Sunday, October 17, 2010

Expat Experiences: New Zealand - Jared Gulian


Who are you?

My name is Jared Gulian, and I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up living in paradise. My partner Rick and I are two American city boys who moved to rural New Zealand in 2006. We live on 20 acres with an olive grove just outside the charming wine village of Martinborough, at the bottom of the North Island.

We sell our olive oil commercially, and we commute into Wellington for our day jobs. We've got chickens and there are cattle and sheep grazing in our paddocks.

I write about our life on my blog Moon over Martinborough


Where, when and why did you move abroad?


Rick and I were living together in Chicago when I became restless. I had always wanted to live overseas for a year or two, but had never managed to do it. Fortunately for me, Rick said he'd join me. We moved to Japan in 1998, when we were both 31. We ended up staying a lot longer than expected.

During our time there we heard really great things about New Zealand, and we met a lot of very nice Kiwis. When we were finally ready to leave Japan, we decided to give New Zealand a try. By then we'd both fallen in love with living overseas.

We moved from Japan to New Zealand in 2003. We started out in Wellington city, but in 2006 we moved out to Martinborough, which is in the Wairarapa valley about an hour outside of Wellington.

For more about how we ended up here, read my 'life story as recipe' in the blog post - 'Make your own olive oil in 23 easy steps'


What challenges did you face during the move?

We tend to leap-frog across the planet. I moved from Chicago to Northern Japan first, then...

Read more at
http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-new-zealand-experiences-jared-gulian

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