One Year In: Impressions on our New Zealand Adventure

Nov 03 2022

In one of my previous posts, I shared our family’s first coast-to-coast journey across (and the first glimpse of) the south island of New Zealand. I couldn’t have known then how often we would take that same breathtaking route over the coming year:

For fun.
For orthodontist appointments.
For getting the car serviced.
For those delicious “Iowa” pancakes they serve at Drexels (believe me, they are worth the three 1/2-hour drive)

Nature's chandelier: a spider web hangs heavy with glittering raindrops. — Nature’s chandelier: a spider web hangs heavy with glittering raindrops.

As I write this, it is a year to the day that we made that road trip, and I am in disbelief that a year can vanish so quickly. Our family has experienced so much, yet so little, in that time. So today, one year in, I’d like to share some impressions on our New Zealand adventure so far…

The people

Small-town friendly. Making conversation with a total stranger seems second nature, which is a good thing for me. I love to talk to my hair stylist and people in the shops and out on hikes. Connecting with the community is essential; you can learn so much about a place when you stop to talk for a few minutes. It drives my teenagers and husband crazy. But in our neck of the south island, that level of friendliness is a common way of life.

Why is that 12-year-old driving a car?

He’s not; he looks, well, like a tween. I’m already a terrible judge of age, so the physical appearance of kids in New Zealand throws me off.

They look so much younger than my own.

I swear I saw a 12-year-old girl getting her driver’s permit…even though one has to be 16 in New Zealand to do so. Also, kids with significant acne are practically nonexistent. We’ve wondered if diet has something to do with the youthfulness of Kiwi kids. And it turns out the use of hormonal growth promotants (HGP’s) is also practically nonexistent in raising meat. HGP’s are never used in sheep, chicken, or with dairy cattle and are used in fewer than one percent of beef cattle. So it’s possible the limited exposure to hormones in food has something to do with the maturity gap.

School

Six ways in which public school in New Zealand is different from public school in the US:

Year-round learning (two-week holidays between quarters, 6-week summer holiday)
The final year of high school is optional (although our kids don’t have that choice!)
Faculty don’t choose “winners” and “losers.”
No pressure to take an AP course load (our high school doesn’t even offer an AP track)
Trades are accepted as a realistic and valued career path.
School uniforms required
No weeks on end devoted to standardized testing (and away from learning)

I’m not a fan of the American school system, especially as I have kids with learning differences. Yet, gun-shy from previous experience in the US, there was still no question my husband and I wanted our kids to try public school in New Zealand. And they really like it: realistic expectations, less pressure, and objective testing procedures (all tests that matter are submitted to a national board for evaluation). In fact, they are thriving.

And why is that dog driving a car?

He’s not, either. Finally, I don’t go through the horror (or awe, truth be told) of seeing a dog parallel park. Because, of course, he’s not (don’t be silly!). He may be sitting in the left-hand seat, but he’s not behind the wheel (duh, daft American…!). It has taken months to remember (without thinking about it) that people drive from the right-hand side of the vehicle. But fortunately, it took only a few weeks of practicing mirror-image driving to feel comfortable with it.

And that’s when I got rattled.

Because every so often, I do try to get into my car on the wrong side and, on occasion, look left-right-left before crossing the road instead of right-left-right. I’ve learned to be cautiously comfortable with driving in New Zealand. Especially when giving directions. Since a left turn here feels like a right-hand turn in the USA, and vice versa, I give wrong directions often more often than I care to admit. Again, cautious comfort.

It’s safe.

Does mayhem occur? Yes. Are there violent crimes? Yes. But New Zealand is, overall, a pretty safe place to live. The rate of serious crimes in 2019 was 2.63 per 100,000 people (compared to 380.8 per 100,000 in the US in 2019). And there is no threat of school shootings, thanks partly to a progressive gun control policy.

And get this:

Kids in our community have paper routes. This blew my mind, coming from a city in the midwest where two paperboys vanished without a trace several decades ago. Here, primary school children walk and bike to school without adult supervision.

