 Okay, next week, I'll be eating breakfast in London. An insignificant thought to many, but this is the breakfast that changes my life. Now, it's really not important what it is, but yet it will be the first. And I know I'll always remember it as the first breakfast of my new life. Even though I still kind of have no idea what I'm doing, I at least know where I'll be doing it. And I know this is really cheesy and sappy, but I just know that eating this breakfast will be overwhelming because a breakfast like this brings you home. It brings you to all the people that have gotten you this far. I honestly couldn't be more heartbroken about it because these are not ghosts. They are real. They are tangible and 2,000 miles away or more depending on if you live in Indiana. Go, Katie. Go, Katie. Hello, Internet. We're in the hospital because I'm fine. But we're just having a cheeky little time. We're playing the game where you try to make the noises. Automatic hand sanitizer. Everyone's paying for my Paul McCartney impression for you all. I'm Paul McCartney. I'm Paul. Hello, everybody. Welcome to London. OK, so I have to start from the beginning, especially if you are new here. So two years ago, I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland by myself in about like 2021 and pretty much ever since then I have been plotting my return. And then finally, after last year, I finished up my last year of college. I spent many, many, many hours applying to grad schools over in the UK. And so as many of you guys know, last year I had to move back to Charleston to complete my final year of college. And I hadn't been to my college in two years. So I really wasn't super looking forward to it. Honestly, you guys saw me online like way less than I've ever I've ever been online. Here's the tea. Last year was honestly one of the best years of my life so unexpectedly because I rekindled and made some of the best friends I've ever had in like my whole entire life. And saying goodbye to them again was, as you saw, it was incredibly emotional. I did cry all the way on a flight from Charleston to DC. I cried the whole time. The man next to me probably thought somebody had died. And so in this video, I really want to cover just everything that it takes to move, especially to a new country, if this is something that you're interested in doing because there are a lot of steps that happen before you even book your plane ticket. And you guys will see at the end of the video like I'm in London. You'll get footage from the last couple of weeks, which is super exciting. As you will see from this video, there's a lot to moving that is incredibly stressful. But one thing that doesn't have to be stressful is finding a place to live. Today, I would like to thank our partner, Amber, students. Amber is an online platform that handles the hard bit for you, which is finding a place to live in a foreign country. I just moved to London, so there isn't even a language barrier, but trying to figure out the rental market has been the most insane experience of my whole entire life and tune in for next week when I talk about all of that. So if you're busy like me crying over your friends, I really suggest that you check Amber out to find a really cool, nice place to live. And if at the end of this you are interested, please check out my unique link that is going to be in the description of this video and it is going to be in the pinned comment. You can search for apartments with your own preferences. You can view details like amenities and photos of each apartment. There is a wide variety of choice on Amber's platform as well, so you definitely won't be stuck without options. They also help you find roommates, which can be a really difficult part of moving to another country, especially if you're moving alone because you won't know anybody in that country. So trying to find people that have similar preferences to you can be really important. One of the greatest things is that there's no negotiation. So Amber does all of that for you, which is so nice because getting into bidding wars in other countries is definitely not something that you want to be involved in. Amber has a prominent supply of housing in the UK in places like Coventry, London, Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Birmingham. And they also have housing in over 20 plus countries all over the world. So even if you're not coming to the UK, definitely check to see if your location is on their list. And on their website, you can search for your specific university. You can search for your area. You can research room info. There are 24 seven assistance online that can help you find properties. Community reviews, which is always helpful so that you can really know what real people are experiencing using these services. And then the best part is you can book through Amber and they will handle most of the difficult paperwork for you. So again, if this is something that sounds interesting to you, please make sure to check out my unique link, which is going to be in the description of this video and in the pinned comment. And now we can really get into it. So we're just going to do like a little bit of like create information before I get into like my actual experiences moving abroad. For me, my avenue to move abroad, you know, if you're young in your 20s and you just like don't only know what to do with your life because I always talk about gap years on my channel and studying abroad, but sometimes you don't get to that when you're in college. So maybe you want to do it after college. Maybe you are in between careers and you want to try moving to another country. There are a lot of different avenues that you can go through to get yourself over there and definitely doing some research. But I decided that I was going to go to grad school. This is something that I've always wanted to do. I always knew that I was going to pursue grad school. And so it just seemed like sort of the natural next step for me to get myself over to London. And surprisingly, grad schools are actually a lot cheaper in the UK than they are in America. All of the pieces just kind of fit together. And after my year abroad in college, I just kind of knew that this was the path for me. And in total, I ended up applying to four schools and I ended up choosing UAL, which is the University of the Arts London. And it was the only like arts program that I applied to. The rest of them I applied for like my actual degree that I already had in the US. I applied to all these schools around October, November-ish and UAL was actually the last school that I applied to. I think I finished up my application in January, but I had already gotten into a school. So I sort of knew in like November of last year that I was going to be moving back over here. Once you accept your offer to get into grad school, which I accepted maybe around June, I would say, I booked my spot and basically the next step is you have to wait for a cast number. So if you've never applied abroad before, this basically means that your school provides you a number that allows you to apply for a visa. So for months and months and months, I heard no word from my school and they actually had a backup of issuing cast numbers. So I was maybe supposed