Moving to New Zealand: A Rollercoaster Ride of Emotions

Journal from 40,000 feet

I’m not going to sugar coat it. Getting here has been painful. It has broken me mentally, emotionally and even physically. Layer upon layer of stress, week after week after week. And suddenly, here I am sitting on the plane – and I’m not quite sure how I have done it.

Actually, I do know. I haven’t done it. We have done it. Together. As one solid crash of rhinos.

And now here we are. 

I knew this experience would be a challenge – that was part of the appeal. I knew it would push me out of my comfort zone and teach me new things. And I also knew it wouldn’t be easy. 

But I could never have imagined just how intensely challenging the last ten days of emigrating has been. Packing up our lives, clearing all our stuff, endless to-do lists, the exhaustion of so many goodbyes and the disappointment of not being able to squeeze everyone in.

The whole process from seedling of an idea to this point where I am now has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions and stresses. Tackling not just the immense logistics of emigrating and dealing with our own emotions, but also taking on everyone else’s emotional response too. It’s been a heavy weight to carry on our shoulders. But the last few weeks of the rollercoaster ride have been like a long lightening speed vertical drop, down and down, day after day after day. 

In these last ten days I have cried so much – to Rhino, the girls, the cat, in the car on my own, in the car with Kitty, at the tip, on the phone to the DVLA, on the phone to the airline, walking around town, in the shops, and to almost anyone who came to the house. Actually, I cried after you left the house. I even cried when the removal van left with our stuff and I realised I forgot to pack my lovely kitchen bin. To which Rhino said,

It’s ok, I’ll buy you a new bin when we get there. 

Looking back now it sounds ridiculous, but I have honestly never felt everything so out of my control. Everything so on top of me with so much to do and no time for a break, no choice but to keep on going, chipping away bit by bit, with early starts and late nights, working hard to get to the finish line.

Obstacle after obstacle fell in our path. From losing a log book, and watching an iphone smash into a zillion pieces, to visa problems. With each step forward there was another challenge – another layer to really test us. 

And here I am, finally sitting on this Boeing 787 with Kitty and it’s hit me… 

We weren’t rushing to the finish line at all. 

We were just preparing to take our positions on the start line. 

The start of this new challenge we chose to embrace and bring into our lives. New jobs, schools, homes, friends, neighbourhoods, a new language, culture, new waves and weather patterns. 

And now that the haze in which I have lived for the past three months is clearing, the outlook is quite spectacular. 

One month in: A New Perspective

I warn you, it won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

My brother and his wife emigrated to Australia 15 years ago with two very young children in tow. They sold or donated everything they couldn’t fit into a suitcase and started again from scratch. When I told him we were doing it too, these were his words to me. And he was right. He knew where we were coming from and why we felt the need to do this. He knew this would be an opportunity, a great adventure in life and he also knew how hard it was going to be. I remember his last few days in Wales being crazily busy, but I didn’t really understand what they were really going through. Now that I have walked in those shoes, I have a new understanding.

You are a plant that has outgrown its pot. There is nothing wrong with the pot. It’s just not the right one for you any more. 

Do you ever look back at photos of yourself five, maybe ten years ago and think who is that person? I looked so young, so different. Where did all that time go? The older the photos are, they more they transport me back to a time I can never get back but will always remember like yesterday. I suppose what I also see, is how much I have changed.

One day, sort of out of nowhere, like all the best things in life, it happened. I realised that every single day, I grew a little older. Every single day was one more of my days here done. And at that moment when I realised that we are here for a good time, not for a long time, that was the moment I found the courage to jump and the freedom that comes with it. There was no time like today to go out and do the things I wanted to do – travelling with young kids, starting a blog, and now moving to New Zealand. No matter how crazy those things seemed to some people. 

In fact when we broke the news to those around us, people’s reactions fell into two distinctly different categories. On the one side, there were those who gave us a pat on the back, told us how they wished they’d done it when they were younger, and said things like ‘in the nicest possible way, I hope I never see you again.’ Those who said they felt envious and inspired by our boldness and excitedly lived the move alongside us, encouraging us along the way. These people were largely, but not all, older than us. And those who had, like my brother, done or wanted to do a similar thing themselves. I drew from their hindsight, their wisdom, to give myself the energy to keep going with it all when the pressure was building.

And then there were those who simply did not understand. Who questioned why and drew upon all the things that could go wrong and reasons not to go. I’m pretty sure some of these people think I’m a bit crazy. That we are a bit crazy to leave everything behind and jump into this new adventure.

