My Life History: How Did I Get Here?

*cue Odesza* Since I wrote up a similar story for my visa application, I figure it would be helpful to include a more comprehensive life history here on the blog as well. This will hopefully explain why I ended up moving to New Zealand and how I went about starting the actual process.

(You can also read my about me page if you want a super quick summary!)

Early life

I was born and raised as an only child in the suburbs of Chicago. As a kid, my parents and I took a few domestic vacations here and there. My first time immersing myself completely in a different culture came when I went to France and Italy on a school-sponsored trip. I fell in love with the thrill of being somewhere new and getting out of my comfort zone. Those two weeks I spent abroad at 16 quickly convinced me that the United States is not where I wanted to end up in the long run.

In college, I studied abroad for ten months in Aix-en-Provence, France. It’s almost impossible to describe just how content I was during this time. I made great friends, threw myself into learning French, and traveled around the rest of Europe almost every weekend and school holiday (of which there were plenty, because France).

After graduating from university a year later, I started the dreadful task of job searching. I had majored in psychology and quickly discovered that there were very few entry-level jobs you could get without a graduate degree in that field. The idea of more schooling didn’t thrill me (especially when I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do). I kept applying to random jobs and resigned myself to being a cog in the corporate wheel until something better came up.

Landing my dream job

During a slight mental breakdown, I applied for a flight attendant position that had popped up online. To my surprise, I got an email back the next day inviting me to complete a recorded video interview. After finishing that (and thinking I had bombed it), they invited me to an in-person interview in Newark, New Jersey. I flew out within the next week and received a conditional job offer on the spot.

A few weeks later and I headed off to six weeks of flight attendant training in Houston, Texas. In training, I learned that they were going to assign me to the company’s San Francisco base after graduation. I frantically searched and worried about how I’d afford San Francisco rent on a ramen noodle budget. I ended up in a three-bedroom house near the airport with seven other flight attendants.

Although sleeping in a bunk bed at 24 was not ideal, it ended up being so much fun! Having so many people around felt like a college, part 2. It definitely helped to have friends to commiserate with about erratic schedules and rude passengers. I survived my first year of being a super junior flight attendant and loved (mostly) every minute of it.

Catching the travel bug

In June 2017, I attended Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas on a whim with my high school friends. To say I became obsessed with music festivals would be an understatement. Back in San Francisco, I convinced my roommate Jamie to go to another one with me. Wanting to take advantage of our flight benefits, we bought tickets to Ultra Music Festival in Croatia the following month.

We got to the city of Split a few days before the festival began. After a full day of traveling, we were hungry and exhausted. We agreed to go out for a quick dinner and have one beer. We wanted to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for the weekend to come. Of course, being the people we are, one beer turned into two, which turned into three. We found ourselves drunkenly walking the streets of Split after dinner when a random man approached us and asked if we wanted to go on a pub crawl. Never ones to say no to free alcohol, we laughed and said yes. Jamie and I boarded a coach bus filled with beautiful Europeans and drove away to some unknown location.

At the bar, two guys with funny accents approached us. They ended up being Ben, my future boyfriend, and his best friend Mark. The four of us hit it off. We ended up spending the rest of the night and a majority of the festival together.

A spark catches

After coming back home to San Francisco, Ben and I kept in touch while he traveled around the rest of Europe with Mark. I really liked him, but kept telling myself it definitely wouldn’t go anywhere (on account of living on different continents and all). In a bit of a crazy move, we decided to meet up again in Hawaii in a few weeks on Ben’s way back home to New Zealand. This was the first instance my friends and family were convinced I would get murdered.

Against all odds, I didn’t end up dead. We actually had an incredible time getting to know each other while soaking in Hawaii’s beauty. In retrospect, I will admit that going on what is essentially a honeymoon for two uninterrupted weeks with a stranger I’d known for four days is straight-up insane behavior. Thankfully, it ended up being better than I could have expected!

A few months after Hawaii, we took another laughably romantic trip – this time to Fiji. As expected, it was out of this world amazing. A few months after that, I visited Ben in New Zealand for the first time. I took a short leave from work and we spent three months living in a renovated Sprinter van and traveling the North and South Islands (this was “you’re going to get murdered” instance #2). I fell in love with him, and with New Zealand, and with the freedom that I had as a flight attendant. Life was good!

Love birds

Officially a long-distance couple, we spent the next two and a half years bouncing back and forth between New Zealand and the United States. I never fully committed to moving or getting a long-term visa because I didn’t want to quit my job. Neither of us wanted to live in the US long-term, so we decided to wait things out.

Side note: there are flight attendants that choose to commute extremely far from home to base. I’m talking across the country or across an ocean far – our flight benefits make it possible. At this point, I had changed base back to Chicago and would have had to endure three flights (18+ hours total) and a four-hour drive to get to Ben’s house on the South Island before and after every assignment. Yeah, that’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.

Pandemic

And then came COVID. As we all know, decreased demand and international travel restrictions ravaged the airline industry in March. I found myself on call and technically “working” but spending all of my time sitting at home because there were no flights and a surplus of flight attendants. Because of the CARES Act, I was still employed and getting paid, but the writing was on the wall. The CARES Act expired at the end of September and I was furloughed indefinitely from the job I loved. All this time, Ben and I were apart in our respective countries. We couldn’t travel to see each other because of border and quarantine restrictions.

Sensing myself stuck in a kind of limbo, and not having my job to hold me back, I finally decided to take the plunge and apply for a visa to be with Ben. Because of a weird new requirement on New Zealand’s end, he had to fly to the US to “fetch” me before I could apply for a Critical Purpose Visitor visa. This new visa type, made for partners and families separated by New Zealand’s border closure, allows me to enter the country with my partner and stay for up to twelve months.

After doing a lot of research, they approved my CPVV in early October. Ben and I flew back to New Zealand together a few weeks later. We went through managed isolation together and are now living in his house in Twizel.

Moving on

As for the future? I’m hoping to apply for a work visa here in New Zealand. If and when they recall me back to my flight attendant job in Chicago, I’ll probably aim to keep taking leaves of absence while I figure out my game plan. Until then, I’ll be enjoying life here in a gorgeous country that is operating mostly normally despite the craziness going on around the rest of the world.

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

xoxo Niki