The Start of a Journey
Călin / 26 June 2022
While saying goodbye to a number of friends on the latest hike I organized for our BARD hiking group, someone suggested that I post stories and photos of our new planned adventure in New Zealand. So I decided to start journaling – something that I have been considering for a while, but I did not have a good incentive. While we have been spending time outdoors, hiking, biking, and skiing, and I have posted a number of my pictures either on 500.px or shared privately, writing text about those has been not something I considered. After all, we want these hikes and skiing trips to be uneventful! So here we are, at the beginning of a new journey, one that feels exciting and gives me a good reason to challenge myself to write.
Of course, everyone is asking why are we moving? The answer is … complicated: it’s been a while that we have been considering moving out of the US. We had an amazing run of 29 years here, and we are grateful for what this country has offered us:
- free education, and actually even better – we were paid to go to school, learn, and earn our degrees.
- family life: the opportunity to build a family; we have two loving kids who continue to teach and inspire us.
- job opportunities in industries that have been growing exponentially and allowed us to live the “American dream”: work hard and have a comfortable life.
- acceptance: we never felt excluded or oppressed, even though we have funny accents. It used to be that folks used that opportunity to ask where are we from. It is also true that we fit in – not only with existing Americans (white, middle class, educated), but also with the thriving community of immigrants and other people with “funny accents”, all of whom call this country home now.
- accessible natural beauty to pursue our passion for the outdoors. And lots of advocates for preserving it, people who build preserves and volunteer to maintain the trails.
Why are we leaving then?
First and foremost, Google gave me an opportunity to continue the same work I’m doing now from New Zealand. The Google NZ site is a new office and with the experience in the past two years of working remotely, working in a timezone that is 3-5h away from California seems quite doable. We already have a couple of people working in that office and with the Google process for remote work, it’s just too easy and appealing to pass on the opportunity. Thank you Google!
New Zealand is a country of endless beauty, and as we looked around the world, it seems to be one of the countries that truly matches our lifestyle: small, outdoorsy, and yet ranking top on many issues that we care about. We do not care about gun ownership, we would rather abolish capital punishment than the right to abortions, and we would rather have leadership than reality shows. New Zealand has a mature, adult government that takes care of its people. They have programs to reduce the inequality rather than always favouring the rich. Are these all an illusion because the grass is greener? We do not know for sure, but we’d rather find out. Are all these problems fixable? Indeed they are, but for that, we need the ability to have a civilized dialog. That does not seem to be possible anymore; Anca tried her hand with activism – calling to convince people at least to go out and vote, and she found at most a handful of people willing to listen. The division runs deep and the political environment is only exacerbating the differences.
So, just as 30 years ago we packed our bags and moved to the US to explore the world, here we are, packing our bags again and embarking on a new exploration.