It’s strange how time moves — quietly, almost unannounced — until one day you’re seated across the same faces that witnessed your beginning, and you realize six years have passed.

Yesterday, we booked a table at Maneki Ramen in Birmingham — not our usual spot, but one that somehow felt right for the day. A cozy place, steam rising from bowls of broth that smelled like comfort. The kind of warmth that reminded us of home. We talked, laughed, and, as always, shared food like family. But this time, the table felt a little quieter.

We were nine before.
Now, some have moved to London, others across the Atlantic to the US.
We were incomplete — but that’s life, isn’t it? People drift to new places, new dreams, new chapters. Still, what remains is the thread of belonging that doesn’t fade with distance.

Six years in the UK. It sounds simple when you say it, but when I look back, it feels like a lifetime — one that began at Heathrow Airport, all of us clutching our documents and dreams, terrified but determined. We came here with our luggage full of courage and uncertainty, not knowing how much this country would shape us — not just as nurses, but as people.

The Early Years

Back then, we were just a group of strangers bound by the same offer letter and the same homesickness. We learned together — how to adjust to the NHS system, how to survive night shifts fueled by instant coffee, how to find laughter even when exhaustion blurred our words. We discovered what “loo” meant, mispronounced “schedule,” and laughed at ourselves for calling “crisps” chips.

But in between the cultural mishaps and clinical checklists, we built something real — a friendship that felt like family. We celebrated first pays, first flats, first winter snow. We comforted each other when things got tough — when homesickness hit hard, when work tested our limits, when life away from family felt heavier than we could carry.

Time passed, and the group that once shared the same flat keys and shifts slowly spread out — new hospitals, new specialties, new postcodes. But the bond, that invisible pulse of shared beginnings, never really faded.

Yesterday at Maneki Ramen

Sitting there yesterday, surrounded by steaming bowls and familiar laughter, I felt a wave of nostalgia. The ramen was rich and comforting, but what truly filled me was the conversation — stories of where we are now, the updates, the gentle teasing about who’s still single, who’s saving for a house, who’s planning to move again.

There were pauses too — moments when we looked at each other and silently knew what we’d been through. The pandemic years. The tears hidden behind masks. The fatigue that words couldn’t describe. And yet, here we were — still standing, still laughing, still choosing to meet even when life had scattered us across postcodes and time zones.

We were incomplete, yes. But the absence of some made me realize how much we’ve all grown — that friendships, like seasons, change shape but never truly end. Some bonds simply stretch across oceans, waiting for reunions.

Six Years, Countless Lessons

1. Some seasons are meant for staying, others for moving on.
Six years ago, we were all in one place. Now, we’re scattered across maps — but maybe that’s how life works. Growth doesn’t always mean staying together; sometimes it means cheering for each other from afar.

2. The hardest part of growing abroad isn’t the work — it’s the loneliness.
It’s learning to live without the daily comfort of family, to celebrate milestones quietly, to hold your tears until the shift ends. But it’s also learning to turn strangers into home, to build support from scratch, to find warmth in shared ramen and borrowed stories.

3. Friendship is the most underrated kind of success.
Titles, pay grades, promotions — they matter, but not as much as the people who saw your struggle and stayed anyway. The ones who showed up with food after your night shift. The ones who texted, “You okay?” on days when you weren’t.

4. Gratitude softens everything.
It softens the pain of goodbyes, the distance, the fatigue. It makes you see that six years here is no small feat — it’s years of courage disguised as ordinary living.

Maybe the real meaning of success is this — not how far we’ve gone, but how deeply we’ve stayed connected.

Six years in a foreign land has taught me that home is not one address. It’s a shared story. It’s the sound of familiar laughter over dinner. It’s the comfort of knowing that no matter where life takes us, there will always be people who understand our beginning — the versions of ourselves that carried hope through Heathrow’s cold air.

We were nine once. Now fewer in number, but stronger in spirit.
And as we talked last night, I realized: maybe the measure of friendship isn’t how often you meet, but how easily you pick up where you left off.

We came to the UK as nurses chasing a dream.
But we stayed because, somewhere between shifts and storms, we found each other.

As the night ended, someone joked, “We’re getting old, aren’t we?”
We laughed — not because it was funny, but because it was true.
Six years of stories, of resilience, of learning how to belong in a world that once felt foreign.

The truth is, we didn’t just survive here — we grew.
We built lives that our past selves would be proud of.
We created memories that no distance could erase.

So here’s to us — the ones who stayed, the ones who left, and the ones who’ll find their way back to the same table someday.

Six years abroad, and somehow, we’re still each other’s home.

🎵 Song suggestion while reading: “Home” by Michael Bublé
Because sometimes, “home” isn’t a place you return to — it’s the people who never left your heart.

📸 Photos taken yesterday – Birmingham