Live and Learn

3-12-10

Every adventure becomes in its way a learning experience and this one is no different. We all have dreams, set goals and make plans with some idea of how things will be. Plans become compilations of what we know through research and what we assume and hope for through imagination. In the many months before we came here we had researched, planned and dreamed much.
We had hoped to immerse ourselves happily in another culture only to arrive and find that Kiwi Land is in many ways America Lite. Kiwi’s seem rather taken with American culture, which is really pop culture since that is really the only culture we export. Everywhere you go for every new thing one can see one will also see something rather familiar.  From Snickers bars next to the Picnic ones and Burger King next to the souvlaki shop to the entire gambit of American television, music and movies, it hardly feels like we are so far away from home. It’s easy to see why an American would want to immigrate here for in many ways it is a more peaceful and less populated version of home. In a month’s time Christchurch has become somewhat ordinary though. In that there is a rather big learning point for me which is to never stay in a foreign city more than a month before moving on to another one.  Greg tried to tell me this before we left, but I didn’t understand it then. I do now.  But despite that we do like this place enough to wish we could find work here and stay. While we have looked into it and Greg has applied, our time here seems rather too short to accomplish such goals so we have filed it away because unlike most places Greg has gone he seems keen to return to these lovely islands sometime in the future and I agree.

Another learning point has been do not take too much from home with you. For practical reasons I had to bring along school via online classes and my work to help finance this adventure but both have been rather greedy with my time. My aspiration to tap into a deep creative vein here for writing and painting has been blocked by my responsibilities. The creativity is there though. Most days I awake inspired, wanting to sit down to the keys or brush and express what I see and feel but often I sadly must put that impulse aside for work or school.  We have confirmed my idea of have internet will travel in regard to my work though, which is good. But in my mind now I dream of just having the free time to create in such a peaceful place like this with no other responsibilities. Another goal to work toward I suppose.

Traveling as a family has been another disappointment.  Greg and I both made the unfortunate assumption that Celia was like us in that we have an innate curiosity about the world.  We enjoy simply exploring new places and get great fulfillment from experiencing. I’ve been this way since I was young and assumed a similar vein ran through Celia which would make this experience enjoyable for her. But that is not how it is. This trip has not been a happy experience for her. She does not enjoy travel, is not curious about the country and spends much of her time bored and missing her friends. I feel very badly about this, for her and for us as its cast a gloom over the whole experience.
Though as a family we do all agreed our holiday home is a curious one. It’s nothing fancy but rather a simple strange cottage across the street from the ocean but we’ve noticed some oddities about it. For example there are the bookshelves. There are three large full book shelves in the living room and one in the hallway. Now we have all thoroughly investigated these shelves several times. And initial inspection was strange enough. We found medical books, spiritual books, novels, travel guides and an odd assortment of other topics. The strange thing is how so much of it applies to us. Things we are talking about like how to be a happy family, how to make friends, how to be positive people, how to use the mind to improve health, poetry and short stories for Celia’s education, marriage, cooking, even a few art books, lie on these shelves. But even more strangely are the things that appear, like Celia asking me for watercolors and a day or so later a beginner’s book on water colors complete with a paint set and paper appearing. No one saw it there before and we had all looked through the shelves in detail.  Of course one might say we are just being superstitious, and perhaps we are, but we all feel a presence in the house and from some investigation suspect that this house once belonged to an older couple, of which the woman died of cancer. Odd things continue to appear, like the sun shaped sun catcher that emerged from the wall ivy yesterday.  It bothers Greg a bit and we all have experienced vivid strange dreams and bad sleep from time to time, but overall it isn’t a bad thing, just odd.

But despite these oddities and disappointments we are trying to make the best of something we worked so hard to get. Some goals have been achieved. Greg’s health is greatly improved and he is now strong enough to launch his career in whatever direction that takes us. We talk often on the possibilities with some days being focused on actual work in the states but more time spent considering another adventure to South America this summer to hopefully find the excitement and closeness we were hoping to find here. We will be married shortly and make a solid commitment of this family despite our imperfections.  

3-18-10

Yes , I know, I’ve been terrible about keeping this thing updated. Seems none of my plans and intentions for this trip has worked out well.  So I’m including a bit of an update on the post above, which I wrote offline, intending to post it, but didn’t get to it. Not having internet at our home anymore is really very detrimental to getting things accomplished including blogging, work and school.  But this week deserves a bit of an additional update before I post.

Last Saturday we went to a so called Gypsy Fair, which was more market for weird stuff then actual fair. But the “house trucks” were interesting to look at. If you imagine an old gypsy wagon then transpose it onto an older style truck you kind of can imagine what they were like. But overall it was rather disappointing, as much is becoming here.  Like Greg’s aspirations for work. For weeks he diligently prepped his resume, reviewed immigration information and made profiles on various job search websites. But often when he went back to those websites he couldn’t use his log in information and so emailed the websites for assistance.  Yesterday he got answers. Apparently the job market is pretty much closed off to Americans, maybe foreigners in general. One site told him they didn’t register his profile on purpose because they want to give locals opportunities first. Another told him they didn’t recognize his qualifications. But the kicker was from immigration services themselves, who told him that his degree, his MPA, was not recognized here.  They would not recognize any of his education or experience and told him if he really wanted to work here that he should go hang out at the downtown cafés in Wellington, try to spark up conversations with businessmen, and offer to work for free. It was a devastating and insulting blow and the final straw on our good feelings toward this place. We probably won't be coming back as too much of this Kiwi-ness just doesn't mix well with our American sensibilities.

Its one thing to want to support your citizens getting work but an entirely other thing to completely insult twelve years of quality US university education. They acted like his degrees had come from some community college in some third world backwater.  After some discussion and venting we decided that this place is simply not meant for us and that whatever Greg is meant to do with his education and experiences it just hasn’t manifested yet. Everything in G-d’s time I suppose. So after venting we cheered ourselves with a trip downtown to celebrate St Patty’s day at an Irish bar. We were going to go to a new one, The Bog, but it had a wait line about 200 people deep. Ridiculous! So we went back to Sullivan’s, where we had gone on Valentines and had some Guinness, listened to loud live Kiwi renditions of American music, because apparently they don’t seem to have any musical culture of their own here, and over all had a good enough time to chase the blues away.