Now we don’t live in Auckland or Christchurch where things could be quite different; I can’t speak to that. But where we live, it’s pretty darn safe for kids. Unfortunately, though, New Zealand has one of the worst child abuse records in the developed world, according to unicef.org.nz. New Zealand isn’t perfect, but overall it is safer than most places worldwide.

Reflecting the safety of the country, and true to what we read before arriving here, embellishment in reporting the news is commonplace. For example, this article recently graced the front page (above the fold) of our local newspaper, the Greymouth Star:

Slaughtered daffodils are newsworthy in a small city. — Not that this isn’t a big deal, someone’s hard work was destroyed.

And I find this feature simply refreshing:

New toilets in Reefton make the news. — Truth be told, I’d much rather read about the new toilets in Reefton than what the immediate past POTUS is trying to flush down his.

Full disclosure, I’ve used those new toilets, which are a definite upgrade…

The Weather.

Today is not a great day for reflecting on the weather on the west coast. Yesterday was gorgeous with a capital G, sunny, and 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees F), a much-needed drying-out after a week of rain showers. Today? It’s raining torrentially, and the wind is blowing it sideways.

Spring is typically the wettest season in New Zealand, so this is not surprising weather. But it is vastly different from our home in arid southwest Colorado, where two rainy days a year is the norm. In contrast, the average number of rainy days on the west coast is 172, nearly half the year. It is, after all, a rainforest…

I’m a dry-heat kinda girl, so when the damp spring chills set in, I’m not at my best. But I’m growing accustomed and learning that the folks here find that 18-degree-celsius weather to be quite warm. It’s lovely, for sure, but I miss the mid-80s and ten percent humidity.

Culture.

The native culture is valued here in New Zealand, and evidence of that is present in everyday life:

A Maori Wharenui (pronounced faa-ray-noo-ee), or meeting house, is built on the high school campus for Maori studies.
Non-natives know at least a little Te Reo Maori, the Maori language, which is incorporated into signage, everyday conversation, and newspaper reports.
Towns and landmarks retain their Maori names.
Every day at school, the students recite a verse in Maori, and in the Maori tradition, one that respects the value of a meeting and hopes for it to progress well.
And, much like in the USA, there are opportunities to learn more at cultural centers throughout the country.

Also, there are efforts taking place right now on the west coast to better define and strengthen the relationship between the local Maori and the non-native south island infrastructure, in keeping with the founding treaty of New Zealand. (That’s how I understand it, but we still have much to learn.) To give an example of how Te Reo Maori is used daily in New Zealand, here is a quote from the website devoted to the Te Tai o Poutini Plan (those efforts I mentioned above):

Tangata Whenua

This chapter will outline the key relationship with Poutini Ngāi Tahu and how the Plan addresses the Treaty of Waitangi. It will provide information on the hāpu on the West Coast and the Councils’ relationship with them. It will explain how hāpu and iwi planning documents are addressed within the plan and the process for ongoing involvement and participation of Poutini Ngāi Tahu in implementing the plan.

Te Reo Maori and English blend effortlessly.

So the Maori culture is not relegated to the sidelines in westernized New Zealand. It is embraced, highly valued, and respected, and “doing better” is the goal.

This year has passed frighteningly fast. And there is still so much to learn and experience…the more we do and see, the more we realize we’ve only scratched the surface of this beautiful place also known as Aotearoa, or “long white cloud.”

It has been a gift to be here.

A sign that used to be posted at Pukekura, a town on the west coast of the south island, providing a cheeky weather update. — The perfect blend of cheeky New Zealand humor, bluntness, and the reality of living in a rainforest. (Photo as printed in the Greymouth Star)

Want to read more about New Zealand? Every other post I publish here at Pulse will be on our family’s adventures here, so stay tuned! Next up in the New Zealand post lineup will be:

New Zealand Rock and Roll Will Leave You Quaking In Your Boots.

Or something like that if my SEO doesn’t like this title.

And for a light, entertaining read on providing healthcare in New Zealand, read my husband’s recent post on chuckbphilosophy.com. I was giggling so hard I nearly chundered my cuppa! (Read his post for translation.)