to move like ideally early September, but I actually ended up moving two days before my program started, which was like October 2nd. And this was kind of a nightmare, but I'm here now and it's all good. It's fine. Sometimes these things do happen. So I'm going to let past me explain. And welcome to what are you doing? Lay down. Do you want to say hi? Do you want to say hi? Oh! My dog, Tony, if you've never seen him before. If you guys don't know, I am starting a program at UAL in the fall to get my masters. I have a place to stay when I arrive in London now, which has honestly taken so much of the stress out of my life because I'm already moving to a whole other country, new city, new school on top of that, having nowhere to live like that was really stressing me out. It's currently Monday and I finally got word on like a piece of my visa because I have been in a waiting game trying to even have the ability to apply for it, which is like such, it's such a mess. But hopefully I will get there before my program starts because that's really stressing me out. But that is honestly just part of the glorious world of going to study abroad. It comes with a lot of different stresses, but it's fine because I want to do it like so badly and I'm so excited, but it's also just a pain in the f***ing self. Hello, everybody. Excuse my appearance. Okay, so I have been waiting to go to the UK forever now and I just checked my email and my visa approved. It was not supposed to be approved for like another 15 days. And so now I'm like, I'm having an aneurysm. So now I think I have to move to another country on Friday. It's like, I know I wanted this the whole time. Now I have to go on a plane. Everybody, so this is, I'm in London. Yeah, I'm in London and I had my first day of school today. Man, I'm alive, you know what I mean? I think that I felt like I would feel a lot more overwhelmed. But this time around, like I feel very comfortable. I haven't really felt anxiety about like all of this yet. My program definitely seems hard. Definitely not like for the faint of heart, but I'm moving to London. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but I'm feeling really okay. Like pretty, pretty good. I feel like I've done this before, which I didn't. I felt like it would feel completely different, but I just kind of feel like I know what's going on. And I don't know. I don't know if it's because like the first time that I moved to Edinburgh, like I didn't know how the buses worked. I didn't know how, you know, I can't like conversational things. Like I didn't know those, those conversational things that are different and words and language and tone. And I don't know. It was just like so much more confusing. I feel like I'm doing okay. I am staying with a family friend right now, which is so nice. I'm commuting downtown for school. Oh, I was on the tube today in the train, actually. This guy's like bike fell over. So he got up out of his seat and then this other guy, like the door's open. So like all these new people came on and he took the guy's seat and the other guy that came back and he was like, sir, that was my seat. Don't be a f***ing just move. And then he made, they were gotten to like a fight, but it was the most polite fight. Like when I think of like fights breaking out on that train, I think of like two New Yorkers like screaming at each other, but they were like politely sir f***. And it was just, it was so quiet too. It was like the quietest, but most aggressive fight I've ever heard. And it really, it was quite funny. I mean, not funny, but it was just like, what is happening? I don't even know. We just got done with our first day like fully working in a TV studio and this is something like I've literally, I've never done any of this before. Um, I've, I've done YouTube like all of these years. Um, but like to be in all honesty, like I don't, I don't know like all this stuff and I was super nervous coming into all of this thinking that like I would be someone with like the least amount of experience or like I wouldn't have any idea what was going on. And um, this has been honestly guys like the most weird experience of my life. And I don't, I share these things not to be like, oh, poor me. Like like all of that kind of stuff. It's just that growing up, I was so quiet in high school. Maybe I had spaces that I could go where I felt people also felt the same way that I did and college like not really so much. I feel like I sort of had to create those spaces for myself. Like I had to create YouTube as a spot for me to be creative and like to be myself. And like, yeah, I was in like arts classes, but I still really never felt like like being myself was easy. I've always been someone who's like very adamant on being yourself, but I've always done it really quietly. Like I, YouTube has always seen like who I am because I'm alone. Like when I'm alone, this is like my truest self, right? Or at least like one version of like my truest self. When I'm around other people, like I'm really quiet. Like I'm most of the time, I didn't really want to put myself out there until I got a little older. I guess it's just to say like I have, I have never been in a room where I have been able to say like, oh, I do YouTube or like, oh, I do X and such thing. And like 95% of the room is like, wow, that's cool. Like without hesitation, like I have never been in that situation before. It has always been like, I've always been apologizing for who I am. I have always been apologizing for, I've always been, I've always been apologizing for who I am. Even if I didn't feel like I have to, I had to. I did it to sort of like maybe ease others' comfortability around me or I don't even know why. And I'm not saying that like those things ever stopped me from doing what I wanted to do, but there was always friction. There was always, it always created a dissonance between like, this has been so frictionless. There's no friction. I have just, from the get go, from day one, I have been able to introduce myself as the person that I want to be able to speak up and say like, I'm proud of this. And I haven't done that. Like I look at YouTube, like I literally don't mention it. Like I don't tell people about this because I think it's embarrassing. Like isn't that sad? Like this is something that I have literally poured my heart and soul into and like you guys have seen that over the past three years if you've been here the whole time or if you've seen like my study abroad diaries, like I have poured my heart and my soul into getting better at this and to sharing one piece of what I have gone through for, honestly, it's for that one comment that I get that it's just like, oh, this made me feel less alone. I can make one person feel like they are not going through something alone. Like that is, that is why I make these videos. And I just feel like I am in this point right now where like being myself in quiet for so long has allowed me to get to this place where I can be myself as loud as I want to. I'm just really grateful. I'm grateful that I hung in there. I'm grateful that I didn't give up. I'm grateful that 20 year old me picked up a camera terrified. I'm glad that 21 year old me booked a plane ticket to Edinburgh terrified because now I'm here.