Is two years a good enough try?

[KLS2010 30]

I've only been here 6mths, so I can't really speak to how long it should take you to adjust.

That comment you made about the environment making you depressed - that hit home with me and I absolutely believe it's true. I was born in Sydney but I am a country girl at heart. I can't stand the city, I can't deal with seeing nothing but concrete and traffic and smog, and crowds of people. And now I'm living in Houston TX - which is maybe the 4th or 5th largest city in the US!! For the 6yrs before I moved here I had been living in a small country town of around 3000 people, Houston has something like 5mil!!

My husband sees a huge change in me when we get out of the city. When we go somewhere where there are trees and grass and open spaces its like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders. I would love to move (ideally back to Australia, but even just somewhere else in TX), but I know that this is where we need to be for now - we need to get my step-daughter through school first and get her started at college before we can even think about moving anywhere else. I want to go back to Australia, and I am lucky that my husband is open to the idea once his daughter is settled, but in the back of my mind is the knowledge that my husband will probably have the same problems adjusting to Australia, just like I'm having adjusting to America.

So maybe a compromise of moving to another town/city nearby would work for you.

Now I may be completely out of line here and I don't mean to offend....but you may end up banging you head against a wall with this. You husband has never lived anywhere else, isn't really open to the idea (of moving to NZ at least, I don't know about another town), and you said your MIL wont be happy either. It sounds to me like you may have bigger problems than just the issue of where to live. I see the same thing in my husband's family - he was born and raised here in Houston, has never lived anywhere else, but at least he is open to moving. His sister will never live anywhere else as that would upset their parents. Same thing with my husband's uncle and their family - his uncle and two of their children (and their families) all live in the same neighbourhood (one daughter actually lives right next door to her parents), and have never lived anywhere but Houston either. Now I'm all for families being close and supporting...but with them it just seems like they don't get to live their own lives because all of their family are right there with them all the time. And I know from being in that sort of situation....it's not always easy to make a decision when you have an entire family making their opinions known. I hope I'm wrong on this part of it...and my apologies if I'm out of line.

I wish you well and hope that you and your husband can work something out so that both of you can be happy.

[arren 6]

Thanks, I feel so much better now I would totally move to B.C. or something in a heartbeat! I think a lot of my homesickness is, in a funny way, the lack of trees over this side of Washington. I don't know why but I need a lot of water and trees to feel happy lol. Is it possible that my environment could be making me depressed? It really is an awful landscape! I definitely think a bigger city with more interesting surroundings and access to other ex-pats would really improve my outlook on life, without having to resort to an extreme move like New Zealand.

To everyone that has replied, thank you for being so kind! You've all been a huge help and I really appreciate your thoughts and advice.

If you're missing water and trees you should definitely move to Western Washington!

I live near Seattle and I really like the area. I come from Italy so it's a lot different here, but the Seattle-ites are nice and the population is VERY diverse - I've met people from so many different countries. I find it always nice to talk with people who come from abroad because you can still relate to them, even if it's completely different countries. Also, I'm sure it's easier to find a job here compared to the area where you live.

I get homesick too - I've been here for 3 years and I feel it's getting worse rather than better. But I think the quality of life in the Seattle area is great so I can't objectively complain about it

[JacAng 8]

The best thing for you to do is maybe to just go home for a visit ... I am finding out the hard way that I did not miss home as much as I thought and now I am missing my husband a whole lot more. I went from the beautiful BC to the dreaded eastern washington and hated it also.... I was married during a visit so I could have stayed and adjusted status but noooooooooooooooo I have to do everything the hard way....now I wish I had stayed but at least when I go back he wont have to put up with me being homesick. The beauty is not in the place the beauty is in how you see the place.

[Robert&Karen 264]

We live in a very small town, population 107. We have to drive 20 miles for a quart of milk. Karen is going bonkers with nothing to do for work. We will likely move to the city in the summer, but it i still all so new to her. She loves shoes as well, and you both have a lot in common. I wish there was an easy answer. maybe you can compromise.... think of 5 things you want and have your husband pick one or two and make them happen.

[Pinoylover 6]

KL and Z if your looking for some place that is quit and homely need to move closer to Dallas area in Tx not necessarily in down town Dallas but the outer skirts lots of small towns and yet close enough for the kind of work you do? Just a suggestion....Good luck!

[chastitynjoel 19]

My husband is not here yet but I know he is very nervous about starting his new life in this country. I know there will be a period of adjustment and what makes it even harder for him will be the language barrier. I believe, as long as there is love, respect and understanding, most couples can get through anything TOGETHER. I have a great career, I am in grad school and have a 6 year old...but I have also contemplated the what ifs... What if we do not get approved? Then what? My answer is simple: I would move to his country. Why? Because if he is willing to leave behind everything he knows, his family, his life for me then how can I not do the same thing for him?

