Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's not like I will be going house hunting while I'm there. The kids would come just to see a new part of the world in case we never decide to move there. Albeit that they are young, by next winter I think our 6 yr old would remember the trip as he got older, our 3yr old not so much, but he would be in all the pictures....and I think New Zealand has plenty of stuff to see and do, from renting a boat for the day in Auckland, or taking a helicopter ride down by the glaciers on the South Island, and even the simpler things like just going to the beach, or going hiking in the mountains, etc...we would never plan a grown up vacation and bring our children to spend 20+ hours in a plane and then spend the rest of the trip in a car driving around doing nothing. When we go on vacation we tend to fill it up with all sorts of activities. They are too young for the extreme sports that New Zealand has to offer like Zorbing, Bungee jumping, white water rafting, etc...but we can still make it a vacation worth remembering for us and them. Our son still has vivid memories of Colorado from our ski vacation and he had just turned 4yrs old then, it's still his favorite place in the wolrd (except mom and dad hate snow and cold)....so he will have to learn to deal with places like that only being for 1-2wk vacations as we will never move to a place like that. SoCal has Big Bear not too far away, plus we have the beaches, and is not out of the equation either since we are both from there...but I know it was simpler when we were there and even at that level from 20yrs ago, SoCal is nowhere near as peaceful or laid back as Hawaii was when we were there....and I hear that New Zealand is also a very tranquil place to live and not have to be helicopter parents with your children living under a magnifying glass behind a safety net. I liked that about growing up in Japan....it was so safe that you had the freedom to just go and have fun. There was almost a 0% chance of getting kidnapped, assaulted, robbed, raped, etc... We moved back to the US from Japan and all around Disneyland, every hotel and restaurant has bars on the windows. Come on now.
Sorry that you had think that I need counseling because I think that Houston is a dirty ugly city with bad air quality, poor sight seeing, muddy water, etc....but that is what it is.
I think you would need counseling if you thought otherwise. Houston is my least favorite city in the us. The old Skatepark of Houston was pretty awesome in it's day though.
Winkosmosis stated that Houston and Honolulu look and smell the same. This is nothing short of BS. Honolulu is nowhere near the size of Houston, and lacks the industrial elements (pollution) that Houston has. The trade winds in Honolulu keep the air fresh, and flowering plants add a very nice aroma to the air. I spent a good deal of time in Houston at skateboarding contests when I was younger, and now live in Honolulu. They are very different towns.
I sure as hell couldn't tell a difference when I was in the crappy part of town near the community college. The run down strip malls look identical. Flowering plants? Didn't see a single flower. And every time I've gone to HNL it has rained, just like Houston in the fall and winter. Humid, wet, dirty.
i'm not a parent, but I was talking to my friend who is a parent and she says no way would she take her children abroad (especially not to australia or NZ) until they're teenagers. I agree with her. My BF and i can't wait to go visit NZ, but it's costing us thousands of dollars to go. i can't imagine taking a young child. I just don't think they would properly appreciate it to make it worth the money, you know? I wouldn't have, at that age. I would have thought it was a fun adventure, but I'd have felt the same way if we had gone to Florida, California, or Hawaii (or anywhere else in the US). I would not have appreciated NZ for what it was. Plus then you have like a 13 hour plane ride with small children! don't inflict that on yourself
Now of course if money is no object, ignore me, and go have fun in NZ! Just my .02.
It's not like I will be going house hunting while I'm there. The kids would come just to see a new part of the world in case we never decide to move there. Albeit that they are young, by next winter I think our 6 yr old would remember the trip as he got older, our 3yr old not so much, but he would be in all the pictures....and I think New Zealand has plenty of stuff to see and do, from renting a boat for the day in Auckland, or taking a helicopter ride down by the glaciers on the South Island, and even the simpler things like just going to the beach, or going hiking in the mountains, etc...we would never plan a grown up vacation and bring our children to spend 20+ hours in a plane and then spend the rest of the trip in a car driving around doing nothing. When we go on vacation we tend to fill it up with all sorts of activities. They are too young for the extreme sports that New Zealand has to offer like Zorbing, Bungee jumping, white water rafting, etc...but we can still make it a vacation worth remembering for us and them. Our son still has vivid memories of Colorado from our ski vacation and he had just turned 4yrs old then, it's still his favorite place in the wolrd (except mom and dad hate snow and cold)....so he will have to learn to deal with places like that only being for 1-2wk vacations as we will never move to a place like that. SoCal has Big Bear not too far away, plus we have the beaches, and is not out of the equation either since we are both from there...but I know it was simpler when we were there and even at that level from 20yrs ago, SoCal is nowhere near as peaceful or laid back as Hawaii was when we were there....and I hear that New Zealand is also a very tranquil place to live and not have to be helicopter parents with your children living under a magnifying glass behind a safety net. I liked that about growing up in Japan....it was so safe that you had the freedom to just go and have fun. There was almost a 0% chance of getting kidnapped, assaulted, robbed, raped, etc... We moved back to the US from Japan and all around Disneyland, every hotel and restaurant has bars on the windows. Come on now.
Yeah, the area around disneyland is super sketchy. I definitely wouldn't move there. But not all of socal is sketchy...it seems to be really random what is and isn't though.
