12 August 2018

Forever Home



Hold on to me as we go
As we roll down
This unfamiliar road
And although this wave
Is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
‘Cause I’m gonna’ make this place
Your home
- Phillip Phillips Home



We are back in The Land Of the Long White Cloud, and it took longer than we had hoped. We left NZ in Sept 2017 with the intent to return as soon as possible. Our goal was to have our house on the market by February 2018 and be back in NZ by mid-April. To be honest, we thought that goal was a little too ambitious, but we fully expected to be here by June. Now, two months over-schedule and over budget, and nearly a year after we first left, we’re back. So many things conspired to delay us; most significantly was our immigration application. If you have never tried to immigrate to another country, and you believe what you hear on American television, you might think it’s pretty easy. Far from it. Our application for immigration, with supporting documents, ran to 217 individual pages and cost us almost $10K. Leaving one country for another is never easy (Link: Run For the Border).

And while I say “We are back ...”, we are only partially back. I let my previous ED group know that I would work my last shift for them in mid-July and told the group in NZ that I would be ready to start work on 6 August. Packing up and moving a 3400 sqft (315 sq m) house is a 3 day event. The plan was to have the movers pack and load only a few days after my last shift, and for the three of us to fly out on 21 or 22 July. The movers couldn’t quite meet our timeline, so Little H and I drove to Houston, sold my car, and boarded a flight on 28 July, landing in New Zealand on 30 July (you lose a day crossing the International Date Line). Kari was left behind to jettison the last bits of detritus we had accumulated, deal with any problems that cropped up, and organize the move. She will arrive in NZ nearly a month after we did.

Over the 13 years we have been together, Kari and I have moved around quite a bit. We met, got married, and had a baby in Galveston TX. From there, we spent two years in the suburbs of Washington DC before heading off for three years of training in Iowa City. I learned to be an Emergency Medicine Physician and Kari learned to be a Nurse Practitioner. We left Iowa City to start our first professional jobs (well, not really ... Kari was a nurse for many years before becoming a NP). We left Iowa for Myrtle Beach, SC and to say that we were disappointed with where we landed is an understatement. If not for a fantastic group of friends and neighbors, and an amazing group of doctors (Palmetto Emergency Physicians) who took me in, we would have left SC five years ago.

On my last foray up to Canada to play golf with my brothers before permanently relocating to the other side of the globe, I had to clear U.S. customs and immigration in the Toronto airport. When the U.S. ICE officer asked me what I do, I replied “I’m an Emergency Medicine Physician.” He looked at me and said, “That’s quite a title.” I don’t really think so, but I’m glad I didn’t use my New Zealand title ... Emergency Medicine Consultant Specialist.

Taking a chance, moving away from friends, family, and everything we have always known is hard, but not as hard as I expected. Maybe that’s because we are running to something, not away. We are running toward a better future, a better life, and a better environment in which Little H can grow and explore. We probably could have found what we were looking for somewhere in the U.S., but we think we found it here. We return not as visitors, but as permanent residents, and hopefully, someday, citizens. This is the place in which we hope to grow old together. Don’t hold your breath, though; moss doesn’t seem to settle well on our feet ...


Y’all come back now, ya’ hear ...

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