We’re Moving!

Yes, again. If you know me, I am *oh* so thrilled to be packing up our belongings for (what are we up to?) the eighth time in about a year and a half.

And yet, we’re doing it. Let me explain.

The House

Despite views like these, our time in this house has been challenging. We love many things about it; the wood burning stove, 4 bedrooms, the yard space, the ability to have chickens, etc. But now that we’ve lived in it, there are things that just don’t really work for us.

For one thing, it’s COLD. Yes, New Zealand houses aren’t often very well insulated. We knew that coming in. The wood burning stove is amazing for our living room, but because of the high ceilings in the hallway, heat doesn’t get pushed down to the bedrooms. It doesn’t get into the kitchen or bathroom either, so those areas are absolutely frigid at night. Basically whatever the temp is outside is the bathroom temp…not super fun. We did get space heaters for all the bedrooms, which helps a ton, but then our electricity bill is hiked up…can’t win on that one in NZ I guess.

The space doesn’t work as well as we’d hoped either; having four bedrooms is really nice, but we spend so much of our time out in the shared spaces, and our kitchen is really tiny and not updated. It’s made cooking into something we dread, which isn’t our norm (Ayden looooves to cook!).

Speaking of the kitchen, another challenge has been the rodents. Possums? All good. They stay outside and live their life. Cool. Sweet as. The mice and rats? They want IN. Mice find their way into our kitchen somewhere by the water heater which is in the back of the kitchen pantry, and just explore to their heart’s content. On several mornings, we had to figure out how to deal with a live mouse running around the kitchen before I went off to work (too much excitement before 8 am). Once we got traps set, we were catching one or two mice a day. Thankfully they have tapered off, but we do still catch one occasionally.

And yes, I did say rats earlier. We have a compost bin that they have literally chewed holes into the side of. We covered the holes with bricks…they started tunneling underneath. We covered the tunnel…they made a new one. Eventually we started noticing little scratch scratch scratches in the walls, under the bathroom floor, and one very unpleasant time running across the ceiling. I ordered rat traps fast after that…we’ve caught four so far and they are BIG and gross and thankfully we haven’t been hearing them IN the house anymore. Also very thankfully they haven’t found a way into the actual living spaces. But still. BLECH.

Oh also, our house might be trying to kill us? We have now had two times in about 3 weeks where we have smelled that scary electrical-burning smell, had an electrician come out, and yes definitely there would have been a fire if we hadn’t caught it in time. First something in our electrical panel went bad, and this week a built-in light above our drapery decided it was going to spontaneously lose it, despite not even working in the first place.

Oh, and between those two electrical mishaps, our hot water heater crapped out and we had to have a new one put in. Thankfully it’s a rental, so no skin off our nose, but it makes you question the integrity of the whole house when we keep having issues like this come up.

The Isolation

One thing that we liked about this house before moving here was that it was way out in the country. We wanted to have a homestead and get away from the grind of it all. We’re on a working dairy farm, so we get these beautiful farm views that remind us of home, and we also border the national park, so of course that direction is gorgeous too. We have a view of the top of the mountain, and we can see the ocean from the South side of the house. Beauty in all directions.

This house is 20 minutes outside of town, which coming from the US, sounded like a piece of cake. 20 minutes? We do that all the time. No biggie, right?

Wrong. 20 minutes in New Zealand is SO FAR. These are winding, two-lane roads, so it’s not like just hopping on the interstate or highway where you just drive straight for miles. Being this far from the nearest grocery store, gas station, trash facility (trash pickup doesn’t come out here), etc. is inconvenient, and you don’t realize how easy it is to run to the store on your way home, or to just fill up your gas tank as you’re going past. Because my school is rural too, we’re never just going past anything. We’re always making separate trips to town for XYZ, combining errands when we can, but inevitably we forget something or are out of milk again and we have to make another town run. We don’t even get mail daily out here. Rural delivery only comes on Wenesdays and Fridays…so we wait for the mail on those days like Steve from Blue’s Clues.

Not only is all that annoying, but it’s also been super hard to connect with people in town. I’m working every day of course, and have amazing coworkers that I fit in with really well. I’m getting to talk to people who are from here and know the culture and the area, which gives me more of a New Zealand experience and more support with the transition. However, Ayden’s experience at home has been really difficult with the kids, and his mental health has really taken a hit. When we first got here, he was pretty active going into town for all the little playdate things, library, etc. But three-under-five is a trip on the struggle bus every time we go out with two parents, let alone with one. Ayden also wasn’t really able to connect with any other parents in town despite everyone being nice and friendly. We both know how small towns work; that’s how we grew up. Everyone is extremely kind, but if you grew up there, you know everyone. You have your people already because you’ve had them forever. When new people show up, usually locals aren’t desperate for new connections in the same way that we are, coming from across the world. We get it. It’s hard to break into those circles, especially when we live SO far outside of town. It’s not like we have neighbors that we see playing outside every day.

And on top of all that, we’re in a rental, so we can’t just make this space into our own. If we owned this place, we’d be making updates and doing the homestead thing the way we wanted. Since we’re renting, obviously we’re not going to put too much time and effort into it in this location.

