An adventure is born

Some years ago my husband's company bought a company located outside Cambridge, England. "Wouldn't it be great," we said, "if you could work out of the England office for a year?" We have lived outside the U.S. before. We spent a year in France back before kids. It was fabulous - the bakeries! the people! the countryside! the travel opportunities! the cheese shops! Just one little problem - we didn't speak French. Oh, you'll pick it up in no time living there everyone said. Not so. The stress of going around talking like a somewhat slow 4-year-old wore us down. We loved it, but were ready to go home when our year was up. Now almost 15 years later we get this opportunity again for living abroad, this time speaking English! We're so excited. I have many romantic notions of what life will be like living in England. I'm ready to test how many of my romantic, Anglophile visions hold up to real life in England.