America has many great qualities and perks that draw people here but it is far from perfect and has its drawbacks as well. Can you suggest moving back to NZ for just a period of time? Say, 2 or 3 years and then reanalyze the situation at that time to decide whats best for the both of you? That way a fair comparison can be made and mutual respect for each others needs and feelings are fulfilled.

I wish you the best of luck, Kiwi!

[Krikit 1,165]

Just putting my vote in for Seattle!

[newlyweds2010 208]

I agree with the other VJ members who suggested you move within the US, even within Washington State. Seattle may be a very good option, a big city, although not a metropolis or an asphalt jungle, with things to do, places to see, new faces to meet, and certainly more job opportunities to catch. The adjustment process is not easy. Good luck.

[K&E2009 71]

You are definitely not alone with your feelings.

I currently live in the South West of Ireland, the beach and Atlantic Ocean are 100m from my house. Cliffs, mountains, rugged landscape is all around me. I LOVE MY COUNTRY and it BREAKS MY HEART to leave. But, I know that it's the right thing to do for now.

No jobs here for me and my US fianceé... 10 years down the road maybe there will be! At which point we WILL be back!

She lives in Florida... which is NOT all it's made out to be. The Central Florida area is terribly overcrowded, it's a swamp, it's DIGUSTINGLY HUMID in the summer, there are ZERO mountains. They have beaches, but no scenery if you know what I mean!? Unless you want to look at people in cammo, driving trucks bigger than my house...

For the most part it's full of small minded, ignorant, racists. I wonder how she grew up to be completely different to most of the other people who live where she's from!! Seriously, I have heard some things that I cannot repeat. She is as eager as I am to go to a different State. Something a bit greener and scenic.

We'll probably stay in Florida for a year, and get out. I like the idea of the North West/North East of America. Probably look a bit more like Ireland. The North West seems like it would be a much friendlier place, too. Seattle/Portland, up there.

[cdneh 3,112]

I hear you Zeddess. Easy it isn't. I am 3 years here now, and actually a Canadian who was living in NZ for almost 20 years before that. When I get homesick, and I still do, it's for NZ.

I lived in Blockhouse Bay, overlooking the Manukau Harbour, only 2 minutes to a very nice beach, at the foot of our street. I worked in the ambulance comms center, as a 2OIC dispatcher and relief team manager. I am a paramedic by trade.

Now I live in small town Arkansas. Very small. No hills, no body of water anywhere. The heat and humidity here in the summer is not to be believed. No jobs gong here, not in any trade.

We relocated here from Virginia, about 20 minutes outside Washington DC, to help my MIL look after her aging husband while she was in hospital herself. He has since passed away, and now we are keeping a close eye on her. She is 82. We certainly never intended to get stuck here, but we are. My husband is also now unwell, and waiting on a transplant, so if anything I am kept busy by the two of them, which is a good thing.

I'd go back in a heartbeat, but I only had permanent resident status in NZ. I had to relinquish that to come here.

I'd look at Seattle in your shoes. There's other Kiwis there I am sure, the climate meant to be like Auckland being one of the attractions. Perhaps in a bigger city you would feel more at home, and perhaps your husband will come to understand how hard it is to be away from home, and trying to make your way in a new place. I think a persons surroundings, and how they feel about where they are can make homesickness worse, and make a person long to return to the time and place where they were last very happy. Now we can't go back in time, mores the pity, but we can try and go ahead! I wish you all the best

[Justine+David 218]

I'm sorry you're having a tough time.

I'm from Tacoma, just south of Seattle and have lived in Seattle for a few years before moving east. Yakima is a TOTALLY different area and way of life. I don't blame you for not wanting to live there! That said, I think you'll have many more job opportunities in Seattle; Yakima sounds more like you have to know someone to get a job, from what I've heard.

If nothing else, you should try to hold out until you can get your dual US citizenship so that you guys won't have any problems should you try to move back to US from New Zealand or going on visits.

Best of luck.

