. Having entered a few other charges that day, a few days later I discovered them sitting in January. You see I entered them as 1/2 or 1st February. I guess my auto pilot brain just did what it was taught and practiced for 30 odd years.



What about other differences and how do they affect us?

• Another important difference is driving. In the UK we drive on the left side of the road. I can happily say it has never been a problem driving on the right side of the road - maybe we just think harder - thank goodness for that! However in the first few years I was often seen getting in the wrong side of the car to drive - LOL 
• 95% of cars in the UK are manual gearboxes, we all take our driving tests using manual cars, if you take it using an auto you are only allowed to drive auto and have to take another test for manual. During your test in a manual car, if you cannot hold the car still using your clutch and go backwards even an inch it is a fail! So driving here with auto cars is a breeze.

• After 2 years we bought our first house. Time to sign all those pieces of paper, how many? That looks like a tree! Literally. In the UK the transfer of title, mortgage loans and all that other stuff is done on a single document. Closing, no the attorney takes care of that, we pre-signed our piece of paper and concentrated on moving out by noon on the day and moving to the next house. A call from the attorney to say all is done and we start un-packing.
• Signatures on closing docs. In the UK a signature is very typically initials and last name. So the legible version is my signature would be C A Guest. So after starting to sign all our closing documents, suddenly a halt was called, you are not signing these properly. What I said 'match it to my drivers license, you'll see it is the same'. "Well no you need to sign your full name". 'Oh but I don't know how to'. "You have to be kidding?" 'No.' I have never written all my names as a signature - this is another auto pilot thing. I can write my name and I can sign my signature but you are asking me to do something I have never done, I need to go and practice. Seriously if you were to pull those documents and ask me if that was my signature I would likely not recognize it at all. I have closed on a number of properties since then and am getting better at it - but it is not my signature, it really looks like a 6 year old writing. My husbands is even worse than mine.
• Candy and Baked Beans. This is just one of those things, we miss English candy and I cannot live without our baked beans. Ah hah! we found a store in Long Grove called British Accents, they have all our favorites.

So if you are relocating to the USA, whether it be from the UK, Europe or anywhere else, prepare to be open minded to a few changes. We love it here and decided last year that we will apply for citizenship either this year or next. Our kids always had their own green cards but now they are over 18 they can make their own decision about citizenship.