As someone who has always yearned to be a WADA but was never brave enough to actually follow through, this essay really hit me in the gut and the heart. I long to know what it feels like to wake up in a different place than the one I’ve known my whole life and have it be more permanent than a two week respite from the grind of being entrenched in everything it means to be American. I didn’t have any wanderlust role models to give me permission, either spoken or unspoken, to follow that path, and I’m sadder for it. Your family legacy of adventure is envious. So glad you took to this Substack experiment!
Also this paragraph - wow: “I don’t want to overcook this. MAGA abhors immigration because they reject hybridity in any form: fuck ‘em for that alone. Power is always messy, but humans are humans wherever they roam. The line between WADA and local—between immigrant and local—is an infinite and beautiful spectrum, and a story old as stories themselves. We learn by going where we have to go. But we gotta walk that line with grace. As the Kiwis have taught me: always say thanks to your bus driver.”
Hi Tim! Thanks for reading! I love this--"entrenched in everything it means to be American." It IS a grind! But there's a version of this grind in every country. Because the grind is human life. It's cold and drafty (and kind of sexy) when you leave your trench. I am fascinated by the notion that some of us can hold ourselves above the trenches forever, just a-seeing the world. Oh I want this! And I've learned how it's ultimately impossible, at least for me. Home trenches are shelter, grind and all. I don't know. But shutting student visas down serves exactly none of this!
Doesn't take away from how nervous shutting down student visas will be making people feel (even if some in NZ universities see it as a business opportunity) but I wonder if any of the Ivy League Universities would actually feel the pinch. Given the size of most of their endowment funds, they might just wait it out.
They'll feel it, alright. Harvard is one quarter international students. In spirit, even more so. These are deeply international places, as was NYU Shanghai. Or were? We'll see.
Having taken public transportation last month for the first time in NZ, I sat in the back of the bus and I was amazed at everyone getting off either saying thank you or waving thank you to the bus driver. I commented to Z&R my amazement. ( I liked the rest of your post as well! ;) )
Hi John! Glad you liked it! Kiwis do say thanks, quietly and quickly in that Kiwi way. And it's sad how jawdropping it is to American ears! We're so friendly, we are, and that's grand. But that's not always the same thing as polite or respectful.
Ah, thanks for all of this, dude. Another friend (the writer Nathaniel Perkins) responded to that essay with "humans evolved as a species because of our ability to travel long distances to places with more favorable conditions." And I think that's right. It's hard for people outside of the U.S. to believe that Americans would choose to live away from the dominant economic power of our age. But that power and the benefits of that economic might isn't going to the people. It ain't trickling down.
Hey man! Thank you for yours! Truly, the whole thing & B's comment especially struck something in me I'm still chewing on. Nathaniel's right, movement is central to our survival. So is making a stand, as you put it. But that can take so many forms. And I agree, people don't always understand everything that's quit working back home, or never did. It's trickling down less than ever. I mean, they're not wrong. We're rich. It's generally more easier for us to leave than for most anyone to go there. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing for us and our families, for all sorts of reasons! Good luck up there. Will be reading!
Nothing has been or shall be wasted, my friend and fellow ex-pat WADA. On the eve of our family alighting to New Zealand in 2008, our whanau (didn't know THAT word then) gathered for a farewell that ended up feeling a bit like a wake. I took it upon myself to read Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken to the gathered and though I'm pretty sure they all thought we were crazy (you want to LEAVE the greatest nation on earth?), I know my parents admired us for taking a divergent path fraught with unknowns and unknowables with two kids in tow who were too young to protest such a move.
It has been a wild, E-Ticket ride and it continues. My work has taken me around the world to places I had only dreamt about and I have met heaps of extremely interesting people. Our retirement won't be flash unless we win Powerball - and that's okay. We took the road less travelled by - and that has made all the difference!