[DeeDee&Sam 68]

i feel ya i moved here from one of the biggest cities of my country, and the town i live in has nothing to offer. we have to drive about 30 miles or more to go to walmart LOL. you're lucky to have some friends . id love to move in a big city since thats what im used to, but my husband has a very good payd job here so i guess im stuck until i find a better payd job than he has not to say that ive never drove in my life and getting a license here will be like moving to mars.

hold on there. things must come around one way or another. where's love there's everything

[J&N* 68]

I can imagine WA being so different than Australia, why don't you move somewhere warmer and drier? Maybe Arizona or Nevada or anywhere with beaches like California or Florida? Maybe you really just need to get out of Washington and see what else is out. You and your husband might get lucky and get a raise if you move and afford a nice house for a good price (especially if you go to AZ or FL were housing prices dramatically dropped)

Ever heard the saying "You can never go home again" by Thomas Wolfe? I think of that whenever I'm homesick... I can never get my old life back because it's forever gone and if I go back, it'll be a totally new place! Try to live in the present now and try to enjoy it because the days that pass by, will never come back.

I wish you the best and I really do feel what you're going through. I've been there.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

We all, every single one of us, have one major goal in life, and it's the same for every person on this planet. Do you know what that is? It's the pursuit of happiness. People who are smarter than it seems conceivable have figured that out. Where we differ is in what makes us happy.

For me, living where I don't want to live is an absolute deal breaker. My wife and I are on the same page here, so she understands me all too well when I say that I could easily have found another suitable spouse among the 6,800,000,000 people on this planet, but it would have been near impossible to find another place I really wanted to live at.

What is really important to me is the weather. I lived, actually lived, in 6 European countries (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy) and then briefly for 6 months in India on an . . . um . . . spiritual quest before moving to the U.S. By the time I was in my 30s, I hadI visited a total of 32 countries, always looking for my terrestrial nirvana. Only after I had found the perfect place to live, I looked for a partner who I would want to share my life with. Had she been the most beautiful, most charming, most everything woman in the world, yet living somewhere where I absolutely wouldn't want to live, it would have been a deal breaker for relationship and marriage purposes.

Hence, couples need to have some points where they agree on things, and where to live must be high on the list for sure. Somebody who enjoys snow boarding will not have much fun living with somebody who likes to get the tan of a lifetime on the beach.

The U.S. is a vast place. It's a friggin' continent, well, a peninsula of some kind. We have 50 states here, from Alaska to Hawaii, plus the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and some other rather exotic places, so there's really a perfect place for about anybody right here in the greatest country in the world!

I now live in Paradise, and aside from Monaco where I'd love to spend a few months a year if I could spend a million dollars a year, which will never happen, of course, I can't imagine living anywhere else. We had 81 degrees today, and yesterday, and the day before. Blue skies, not a cloud in sight. A bit windy today, but I drove one of my olde roadsters to work anyway. If I could take the weather out of the equation, which I can't, but you may, then I would say Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington are two fantastic places to live!

Have a talk with your husband, and plan two weekend getaway trips for the next future. Have a look, explore, and take it from there. Who knows, you may like it, your husband may like it, or you both don't like it. You won't know until you try though.

Best of luck to you.

[kiwibelcanto 3]

@ KLS2010 - Yes, that's how I feel too. I know my husband would follow me if I told him I was moving back to New Zealand, no matter what. But I would feel so awful! If I'm having this much of a hard time adjusting to American life (and I've been exposed to that culture my entire life), imagine what it would be like for him trying to figure out New Zealand culture, even though he's been there a few times to visit, he would probably like it even less than I do here. You were not at all out of line, I totally understand what you mean about their family - American families are very close and don't really like it when their kids leave the nest. It's completely normal for Kiwis and Aussies to travel the world but it's a really strange concept for small town folk in the USA. Going off to college in another state is enough to make them faint. I definitely know that NZ is out of the question (at least for now), but his mum thought she'd never see us again when we moved 15 minutes away! Lol.

@ arren - I would love to move to the western side of Washington, it reminds me so much more of home! Even just the chance to meet other people from different countries would be fantastic (I know there's a meetup group in Portland which I would love to attend, but a 4-5 hour drive isn't so easy). Every time I've met someone from Australia or the UK I trip over myself trying to talk to them, but they're usually older and have been here for 30+ years, so not too much in common with them either. I would love to go traveling around Europe as well, which is what I was going to do back in NZ (especially to Italy!!!), but I kind of feel that now I'm stuck here my dreams of going on an "overseas experience" are trampled on by the day-to-day grind of the American workaholic mentality. I was so excited the first 8 or so months of being in the U.S., now I just feel so jaded by it.

@ JacAng - Aww I'm sorry to hear that, I'm a little nervous about feeling that way too, what if I go home in September for a visit and it's really not all it's cracked up to be? Then I will really feel like I belong nowhere! I used to think eastern Washington wasn't so bad because it was such a different landscape than what I was used to, but now the novelty has worn off and I'm still in a dusty, dry desert with nothing but freeways and sagebrush. I'm hoping the summertime will make me a little happier, but then again it's like 100 degrees and I don't have air-conditioning in my car haha, so not very pleasant in that regard.

