Posts by Paul Campbell
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When I was 16 I went to Tahiti on a student exchange for french class - my host family was amazed that I could tell kiwis/americans/brits/aussies apart, even when they were speaking french (I guess we all mangle their vowels subtly differently) - to the french we all sounded like english people speaking french
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After 20 years away I lost the ability to distinguish Aussies and Aucklanders - I could mostly still tell South Islanders though - it was really embarrassing - mind you living where I did in California/Bay Area/Silicon Valley I'd run into a Kiwi maybe every other year (unless I sought them out or went skiing)
It only took a few months back home to get my ear back and now the Aussies sound totally different
One of the weirdest things living somewhere where no one has your accent is actually hearing it - after my first 6 months living in SF I heard someone talking on the radio, KPFA, something about nuclear free zones, it was '84 ... her accent sounded really familiar, I just couldn't place it, I listened for 10 minutes before I had that OMG moment .... it wasn't just "oh, she has a kiwi accent!" it was "I sound like that"
Every time we came home to visit we'd sit in the departure lounge quietly listening to the people around talking .... it was wonderful
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Whether that perception of being trapped in NZ was real I'm not sure but for many of us growing up at that time it seemed real.
Well growing up at a time where access to foreign exchange (and as a result travel) was very limited - when I left to go to the US I went down to the bank to arrange stuff, they asked for my credit cards there and then and cut them in front of me .... my plan had been to use those cards to travel with and have someone pay the bills for me in NZ .... traveling overseas seemed impossible to many of us - without an internet people who left just disappeared - the world seems much more inviting now
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Equally Gore is closer to Sydney than Auckland - many people down our way make the occasional trip to Sydney for shopping rather than Auckland
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oh heh! sorry
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it doesn't tell me up front what I really wanted to know at the time:
- how do I enroll the kids in school? answer: find a school, bowl on up and talk to the principle, no form filling required with the dept of education to explain where this child who's never been on their books before materialised from (take their passport with you) - you can choose any school, some schools may be zoned, mostly high schools
- how do I choose a doctor? answer: basically the same, choose one, show up, bring your passport - bring a passport if you ever go to casualty, you're accent may trigger much form filling otherwise (did this last week with my son who forgot his)
other stuff:
- don't forget to register to vote - it's election year
- hunt down your IRD number, you'll need it, eventually the kids will too, if you can't find it call them they'll get it for you
(don't forget to file taxes in both countries - because you're moving from one place to another chances are you'll get a refund in both places - the IRS has a bunch of useful rules that apply if you are leaving the country for more than a year)Jolisa - did you take out US citizenship? if not kiss your SS contributions goodbye, unless you move back for a few years when you retire
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Thanks Sacha - again more intended for people immigrating rather than those of us moving back.
One useful thing is this I was looking for something with that curve in it to post above. Lisa was studying psych in the US and came across a different form of it at about the point where I crashed 9 months after we moved to the US - the versions I've seen before last 18 months rather than 2 years (and without all the silly F alliterations) - I think it's a great way to look at the process of moving anywhere new - that crash after the novelty wears off is a whole mess of homesickness - and when you're back on an even keel 18 months later you are "home"
(for us it was much easier moving back to NZ than moving away)
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to Jolisa,
Paul, I was counting on you to show up and tell me how it's done, right down to the Christmas ornament tip. You should write a book. Actually, we should write a book, or go into the resettlement advice business as per Sue's suggestion. (And ten years, really?? That went fast!)
Well 7 years - close enough to 10 at this point
I really looked for on-line advice and help when we came back, dealing with the NZ consulate was a real disaster - especially for my wife's visa (turned out we could just turn back on her 20 year defunct residency - it never occurred to us that that was an option). We still ended up camping out side the DC consulate for a day to get everything settled once we were on our way
I even went into the local NZ Immigration dept office in Dunedin asking if they had any giveaways for new immigrants,m stuff like "how to enroll your kid in school", "how to find and sign up with a doctor" ... stuff you hadn't done as a student but now you have kids you suddenly have to do - I walked away empty handed.
How about a web site somewhere with hints and tips (and stories)?
I wish I could bring that part of the doorframe, but it'd be a tricky thing to match and patch in a historic house. Plus, we're just one layer of history on this old house. But good advice for the record, for anyone else contemplating it: take the doorframe, take a photo, or start out with something more portable in the first place, like a bespoke yardstick.
For those starting out in the kid business - let me repeat my suggestion above - people move, all the time - grab a piece of wood a couple of metres long, paint it in bright colours - use that - we had friends decorate one for each of our kids at their baby showers, one has an arrow "grow this way" painted at one end - now that they've stopped growing we really need to take that one last measurement of both of them
I just can't shake the weird feeling that leaving here will also mean leaving the ghost of their respective childhoods behind, y'know?
we worried about something like that - the kids have kept in touch with their friends (facebook in particular) as they head of to college, and I think that's what matters - we're going to go back "home" for xmas this year, I'll take the kids back to the old house and ask the new owners (not the ones we sold to) if the kids can have a look, I bet it looks smaller to them - I remember some teenagers showing up at our door not long after we bought it and we were happy to let them wander - we'll take them to places we took them to as kids.
Even for us adults places change, Cody's book store isn't there any more on Telegraph, but Berkeley's still full of that wonderful mix of hippy-children, street people, street stalls, street politics etc that I miss in somewhat staid Dunedin
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well mine's (apparently) obviously a US one .... people make strange assumptions about my politics, morals, religion, etc based on it
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I've said this here before - "home" is a funny thing, it's often where you're not - for years after we moved back "home" was Oakland, now it's caught up with us and is Dunedin
As far as detecting accents, I'm quite screwed as far as Kiwi vs. US is concerned, can't hear my kids accents though I know they have them, and of course can't hear my own - I have a US accent in NZ, even after so long back, and a somewhere-maybe-british accent in the US - there's nowhere on the planet I don't have an accent
When we first came back, about a week before my daughter started school (1st form, ie 11), she came to us, she'd decided she needed to get rid of her accent before she started school so she would fit in - we had to explain, and assured her that her accent would help her stand out and find friends - in the end it was a non-issue