“How Are You Finding It?” A Kiwi Question I Didn’t Expect.

When we first got here, this was the line that kept coming at us from every direction:

“How are you finding it?”

I had to adjust to that phrasing.

In California, the version I grew up with was more like: “So — do you like it?”

That one feels loaded, like the approval is already assumed. Like they want you to gush on cue.

But in New Zealand, it felt like the opposite. No pressure. No presumption.

“How are you finding it?” gives you space to still be in process.

That was oddly comforting in those early months when everything was new, the accents, the slang, the sun being in the wrong part of the sky.

Over time my answer has settled into something calm and solid:

I’m really enjoying our life here.

Not because everything is perfect, no place is, but because it feels like a life I can breathe in.

People ask me a lot to “describe New Zealand. ”The quick version I usually go with is this:

It feels a bit like California, if California slowed down, chilled out, got surrounded by ocean…and traded some of the road rage for rural paddocks and sheep.

It’s familiar enough that I don’t feel like I moved to Mars ,but different enough that it’s stretched me in good ways.

Bare feet to the grocery store? Normal. Rules that are more common-sense than punitive? Also normal. A general vibe of “don’t overcomplicate it”? Extremely normal.

There’s a quietness here that sneaks up on you, in a very good way. Life doesn’t need to be noisy to feel full.

It took me three years to work up the nerve to start sharing any of this publicly.

We learned a lot from other people online before we moved…and I wasn’t sure I wanted to step into that same spotlight.

I still don’t know where this will go.

But I do know this:

The move didn’t start at the airport. It started when the life we were in, the one that theoretically should have been ideal, no longer matched who we were becoming.

And I guess that’s where this story really begins.

Before the decision. Before the suitcase. Before the visa.

With who we were , standing in the life we had , realizing something in us was shifting.

Here we are growing....