From the USA to New Zealand: Dan

No Amazon. Lots of trampolines. And Winter is rainbow season.

Dan grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He was a foreign exchange student in Paraguay, moved to Mexico when he was 25, and then moved to Honduras to work with an NGO for a few months. He then moved to NYC before relocating to Mexico City and later, to Bolivia where he was a correspondent for the Associated Press.

When that position ended, he moved back to the US, got an MFA, and met his wife, Jenny.

You might be fooled into thinking that Dan’s living abroad days were over, but when Jenny got a job teaching at NYU Shanghai, they packed up and moved to China. Which is where they lived for 6 years. And then COVID happened.

Dan and Jenny (and their two small children) bought a 2-week return ticket to New Zealand, just in case. They’ve been in New Zealand ever since.

What’s New Zealand really like?

How does growing up there compare to childhood in the US?

What advice would he give someone considering a move to NZ?

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dan as much as I did.

---

After living and working in China for 6 years, how did you end up in New Zealand?

Jenny's sister (who's an American) and her husband (who's Canadian) had moved to New Zealand in 2017. New Zealand is a long way from everything, but it is on the same side of the Pacific as Shanghai. And in 2018, we did Christmas with them here in New Zealand, which was lovely. Our kids were two and five months and we spent three weeks driving around the South Island with these little babies. It was beautiful, you know? It's a spectacular place. So we liked it, it was great.

At that point we were starting to think about an end game for Shanghai, which was always just moving back to the States. We didn't at all consider moving to New Zealand.

And so for Christmas 2019, we went back to the States. We were in Iowa with Jenny’s family; we were in Texas with my family. We flew back to Shanghai in January. COVID was already happening in Wuhan, but it was still just in the headlines in the background. So we were there. The kids were all jet lagged–they were up all night because they were still on American time. And we're busily preparing for the semester.

The Chinese were masked up. Because they went through SARS. It's not their first rodeo. I can remember looking around and first of all, the subway is empty because everybody's out of town. But then everybody else on the subway is wearing a mask except for me. And I'm like, okaaay.

And the university was trying to figure out what to do. They didn't want people to get locked down. We didn't particularly want to get locked down. In the end, it got noisy enough that eventually the university said, “Okay, we're gonna pause the semester for two weeks. If you're not a Chinese national, you should probably leave because we're worried about a possible lockdown. Maybe you should go home and hang out for a little bit and we'll just see what comes.”

So when we got that, it was like, Okay, well, let's figure out what we're going to do. Eventually we decided to go to New Zealand for a visit. We bought a two week return ticket. It became clear fairly shortly that we were not going to be able to return in anytime soon.

We never went back to China.

So tell me about the adjustment to New Zealand.

A big difference between New Zealand and the United States (and I would say China's on the New Zealand side of this), there's just much more of a collective sense of the population as a group. It's more community-minded. There's positive and negative sides to that. But what it meant for us in New Zealand was that we got here just in time for what became a sort of historical moment in New Zealand politics and culture. And that first lockdown here was a very bonding thing. It's a funny thing to arrive for. We participated in what is remembered as a really huge moment in history. So it actually was a way of sort of getting brought into the community.

And then once we got out of lockdowns there was a co-working space in town. And that became our sort of community and our place. We made some good friends there, lifelong friends there, I think.

And we put our kids in daycare and then they make a friend and suddenly you’re friends with their parents. It doesn't always hit that way, but sometimes it does. Living abroad with kids has a lot of difficulties. But one of the bonuses is that they bring the friends right in. They bring it right in.

How is growing up in New Zealand different than growing up in the US? Can you tell?

I think New Zealand (on its plus side) is laid back in a lot of ways. And sort of old fashioned in a lot of ways that could be, I think, very good for kids.

We're in a small town. The kids go to small, rural schools. There's a “Let kids be kids” kind of thing. Both China and the US have this sort of intense pressure to succeed in school. New Zealand is kind of like, “It's fine.” They don't push their kids. Sometimes I wish they pushed them more, but especially in the younger ages, it's really nice to just be like, “They're fine.” What's more important in these ages of school is community and how they get together and how they are with each other. At least in our kids' school. We're very happy with it.

There's a sort of physical robustness to Kiwi childhood that I think is good. Kids all have trampolines. They're always jumping on trampolines and climbing on trees. They climb a lot of trees. At my kids' school, they're allowed to just climb the trees. So you go pick them up after school, they’ll be 15 feet up in the air up in the tree. Nobody bats an eye. Where in the States it'd be like, You're not allowed to climb the tree because you're to get sued. Nobody cares about that.

We go down to the river and play. Our kids have done soccer and dance and all that kind of stuff. There's definitely activities and sports, but there's less of the hardcore things like traveling club teams. Probably because there’s just less money. But it's very sporty. They really value being sporty and physical movement.

