E2NZ.org

Continuing in our popular series of Migrant Tales, first hand accounts of the migrant experience of New Zealand taken from places around the net.

Today’s tale was recently published on Expatexposed.com, a not for profit emigration discussion board dealing mostly with New Zealand.

The author is an American woman who deeply regrets her decision to move to New Zealand with her Kiwi partner two years ago.

Initially I moved here from the U.S. because I am engaged to a Kiwi and we made the decision to move here to be near his mother. I was alright with this because when I visited NZ I just fell in love with the country, and because his mother has no one else here really that she can rely on. It has been two years now, and I have not been able to even get a nibble as far as a job, we are barely making ends meet and to make matters worse at the end of the month my fiance’s job ends because the company is closing down.

After having been here for two years I can say that I wholeheartedly hate living in this country. Everything is insanely expensive, the job market is garbage and I am almost always either freezing or too bloody hot. Our overpriced flat has no heat or air, is constantly damp and we’ve got a mold problem. Our landlord is useless. I desperately want to go home to the U.S. but my fiance’s mother would be left with no one here, and my fiance just thinks things are dandy in NZ, or at least that things are better in NZ than in the U.S. I am terrified that i’ll have something go wrong medically with me here because having seen the state of NZ hospitals and the healthcare system in general I know I would be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I do feel that my health has declined since moving here. With food prices the way they are in NZ the only food we can afford isn’t food that we should be eating to stay healthy. I am really not at all sure what we’ll do when my fiance’s job ends.

In closing, I dearly want to go home but even if I got him to agree at this point we wouldn’t be able to afford it. I am really just over this place.