Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We talk about
our life in Nelson, New Zealand.
Angela always thought she wanted to live in Nelson, seeing it from the airplane even before landing there. But we had to consider what was practical too. After all, we were in our 30s and needing to work a couple more decades, this move wasn’t a permanent vacation!
We hoped very much to settle in Nelson, but we thought we needed a backup plan. Naturally the thought of Christchurch and Wellington were the obvious options: bigger cities with more job opportunities. Those cities, with 300k and 200k population respectively, would offer us a greater likelihood that we’d be able to replicate our existing jobs and continue along the same career track.
But Angela really didn’t want to stay on the same track, this move was to be a serious break from life as she knew it, and she was ready for a total career change. After 15 years spent in nonprofit organisations and fundraising, she was looking forward to something new. She often said to people who would ask, “What will you do there?” “I’ll work in a bookstore or flower shop, I don’t really care!”
But job was important to Don who focused much of his worry on job prospects. But before we even made the leap to apply for residency, we worked out the numbers and determined that even in expensive Nelson we could afford living expenses if we both made only minimum wage--at least until things normalised in time.
So, we decided we would start out in Nelson and see where we would go after giving it a year or two. Christchurch didn’t really appeal to us in its landscape and English-like character. Wellington’s famous wind reminded us too much of Colorado and at the time we were looking into it, the weather patterns seemed just atrocious.
Besides, moving from a big city to another big city wasn’t really an option for us; it wouldn’t seem like we were changing our lives very much if just swapped cities, even if halfway across the world. Part of the point was to leave the city-stress, the traffic, the crowds. At least at this point in time, we wanted small town.
Nelson offered us so much in terms of the leisure possibilities, employment was simply going to have to fit in around that part of our life. It just had to work in Nelson, we decided.
back to Part 10: Sharing with family, friends and work | Immigration home | on to Part 12: Preparing the cats