Hi Brad! Would love to have been there for the Frost reading. What a scene! Thanks for this--nothing shall be wasted. I need to repeat this. I think so much of the expat conversation comes out as a ledgeer sheet--this is better HERE, and that is better THERE. As a discourse we're as guilty as anyone else (particularly us self-optimizing Americans, but anyone really) of treating life as a game to be won. Leaving is letting this go somewhat, or it should be. You leave to leave. And here we are. And it's made a heel of a difference.
And I agree--whanau is low-key the greatest NZ word.
My husband, a fellow WADA, has now lived here longer than he lived in the US. But then, I tied him down here. And academic job prospects back home were less than he had here. So he's stayed. And the current situation in the US means he's unlikely to set foot there for some time. Even his passport is about to expire and he's reluctant to renew it - he's tried a little and it's become complicated. So I guess he's become a different type of WADA - a White American Dude Abandoned.
Hey Muse! Thanks for reading, and high five to your WADA! I'm on a similar track. I am a fading academic watching Trump try to burn down an unhealthy industry already being eaten alive by AI. Weird, weird days. I still think a WADA takes his own initiative. History churns around us, and we play the cards as they come. Bad cards of late, for sure. I could go back and work at Starbucks tomorrow if I want, right? He stayed for you, and for NZ. But you're totally right: stay out long enough and the A's in WADA will change.
I'm really happy to read your article. I'm from China, and in 2023 I moved to New Zealand with my partner (who's from Florida). Some people have asked us why we didn’t move to the U.S. — the reason is, neither of us wanted to live in our own countries.
Now I'm working here as a journalist and he's a teacher. We're slowly getting used to life here (though we can't say we've fallen in love with it yet — New Zealand has plenty of things that frustrate us, like the traffic and how isolated it is). But at the same time, there's fresh air and nature.
Hi Yima! Welcome to NZ! It's a change, for sure. My partner and I moved here from Shanghai, actually. The air & light & quiet were huge--still are--even as there is plenty else we miss. Have we fallen in love? I guess you could say we had a hard crush early, and have been through a few rounds of what-even-is-this-place since. All the while I feel myself more and more at home here (and more and more uncertain about what 'home' ever meant in the first place?) I wish your & yours a happy settling-in here. Holler if you ever make the Wairarapa! Here's the Shanghai letter: https://www.american.nz/p/blame-it-on-baby-jet-lag
Even as a non native English speaker (European) NZ isn't a difficult country to emigrate too. But I do realise having that ability to move somewhere and adjust so quickly is inherently privileged.
Hi Sophie! Glad to hear it! I imagine it's still easier for both us than it is for many other countries--race and passport are huge, unfortuntately even in generally open NZ. But it's the stories the power creates, too. I never doubted we could pull this off, because I'd heard it done so many times before!
Then again I have had friends who have tried to emigrate and have returned and just couldn't make it work. That was usually because of jobs or missing family too much.
I guess if it becomes impossible for you to settle down here and all you can think of is wanting to be with your family back home. I’ve known people who just can’t seem to make connections here, so they continued to focus on how things were better back home. Whereas once you start to make connections here, there are things keeping you in NZ as well - if that makes sense
Dan, you're such a damned good writer! I love this, like I love so much of what you write. And the best part is that it's not only well-written, it's thought-provoking! Like a Snickers bar that hits you with the chocolate, then the nougat, and then the nuts. And yes, I use an American analogy advisedly, because you (unlike me, really) have so much of America in your voice.
As a fellow WADA equipped with a middle-class sense of stability and some fancy-ass degrees, I really got this post. My family isn't one to wander—I am the first person to move across a national border in several generations, which creates a double-edged sense of alienation (my family don't get me; my host country doesn't get me). But, like the rest of the WADA crew, I keep muddling along, sustained by the beauty and the challenge of the journey. Because that's what it's all about, in the final analysis. At least for me.
Hi Gregory! So glad you dug it! I was curious what you'd think, as a brother WADA. I am tickled to know I've (still?) got so much America in my voice (and peanuts, which I love.) Our country drives me bonkers, but it's still mine, after all these years out.