@ Robert&Karen - Tell her to visit shoedazzle.com, it's amazing!! That is a really tiny town though, a small town to me is about 200,000! Whereabouts is she from in the UK? How long has she been here and what does she do for work? I'm always on facebook if she wants another ex-pat to relate to.

@ Pinoylover - I appreciate your idea but the thought of living in Texas almost terrifies me half to death! Lol, I watch too much crime channel that gives me nightmares and a lot of the stories are from Texas. Probably a good idea to stick to the Northwest

@ chastitynjoel - You are so right!! I hope you guys do get approved, I'm sure you will. You must be so excited. I'm sure if I wasn't approved to live here, he would have moved to NZ in a flash. But the fact that we've come SO far and bought a house and have jobs (or did, LOL), moving back there now would almost be like it was all for nothing, ya know? I think I should probably continue to remove my conditions, get citizenship and then we'll be able to move back and forth between the US and NZ to hopefully figure out where it is we both want to live. Thank you so much though, and best luck to you as well!

@ Krikit - Thanks! Duly noted

@ Widsy97 - Oh my gosh the beautiful Irish picture you just painted makes me want to go there!! I love Ireland and feel like I would just totally just slip into belonging there with no worries. That's another thing, I feel like visiting other countries was a lot more possible in New Zealand than here. I had 4 weeks paid vacation every year, and if I wanted to take off another 3 weeks unpaid to go overseas they didn't bat an eyelid. My friend even left for 3 months for an O.E. and still had her job when she came back. That is completely unheard of in America, they look at you like you're insane. Two weeks paid vacation, if you're lucky, and they might not even let you take it all at once. One week vacation overseas - what is the point of that?! Anyway, you would LOVE the Pacific Northwest, it really is gorgeous (I have NO idea how eastern Washington even squeezed its way in to being considered the "Northwest" lol). I think if my husband had lived anywhere else, northeast, the south, the midwest, I would have straight up refused to come here. When are you moving to the U.S.?

@ cdneh - My fellow Kiwi! I didn't know you were originally from Canada! What a funny small world it is, I'm from Blockhouse Bay We probably know some of the same people. I couldn't imagine what small town Arkansas would be like - I know what you mean about the heat (even though it's a dry heat up here it's still incredibly miserable). I'm also worried about if I leave here to move back to NZ, having to give up my permanent residency, so in case we ever wanted to move back to the U.S. (for whatever reason) we wouldn't be able to. I am so sorry to hear about your husband, I'm sending my love over your way, I hope everything works out for you both, please keep in touch

@ Justine+David - Thanks so much, what's the cost of living like in Tacoma? I've been near that area a couple of times (Puyallup - I love saying that word lol) and it seems a far cry nicer than Tri-Cities. You're right though, I think it would be best to wait until I get citizenship (next year I'm eligible I think), so if we wanted to move to NZ I wouldn't be throwing a long and expensive immigration process out the window! Lol

@ DeeDee&Sam - What city did you live in in Romania?? That would be so amazing to go there!! I guess I'm lucky in that the American culture is very similar to my own, did you have a hard time feeling like you fit in? You should try getting your license! It's really a lot easier than it looks. Except the DMV, that is literally hell on earth lol. My husband tries to be so supportive of my homesickness, but I get so demanding for a prettier and more exciting environment sometimes. He really is wonderful though, and I'd rather be in this town with him than in New Zealand without him.

@ J&N - I would love to move somewhere with beaches, the river that runs through this town just isn't enough lol. The dry heat is what bothers me, the four seasons are a real novelty and I don't really mind the snow because it's so rare, but in the summertime it's like 100 degrees and I can barely stand to be outside for very long. I'm really liking the idea of Seattle or Portland since it's so much closer to the climate I'm accustomed to. I've never heard that saying but I know exactly what you mean, I feel like my old NZ life is gone forever and things would be so different if I went back and that's something that scares me a little. There's been a lot of good times in the last couple of years so I should be thankful for those. Thanks for understanding

@ Brother Hesekiel - Wow it sounds like you've really been around! I really hope I get the chance to visit even half of those places you mentioned. The weather is a big factor for me too, but even though my town gets 300 days of sunshine a year it doesn't make up for the landscape and the people. I have a feeling I would absolutely love Hawaii, but that's probably a bit of wishful thinking lol. Portland and Seattle are very close to my hometown, with their unpredictable marine climates and rainy weather haha, on the rare occasion that it rains here I feel happy because it reminds me of Auckland. Thanks for your wisdom!

Whew, longest post ever!!