What’s the best thing about New Zealand and what’s the most challenging thing about New Zealand, in your opinion?

Socially, the best thing is that it's a very open society. It’s a settler republic, younger than America. So it feels very porous. In the cities, there's quite a bit of immigrants from all over the world. We're out in the country and it’s mostly white, also Maori in this particular section—that ratio changes around the country. And so I know I speak to this as a white American dude that matches a lot of the bloodstock of the people here, so we’re kind of like all alike. But I think it’s true in a lot of way across the board, there's not a lot of this “Oh, you'll never be French (or whatever).” People will say, “Oh, you've been here five years, you're a Kiwi.” That wasn't ever going to happen in China. It happens here. So that's one thing I really love.

And also, there's that welcoming vibe. It's like an ethos, like “Come on in.”

But, it’s a small country. It's a really small country. It's 5 million people. So, it's a smallish American state. And there's a coziness to that. But, it's not six degrees of separation here, it's one. Everybody knows everybody on some level. And that's great. That's kind of fun, actually. I've lived in small towns before. I kind of like it.

But I think professionally that can be a little bit challenging in the sense that as an outsider? I think you get less points for being an outsider. There's less premium on that in New Zealand. It’s very casual. And that can be good and bad. Sometimes it’s too casual and sometimes you feel like the stick in the mud. But other times that’s great..

Physically, I’d also like to put in a word for the sky. I didn't understand this. I had no idea. People talk about the mountains and everything. But the sky here is bonkers. It is insane. I can't even begin to describe it. It's big and blue like the Western US, but it has wild island weather. It's a rainy place. It's rainy and windy. It's a little rock in the middle of the South Pacific so it gets the weather for sure. But the light is incredible. We were driving into Wellington yesterday and we saw like six rainbows. I'm not lying. Winter is coming and winter is rainbow season.

How about goods and services? Can you get everything you want?

What advice would you give someone thinking of moving to New Zealand?

I mean, maybe it sounds really simple, but I would visit first, if you can do so. New Zealand is this tiny little thing that gets left off the map. So all Americans have is the beautiful landscape from the pictures. And that is real. It's beautiful. Although, a whole lot of the country is just very agricultural. There are parts of New Zealand that are like a very wet and green Kansas. There are parts of New Zealand where Jenny’s like, “That's pretty Iowa.” (and she’s from Iowa).

We have this mythological emptiness about New Zealand. Like it's Lord of the Rings and nothing else. The level of American knowledge about the place is very low. And that's fine. I'm not saying that in a negative way. It's just that's how it is. And so it tends to get really romanticized.

As an American, we forget that we live on a continent in the middle of this big, wealthy country. New Zealand is small, small, small. And far, far, far away. The physical environment of New Zealand is smaller. Buildings are smaller. They're less fancy. They're sometimes just shabbier.

There's less money and less building materials. I'm used to Phoenix—there's a new Target store every time you turn around. And that's not the truth here. New Zealand doesn't build.

And also I think the American mindset goes, “Oh, that's it? I thought it would be bigger.” Every single town I go to in New Zealand, I'm like, “I thought it'd be bigger.” And that's not bad. It's just the reality of it.

It's not just like America on a pretty little island that's done slightly differently. It's quite different. So put some feet on the ground first, I think.

Is there advice that you would give to someone who is thinking of moving abroad but hasn't zeroed in on New Zealand necessarily? Are there tips or things you've learned in your 30 years of living in other countries that might be helpful to someone?

Join in the conversation in the comments—ask questions, share experiences, get ideas, get inspired, get clarity.

Because leaving home is hard. Talking to people who've done it makes it feel less overwhelming. And more fun.

---

We also talked about:

• What it was like to live and work in China.

• How Shanghai compares and contrasts to the larger cities in the US. Is it more like NYC? LA? Somewhere else? Dan’s answer will probably surprise you.

• What did they do about the belongings they left in their apartment in Shanghai? And the bittersweet process of sorting through everything over the internet. How do you find closure when your life suddenly and unexpectedly changes forever?

• What it was like to live in NZ during COVID.

• Why their visa situation is frustrating with respect to obtaining NZ residency and citizenship.

• What about healthcare? Especially with children who are jumping on trampolines and climbing trees all the time?

And a unique part of the healthcare system that anyone can access (even tourists) that basically removes the threats of lawsuits from daily life. Aka: why nobody in NZ is worried about being sued if a kid falls out of their tree or breaks their leg jumping on a trampoline.

Paid subscribers can access the entire conversation 👇🏼.

Watch the entire interview by clicking play on the video below. Or listen to the podcast.

---

Good news!

If you want to connect with Dan, you can find him at american.nz

If you found this valuable, someone else will too. SHARE or RESTACK this post so they can see it.