I feel you about family. With the stories we've got, they all totally understand why I *went.* It's the question of *staying* that haunts them and me both. I hold tight to the idea that it's all a beautiful journey--life's a journey anywhere, right? But I keep circling this idea (this myth?) that there can be an end to the wandering part, the moment you plant a flag and call it home. I wonder if Portugal feels this way for you, or if you even ask it to. Some folks find this, others live fine without it. I'm still not sure where my WADA heart will land!
I think that one difference between you and me, friend Dan, is that you seem to have a sort of mental umbilical cord or bungee that ties you back to the US, whereas I think I cut mine long ago. You sometimes wonder aloud whether you will ever return, whereas I can't imagine doing so.
Does that mean that I have found an actual home? No, not really. Perhaps it just means that I have come to terms with being essentially homeless.
This is less of a problem for someone like me who doesn't have kids. If I did, I am sure that I would be quite obsessed with the question of whether they were going to grow up as Americans/Kiwis/Portuguese/whatever, and whether they would feel rooted. Me, I'm just a tumbleweed with an advanced degree. Not ideal, but at least you don't get bored, as they say.
You read me well, sir! It's not an umbilical cord so much as my dang American bones. Doesn't feel like somthing I can cut--I wouldn't know where to put the scissors. I suppose I was just born that way. A childhood in the mythic American West helps--gets a hold on ya, it does. It's also my formative experiences abroad, I think. A WADA is never not an American in LatAm, for all kinds of reasons. You learn to carry that weight & power pretty quick.
And now it's New Zealand, with kids. This the first country where the main differences between being foreigner and local felt weirdly more *inside* me, in my soul or whatever, and therefore malleable? Or not. The kids and their little souls raise the stakes enormously. Tumbleweeds roll in order to scatter their seeds. They're Russian thistles, too--an invasive species that colonized the American West. Not sure where to take the metaphor from there! Never bored, indeed. Thanks for writing, my friend!
Thank you for this thoughtful post! Navigating privilege and outsider-hood honestly is always difficult, with no really good conclusions to be found. It was great to read this open discussion of how it works for you in New Zealand.
Thanks. Rebecca! Agreed--no satisfying answers here. The one I keep returning to is someting like...not being an outsider anymore? To the degree that it's possible? And in New Zealand it feels very possible, I think, at least for me. Which makes the category of outsider weirder to hold on to than it might be elsewhere. Maybe that's an answer?? Onward into the fog!
As usual, I’m watching from the outside in. I have found a home but never have felt the grind. And, yes, I feel it is my power. Love all the thoughts this brings up!
Hi Rachel! If you're watching from the outside in, am I living from the outside out? When i see your walks & stove & bread I feel a bit outside-in myself. Home is what matters, however we write that story. You've got a good one. I'm still drafting. Your notes this month have been lovely, thank you! I tell myself I know to reach out, to make tht connection, etc., but there's a magic in being told to do so by a voice I trust. Thank you!
A brave post Dan. I've never felt like an Ex-Pat here - even after decades of people asking me if I "like it" and 'must be different from Brooklyn'
Now, I've been away so long that very little looks even vaguely familiar (or comforting) when I venture back and sadly I sometimes could say the same when I return.
A bit like the Ray Bradbury classic Sound of Thunder.
Hi Susan! You've got years on me here, but I think I know what you mean--NZ is so close to the US experience in so many basic ways that 'expat' feels sort of off. It's not Shanghai, where we had an ayi and stuck out on every street corner and never got the langauge! I dig the Bradbury--we're back and forth in time and space, wondering how one could possible effect to connect to the other, and which one is ours. 'Familiar' is esssential and maybe overrated at the same time? NZ does have a lot of dinosaur-coded ferns, though!
