Why did I move to New Zealand?
I get this question a lot, and after reading Derek Sivers' post on the same topic, I decided to write up my answer in a blog post.
TLDR: Living abroad (outside the culture I was raised in) has been transformative for me, and I wanted to do it again with my kids so they could experience something similar.
I first lived outside of the US at the age of 19, serving a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Maracaibo, Venezuela. This was an amazing experience. I became fluent in speaking Spanish, and fell in love with the people and food of Venezuela. I loved getting to know so many different people and helping some of them improve their lives drastically. Since I was serving as a missionary, most things were figured out for me. I had a strict schedule, a mission companion who I was with all the time, and a whole office of people dedicated to making sure life went smoothly so I could just focus on studying, teaching, and serving the people of Venezuela. There were challenges with living in a developing country and I was excited to return to America and the life I was more comfortable living. Many of my fellow Americans felt similarly and many of the Venezuelans I met wanted nothing more than to live in America. After two transformative years, I returned to the US with expanded horizons but still firmly rooted in American identity.
The next time I lived abroad was totally different. I was 27 years old, and I moved to England with my American wife. I worked for a local employer, and we had to figure out everything on our own. I had to figure out things that I didn't realize needed to be figured out. How do we get a bank account when we need a local address? How do we rent an apartment or get a mobile phone plan without a local bank account? If all these people are speaking English, why does it feel like I can't understand half of what they're saying sometimes? And perhaps most surprisingly for my American mindset–almost nobody that I met wanted to live in America. They were quite happy in England.
There were things that bothered me that I learned to love, like living in cities without massive Walmart stores that have everything, or that are designed for pedestrians, bikes, and public transport with cars as an afterthought. I learned to live without owning a car. I made wonderful friendships with people who were born and raised in the UK as well as foreigners who could relate to my struggles of living and working in a new country. I travelled all over with access to cheap flights and trains and learned more about different cultures and peoples who had no desire to move to the USA. I also got to feel what it was like to be a minority, and be ridiculed for my religious beliefs and practices. Our first two children were born in England, giving us (overwhelmingly positive) experience with the nationalized medical system. After nearly five years, we returned to what I thought was home. We left England reluctantly, drawn back to the US by family connections and career opportunities, but we were no longer the same people who had left.
Then we faced reverse culture shock. People expected us to be done with our international experience and to "settle down" and buy a home and live like everyone else who was "normal." But that felt like it wasn't true to who we had become. Living in the UK had changed us, and we didn't want to pretend it didn't happen. So when I had a work opportunity to set up a new service in Bogota, Colombia, we jumped for it.
It was a fascinating experience. Colombia is an incredibly beautiful country with a rich culture. My wife and I both made vast improvements in our Spanish speaking ability. We made friends who were locals and friends who were foreigners. But we didn't "go local". For various reasons, we felt different from our foreigner friends and different from our local friends, and struggled to make deep connections with either group of people. My wife had committed to being a stay-at-home mom, but that was very unpopular where we lived. Almost everyone we knew hired cheap labor to handle housework and take care of kids. We tried putting our oldest son into a pre-school so he could learn Spanish, but he absolutely hated it. We had other friends who said that their kids cried every day for the first 6 months, but eventually learned the language. We weren't ready to put our kids through that kind of trauma, even if it meant they'd be fully bilingual if we lived in Colombia long enough. After our two-year assignment was finished, with another child born abroad, we were eager to return to the US.
After only a few months back in the San Francisco Bay area, I was offered a job by an old friend in Northwest Arkansas. This part of the USA was a much better fit for us. It’s called the Natural State for a reason and we lived on an acre of forested land and didn’t have to deal with traffic. I would often walk to the nearby lake and we got a 2-person rowing boat that we used on average at least once a week. We learned how much work forested land can take to maintain (I had naively thought that no grass meant no yardwork), but it was rewarding to do. We had loads of friends, and there was no shortage of interesting work opportunities.
After living a few years in Arkansas, we felt very comfortable. We had our fourth child there. It’s such a beautiful location and it felt so easy for us to stay living there to raise our family. It actually felt too easy. We started to miss the feeling of living in another country. There was also a lack of diversity. While it felt comfortable to be in the majority, we had a desire for our kids to experience something different. Comfort had become its own kind of discomfort. Our international experiences had changed us fundamentally; we now craved cultural diversity and the growth that comes from navigating unfamiliar environments.
We started to think about where else we might live. Our time in England was transformative, but we wanted to try somewhere new. Our experience in Colombia taught us that we'd probably want to live somewhere that was primarily English speaking. We started seriously considering Australia and New Zealand.
I had started reading some of Derek Sivers' work, and I respected his opinion and the way he approached life. In early 2018, I sent him the following message:
"Lisa and I have New Zealand and Australia at the top of the list for countries to try living in next (although visiting might be a good first step)."
Derek responded with the following:
"As for visiting NZ... I recommend friends not to, because it's SO expensive to fly all the way here, and things are quite expensive once you're here, and really.... it's almost exactly like America. Like Vermont or Montana or something. So if you're going to spend all that money, go to India or Thailand or Italy or Japan or something AMAZING like that. Get your money's worth!
But living? Oh, yeah, definitely. I love it. Both the nature and the people. The government is so cool, which is a great feeling. People have their values straight here."
That email helped move the needle for me. The more we learned about New Zealand, the more we felt good about moving there. Amazing nature. Wonderful people. No snakes (my wife has a pretty serious fear of snakes). No ticks or chiggers (these were one of the few disadvantages of Arkansas). Very culturally diverse.
Eventually, we bought one-way tickets to go there in 2020. COVID came, New Zealand locked down, and we had to wait, but we eventually moved here in January 2024. It’s been a wonderful experience for us. Our kids had been homeschooled their whole life, and we had always told them they could go to school whenever they wanted. They chose to attend in New Zealand, and the schools have been amazing. Shoes are optional. Classes start at 9am. In primary school, they don’t have rows of desks; they have places to sit on the floor, some sitting desks, some sofas, some standing desks. The classrooms blend between each other so it’s not really clear where one ends and the other begins. People come from all over the world, and I love that my kids' friends do as well.
Every morning after I drop my eldest son off for his early morning seminary class, I drive 5 minutes to one of the beautiful beaches along Auckland’s North Shore region. Each day I approach the ocean a little differently. Admiring a beautiful sunrise or a morning storm. Taking a walk along a clifftop or meditating with my feet in the water, hearing the gentle waves and feeling the cool water.
There's an attitude towards sports that you don't have to be the best at everything, you can just try a lot of things and see what you like. The competition is less intense. The values are better aligned with our own: a focus on work-life balance, environmental appreciation and stewardship, and community well-being over individual achievement and material success. And we find that we just fit here. We don't have an end date. I think it's possible we'll be here until all our kids get through school. It's also possible we change our minds and go somewhere else. But for right now, it's perfect.