There were so many questions before we left Wales. And it was overwhelming to deal with the same questions every single day. And people were shocked when my answer to most of them was 

I don’t know.

Where will you live? Which school will the girls go to? How long will you stay? Is it forever? What about your pension/property..blah blah blah..

And then we arrived here in NZ thinking that would be the end of the questioning…and it turns out all the questions started from the beginning again…

Where will you live? Which school will the girls go to? How long will you stay?

I guess that no matter where you’re from, suddenly upping sticks and moving your life overseas, is an interesting talking point. And I now realise that the answer I should have given to all these questions was

I don’t know yet.

And that is exactly what is liberating about this whole thing. I don’t yet know all the answers, and I’ve realised that I don’t yet need to know them either.

You can’t see you’re stuck in a rut until you climb out of it.

I realised that this was not just a big physical move, it was a change of mindset. Just by making that decision to jump, we’d already climbed out of the rut in which we’d gotten stuck. And because it was quite a comfortable rut, we hadn’t really tried that hard to leave it. Until we did. And then we realised that this decision had already changed our perspective on life and opened up our minds to new opportunities.

The Next Chapter: Everything is different.

After three flights over as many days, we got off the plane in Auckland and made our way to passport control. I got out our British passports and Kitty took charge of finding the way. She is an excellent travel companion having flown long haul since the age of two and thoroughly enjoys every part of the experience of flying. Walking up to the desk, the passport control officer asked

Do you live here?

I paused, thinking for a second before saying

We do now

and I handed him our passports and visas.

Well, welcome to New Zealand

he said with a warm smile and then asked about our story.

And that was the start of this chapter, where we’re seeing our world with new eyes. Everything is new, everything is different.

The tea I make in the morning, the colours of the milk bottle tops and the brand of cereal I eat before heading out the door, all of these things are different here. And the day continues much the same way. The acronyms used in work are all different and it takes me some time to decipher what everyone is talking about. The accents surrounding me are mostly different, as are the cultural references I hear on George FM, the names of shops and the streets where we find them. The unfamiliar products and pricing within those dairies, the layout of the supermarket aisles, Paywave and Eftpos, it’s all different – as are the recycling and landfill rules which we are still getting to grips with as we watch each Wednesday to see what they’ll actually take and what will be left behind. The Highway Code isn’t quite the same and people look on strangely when we try to let them out of junctions in the way that is common at home. The sunny way that people greet you is different, as are the beautiful sounds and the colours of the birds singing outside. The colour and temperature of the sea, the taste of the water from the tap, the plants and trees which line the clifftop are all different….and when I go outside at night and look up into the spectacular dark sky, even the stars we can see up there, they are different too. 

Different is good.

It is a complete stimulation of every aspect of my brain, much like when a toddler discovers something new and then suddenly seems to jump forward heaps in their growth. My brain is working overtime, much like my browser window with 60 open tabs. But it’s all good.

As I stood outside Auckland airport waiting for the shuttle bus with Kitty, and tried to manoeuvre two big cases and two carry ons, an older chap came over and asked if I was travelling alone. Nope, I said, I’m travelling with this little one, pointing to Kitty who was swinging around on the bars of the bike rack. He came over to help and I explained this wasn’t overpacking for a holiday, that it was all our possessions for the next few months, that we’d just moved to New Zealand and Rhino and Koko were on a different plane, joining us in Auckland later tonight.

It will all be ok

his wife said as she gave me a hug and told me how she had emigrated from Yorkshire 20 years ago and never looked back.

The strange thing is, I wasn’t actually worried that it wouldn’t be ok. Or even stressed about the cases. That rollercoaster I’d been on had slowed, like the moment the parachute opens after a free fall and you start to take it all in.

We’d arrived safe and happy, and we hadn’t lost any luggage! The sun was shining, it was a warm Spring evening, the flight had been great and my first encounters with the Kiwis led me to understand that they really were the friendliest people. We had a fresh new chapter ahead of us, and all because we’d decided to jump.

My first week in work, I ate in the dinner hall with a teacher who was leaving the following day to venture further North. He’d travelled lots throughout his life, moving where opportunity had led him. We chatted about moving around, and I explained how one open door had led to another for us to get here and it sort of felt like it was meant to be. He’d clearly seen the world through my new eyes for a long time and like some wise character in a film, the one who delivers the moral message before the credits roll, just before getting up to leave, in one simple line he summed up my exact feelings….

It’s funny how opportunity is out there when you look for it.