As someone who has always yearned to be a WADA but was never brave enough to actually follow through, this essay really hit me in the gut and the heart. I long to know what it feels like to wake up in a different place than the one I’ve known my whole life and have it be more permanent than a two week respite from the grind of being entrenched in everything it means to be American. I didn’t have any wanderlust role models to give me permission, either spoken or unspoken, to follow that path, and I’m sadder for it. Your family legacy of adventure is envious. So glad you took to this Substack experiment!
Also this paragraph - wow: “I don’t want to overcook this. MAGA abhors immigration because they reject hybridity in any form: fuck ‘em for that alone. Power is always messy, but humans are humans wherever they roam. The line between WADA and local—between immigrant and local—is an infinite and beautiful spectrum, and a story old as stories themselves. We learn by going where we have to go. But we gotta walk that line with grace. As the Kiwis have taught me: always say thanks to your bus driver.”
Hi Tim! Thanks for reading! I love this--"entrenched in everything it means to be American." It IS a grind! But there's a version of this grind in every country. Because the grind is human life. It's cold and drafty (and kind of sexy) when you leave your trench. I am fascinated by the notion that some of us can hold ourselves above the trenches forever, just a-seeing the world. Oh I want this! And I've learned how it's ultimately impossible, at least for me. Home trenches are shelter, grind and all. I don't know. But shutting student visas down serves exactly none of this!
Doesn't take away from how nervous shutting down student visas will be making people feel (even if some in NZ universities see it as a business opportunity) but I wonder if any of the Ivy League Universities would actually feel the pinch. Given the size of most of their endowment funds, they might just wait it out.
They'll feel it, alright. Harvard is one quarter international students. In spirit, even more so. These are deeply international places, as was NYU Shanghai. Or were? We'll see.
They’re already playing ball with the government - two weeks ago NYU withheld a student’s diploma after a pro-Palestine speech during graduation.
Having taken public transportation last month for the first time in NZ, I sat in the back of the bus and I was amazed at everyone getting off either saying thank you or waving thank you to the bus driver. I commented to Z&R my amazement. ( I liked the rest of your post as well! ;) )
Hi John! Glad you liked it! Kiwis do say thanks, quietly and quickly in that Kiwi way. And it's sad how jawdropping it is to American ears! We're so friendly, we are, and that's grand. But that's not always the same thing as polite or respectful.
I agree Dan, I live in a place that's know for friendly people, but Kiwis take it to another level. Cheers!
Ah, thanks for all of this, dude. Another friend (the writer Nathaniel Perkins) responded to that essay with "humans evolved as a species because of our ability to travel long distances to places with more favorable conditions." And I think that's right. It's hard for people outside of the U.S. to believe that Americans would choose to live away from the dominant economic power of our age. But that power and the benefits of that economic might isn't going to the people. It ain't trickling down.
Hey man! Thank you for yours! Truly, the whole thing & B's comment especially struck something in me I'm still chewing on. Nathaniel's right, movement is central to our survival. So is making a stand, as you put it. But that can take so many forms. And I agree, people don't always understand everything that's quit working back home, or never did. It's trickling down less than ever. I mean, they're not wrong. We're rich. It's generally more easier for us to leave than for most anyone to go there. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing for us and our families, for all sorts of reasons! Good luck up there. Will be reading!
Nothing has been or shall be wasted, my friend and fellow ex-pat WADA. On the eve of our family alighting to New Zealand in 2008, our whanau (didn't know THAT word then) gathered for a farewell that ended up feeling a bit like a wake. I took it upon myself to read Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken to the gathered and though I'm pretty sure they all thought we were crazy (you want to LEAVE the greatest nation on earth?), I know my parents admired us for taking a divergent path fraught with unknowns and unknowables with two kids in tow who were too young to protest such a move.
It has been a wild, E-Ticket ride and it continues. My work has taken me around the world to places I had only dreamt about and I have met heaps of extremely interesting people. Our retirement won't be flash unless we win Powerball - and that's okay. We took the road less travelled by - and that has made all the difference!