The Community

It’s not all bad news, though! With the magic of social media, we have been able to connect with other Americans who have all moved to this area of New Zealand within the last 9 months or so. Amazingly, there’s a big group of Americans in Whanganui, which is about an hour south of us along the coast. We started going on the weekends to hang out with everyone at the farmer’s market (we love a good farmer’s market!), and it’s a little bit insane how quickly we’ve all bonded with each other. I suppose it makes sense though; we all left home for a better life. We all left our support systems, jobs, and familiarity of literally everything in order to give our families more than what we had back in the US. All of us have kids around the same age, and when we get together it feels like a big family reunion. Everyone is quick to help each other out, watch their kids, celebrate birthdays, do breakfast dates, etc.

It is SO cool to have people you know you can count on when you’re about as far from home as you can get. Now I understand why back home in Lincoln, there would be parts of town that had more of a certain type of immigrant. They congregated together, and I think I understood why on a surface level. Now I GET it. You HAVE to have that community to survive in a foreign country. If we, as immigrants in an English speaking country, can find so much connection with others from the USA, I can only imagine how much more valuable it is for other immigrants to have their people who speak their language and practice their religion and celebrate their holidays. I have so much more respect for people who have ever moved to another country; this is hard.

Don’t think we moved to New Zealand and are only hanging out with Americans! We have also met some amazing Kiwi families in Whanganui, some of whom were instant family. You know how sometimes you meet someone and it just clicks? Like, “oh there you are!” Like you’ve known them forever. We are so lucky to have made such great relationships in such a short amount of time. Our hearts are truly full when we get to spend time with our people. <3

The Job

I love my teaching job. It’s such a little gem of a school. I have a class of 12, grades 3-5. We only have two classrooms, so we’re a small staff, but everyone there is committed to doing the best for our kids. We’re lucky to have a full time teacher aide in each classroom, and my principal is also an immigrant, so she understands what I need and how I’m adjusting to the New Zealand education system. I’m truly so lucky to be in this role.

That’s not to say it’s without it’s challenges. We have some needs to work through, but what school doesn’t? My big focus with the kids lately has been emotional regulation and creating a growth mindset. It’s hard to learn when you’re disregulated and your brain tells you that you’re dumb and can’t do it. It’s a lot of therapy-type work on top of my regular teaching duties, but as I settled in more and learned more about where our kiddos were at, I knew that trying to change their thinking patterns around school was going to make the biggest impact for some of them. It’s a work in progress, and there are tricky days, but I’ve gotten super attached to this little crew; it’s really just a big family (literally, because about half of the kids in my room are siblings with each other :).

The Verdict

Several things can be true at once: I love my job. Ayden needs a big change for his mental health. Our community is in Whanganui. These are all true for us. We went back and forth and back and forth for several weeks on how to make things better for our family, so that things could continue to work for us in New Zealand. Could we move into town here? Yes, but then we’re still separated from our community. Could we move halfway between my job and our friends? Maybe, but then we’re even farther from civilization and always driving one way or another. Could we move to Whanganui and I get a job there? Technically, but I’m not ready to leave my job.

So yes, we’re moving to Whanganui, and yes, I’m keeping my job. I’ll be commuting an hour to school, which isn’t ideal, but also isn’t unheard of. Also, think of the audiobooks I’m going to get through!! Ayden has had a resurgence of positivity, knowing that he will have more job opportunities and playdate options with our other stay-at-home friends. Having those connections truly is vital, and we’re so excited to be close enough for bonfire nights, board games after the kids are in bed, spontaneous park outings, and maybe some date-night tradesies so we can finally go out for some sushi again.

We found an adorable three-bedroom rental (with three bathrooms!! GOLD in NZ) in a nice part of town, and somehow it’s only a 3 minute drive in any direction from all our people. It has a beautiful yard with a covered back porch, and it’s tucked away on a private cul-de-sac with mature trees. We do have to say goodbye to the chickens, but thankfully they can just live with the rest of the current flock at school (and hopefully I can take some eggs home!). My only complaint about the house is that there’s no wood burning stove, but it does have two heat pumps in the main living area, so we should be plenty warm considering we already have all our space heaters for the bedrooms. The kitchen is much larger and modern than our current setup, and our bedroom even has an ensuite with a heated floor, (I’m SO ready). It has a two-car garage that Ayden has already claimed as his workout room. 🙂 It’s going to be a MAJOR upgrade for us. Hopefully it brings a lot more peace and comfort so we can focus on building a life here. We move on the 4th of July (happy independence to us, I guess!).

I will miss the stars out at our current place; we’ve never seen stargazing like this with our own eyes. Thankfully, we won’t have to go far outside of town to get these views back <3 And yes, these were all shot on Ayden’s phone!

Well, that’s our big news! Sorry it’s been a minute, obviously we’ve had a lot to figure out in the last month. I’m about to go on a two week school holiday, so my goal is to get at least one more blog post up (maybe a house tour!) during the break.

You know us, we’re always figuring things out, no matter what comes our way 🙂 Love to all our people back home <3 The next two weeks would be great for video calls; please reach out! We miss everyone 🙂

Erin & Ayden