Hi Brad! Would love to have been there for the Frost reading. What a scene! Thanks for this--nothing shall be wasted. I need to repeat this. I think so much of the expat conversation comes out as a ledgeer sheet--this is better HERE, and that is better THERE. As a discourse we're as guilty as anyone else (particularly us self-optimizing Americans, but anyone really) of treating life as a game to be won. Leaving is letting this go somewhat, or it should be. You leave to leave. And here we are. And it's made a heel of a difference.
And I agree--whanau is low-key the greatest NZ word.
My husband, a fellow WADA, has now lived here longer than he lived in the US. But then, I tied him down here. And academic job prospects back home were less than he had here. So he's stayed. And the current situation in the US means he's unlikely to set foot there for some time. Even his passport is about to expire and he's reluctant to renew it - he's tried a little and it's become complicated. So I guess he's become a different type of WADA - a White American Dude Abandoned.
Hey Muse! Thanks for reading, and high five to your WADA! I'm on a similar track. I am a fading academic watching Trump try to burn down an unhealthy industry already being eaten alive by AI. Weird, weird days. I still think a WADA takes his own initiative. History churns around us, and we play the cards as they come. Bad cards of late, for sure. I could go back and work at Starbucks tomorrow if I want, right? He stayed for you, and for NZ. But you're totally right: stay out long enough and the A's in WADA will change.
I'm really happy to read your article. I'm from China, and in 2023 I moved to New Zealand with my partner (who's from Florida). Some people have asked us why we didn’t move to the U.S. — the reason is, neither of us wanted to live in our own countries.
Now I'm working here as a journalist and he's a teacher. We're slowly getting used to life here (though we can't say we've fallen in love with it yet — New Zealand has plenty of things that frustrate us, like the traffic and how isolated it is). But at the same time, there's fresh air and nature.
Looking forward to reading more of your writing!
Hi Yima! Welcome to NZ! It's a change, for sure. My partner and I moved here from Shanghai, actually. The air & light & quiet were huge--still are--even as there is plenty else we miss. Have we fallen in love? I guess you could say we had a hard crush early, and have been through a few rounds of what-even-is-this-place since. All the while I feel myself more and more at home here (and more and more uncertain about what 'home' ever meant in the first place?) I wish your & yours a happy settling-in here. Holler if you ever make the Wairarapa! Here's the Shanghai letter: https://www.american.nz/p/blame-it-on-baby-jet-lag
Even as a non native English speaker (European) NZ isn't a difficult country to emigrate too. But I do realise having that ability to move somewhere and adjust so quickly is inherently privileged.
Hi Sophie! Glad to hear it! I imagine it's still easier for both us than it is for many other countries--race and passport are huge, unfortuntately even in generally open NZ. But it's the stories the power creates, too. I never doubted we could pull this off, because I'd heard it done so many times before!
Then again I have had friends who have tried to emigrate and have returned and just couldn't make it work. That was usually because of jobs or missing family too much.
What's the line between missing family *enough* and missing family *too much*? Asking for a friend :)
I guess if it becomes impossible for you to settle down here and all you can think of is wanting to be with your family back home. I’ve known people who just can’t seem to make connections here, so they continued to focus on how things were better back home. Whereas once you start to make connections here, there are things keeping you in NZ as well - if that makes sense
Dan, you're such a damned good writer! I love this, like I love so much of what you write. And the best part is that it's not only well-written, it's thought-provoking! Like a Snickers bar that hits you with the chocolate, then the nougat, and then the nuts. And yes, I use an American analogy advisedly, because you (unlike me, really) have so much of America in your voice.
As a fellow WADA equipped with a middle-class sense of stability and some fancy-ass degrees, I really got this post. My family isn't one to wander—I am the first person to move across a national border in several generations, which creates a double-edged sense of alienation (my family don't get me; my host country doesn't get me). But, like the rest of the WADA crew, I keep muddling along, sustained by the beauty and the challenge of the journey. Because that's what it's all about, in the final analysis. At least for me.
Hi Gregory! So glad you dug it! I was curious what you'd think, as a brother WADA. I am tickled to know I've (still?) got so much America in my voice (and peanuts, which I love.) Our country drives me bonkers, but it's still mine, after all these years out.
I feel you about family. With the stories we've got, they all totally understand why I *went.* It's the question of *staying* that haunts them and me both. I hold tight to the idea that it's all a beautiful journey--life's a journey anywhere, right? But I keep circling this idea (this myth?) that there can be an end to the wandering part, the moment you plant a flag and call it home. I wonder if Portugal feels this way for you, or if you even ask it to. Some folks find this, others live fine without it. I'm still not sure where my WADA heart will land!
I think that one difference between you and me, friend Dan, is that you seem to have a sort of mental umbilical cord or bungee that ties you back to the US, whereas I think I cut mine long ago. You sometimes wonder aloud whether you will ever return, whereas I can't imagine doing so.
Does that mean that I have found an actual home? No, not really. Perhaps it just means that I have come to terms with being essentially homeless.
This is less of a problem for someone like me who doesn't have kids. If I did, I am sure that I would be quite obsessed with the question of whether they were going to grow up as Americans/Kiwis/Portuguese/whatever, and whether they would feel rooted. Me, I'm just a tumbleweed with an advanced degree. Not ideal, but at least you don't get bored, as they say.
You read me well, sir! It's not an umbilical cord so much as my dang American bones. Doesn't feel like somthing I can cut--I wouldn't know where to put the scissors. I suppose I was just born that way. A childhood in the mythic American West helps--gets a hold on ya, it does. It's also my formative experiences abroad, I think. A WADA is never not an American in LatAm, for all kinds of reasons. You learn to carry that weight & power pretty quick.
And now it's New Zealand, with kids. This the first country where the main differences between being foreigner and local felt weirdly more *inside* me, in my soul or whatever, and therefore malleable? Or not. The kids and their little souls raise the stakes enormously. Tumbleweeds roll in order to scatter their seeds. They're Russian thistles, too--an invasive species that colonized the American West. Not sure where to take the metaphor from there! Never bored, indeed. Thanks for writing, my friend!
Thank you for this thoughtful post! Navigating privilege and outsider-hood honestly is always difficult, with no really good conclusions to be found. It was great to read this open discussion of how it works for you in New Zealand.
Thanks. Rebecca! Agreed--no satisfying answers here. The one I keep returning to is someting like...not being an outsider anymore? To the degree that it's possible? And in New Zealand it feels very possible, I think, at least for me. Which makes the category of outsider weirder to hold on to than it might be elsewhere. Maybe that's an answer?? Onward into the fog!
As usual, I’m watching from the outside in. I have found a home but never have felt the grind. And, yes, I feel it is my power. Love all the thoughts this brings up!
Hi Rachel! If you're watching from the outside in, am I living from the outside out? When i see your walks & stove & bread I feel a bit outside-in myself. Home is what matters, however we write that story. You've got a good one. I'm still drafting. Your notes this month have been lovely, thank you! I tell myself I know to reach out, to make tht connection, etc., but there's a magic in being told to do so by a voice I trust. Thank you!
😊☺️
A brave post Dan. I've never felt like an Ex-Pat here - even after decades of people asking me if I "like it" and 'must be different from Brooklyn'
Now, I've been away so long that very little looks even vaguely familiar (or comforting) when I venture back and sadly I sometimes could say the same when I return.
A bit like the Ray Bradbury classic Sound of Thunder.
Hi Susan! You've got years on me here, but I think I know what you mean--NZ is so close to the US experience in so many basic ways that 'expat' feels sort of off. It's not Shanghai, where we had an ayi and stuck out on every street corner and never got the langauge! I dig the Bradbury--we're back and forth in time and space, wondering how one could possible effect to connect to the other, and which one is ours. 'Familiar' is esssential and maybe overrated at the same time? NZ does have a lot of dinosaur-coded ferns, though!
Yes and of course the Tuatara.
:-) Suspect we may have a lot of dinosaur-coded people as well.