You should take them to Dunedin to see penguins and go on a cruise through milford sound if you do go to NZ
I sure as hell couldn't tell a difference when I was in the crappy part of town near the community college. The run down strip malls look identical. Flowering plants? Didn't see a single flower. And every time I've gone to HNL it has rained, just like Houston in the fall and winter. Humid, wet, dirty.
Well, it's a shame you have had such unpleasant experiences here in Honolulu. Hope your next visit is more positive and enjoyable.
We would not look at New Zealand with a value figure attached to it....at that point, if you choose to go, you just have to forget about the costs and focus on the trip itself. If one cannot afford to go on a vacation like that with their family, then obviously it would make no sense to go when other cheaper alternatives can likely offer the family a similar result which is a good time spent away from home enjoying a new place. I would prefer my vacations to serve dual purposes though at this juncture in our lives.
I know I will not live in Honolulu itself, maybe Oahu, but not the city. I am definitely looking for a more peaceful place to live, but living on Oahu and near Honolulu may offer the best benefits for employment, acceptance (big cities tend to be more open to outsiders than small communities), and a bit more of that familiar feel with shopping, dining, and activities to do that are not all just beach, surf, and relaxation for the kids. Being around the military bases may also be a good thing since I grew up in a military environment most of my life and those areas are probably a lot more used to dealing with mainlanders than Maui for instance. My wife lived in Hilo as a child and she remembers school being very rough for her as the new white kid from America, and this was in kindergarten which I find amazing.
Well, it's a shame you have had such unpleasant experiences here in Honolulu. Hope your next visit is more positive and enjoyable.
I only go to Honolulu for work. I can't afford to go for pleasure... So no, my next visit isn't going to be better. I don't get the luxury of just hanging out in Waikiki with the rainbows and hibiscus and ignoring the concrete sprawl and ghettos. I was lucky my first visit that I had some extra time after my course to get out of the dirty crowded congested city and visit the estate from Magnum PI.
I agree with lane_change that the varying topography and pocket beaches make the Hawaiian beachs more interesting (to me as well) than the long, mostly featureless beaches of Florida (outside of the Keys). That said, I do get SurferCocoa's point: there are nice communities to live in right along those big beaches, and you can have that water-activity lifestyle very easily. I saw one of those house hunting shows along Florida's Atlantic coast, and it seemed like there were nice and cheap communities very close to the beach.
One phyiscal difference that is always evident to me in Hawaii is the lack of sprawl. I lived in Silicon Valley/San Jose, California, and came to loathe driving the grid of roads, stopping at a light every 1/4 mile regardless of whether there was cross-traffic. But that means that housing is more dense here, and people live closer together. For people who need more space, there has been a lot of development of larger lots recently (coincidentally, driven by mainland transplants), so you still have the choice. But you end up driving several miles inland for the privilege. That's one thing I do like about Kaua'i: most things are close, and I find myself driving less and less--that directly equals more time with family.
I wanted to offer perspectives on the other issues that came up: safety, discrimination, and social interaction in Hawaii.
While Mayberry is just an ideal, I still feel that Hawaii is a very safe place for kids. The caveat is that the neighbor islands, being more rural, are safer IMHO. And by safe, I mean lack of major crime (murders, kidnappings, etc.) and general acceptance of kids being free to roam when old enough. During school vacation like right now, I see 10-12 year-olds walking down my street 1/2 mile to the beach with their boogie boards and surf boards. And there are no sidewalks and the beach nearby is not life-guarded, so I'm assuming they know what they're doing. In a sense, I think that is what you are looking for for your kids. On the down side, I haven't seen any indication that Hawaii has more or less sexual predators than the mainland. Don't know what to do about that, other than checking the online databases before renting or buying, keeping an eye out yourself among your kid's entourage, and as anywhere, educating your kids in age-appropriate ways as they stray further and further.
As far as discrimination or bullying in schools, I'm sure it exists, but I don't think it is any different than the insider-outsider cliques in any school. I remember it was the jocks and the nerds where I went to high school in AZ. Just in this case, the newly-arrived white people are the outsiders. If your kids are respectful, savvy, and social, I think they will do fine, just as they would on the mainland. Of course, it will take 2-3 years for you and your kids to establish a social circle with 2-3 good friends and 10-15 good acquaintances--that's one of the consequences of moving. And 2 years is usually only as long as people are willing to stay when they feel they don't fit in yet.
That said, there are rougher neighborhoods and schools (again, just like on the mainland). Sadly, it does seem like the public schools are not up to academic standards and among the last in the US in many ways (for many reasons). Parents who want a more academic environment for their kids choose the private schools, and because a higher majority of them are the mainland transplants, we are getting "racially segregated" schools (somewhat like the white-flight that happened on the mainland). These private schools are not necessarily religious, and if they are, usually not overtly. There is one large, successful K-12 private school on Kaua'i, totally secular, and in many ways it is ideal: mostly good teachers, small class sizes, more parents who are involved, still some ethnic diversity, 95% college-bound seniors (75% of those to the mainland), and tons of sports and activities (though not football, mostly track/x-country, swimming, baseball, volleyball, but also robotics, scuba diving, etc). When I saw it, it did make me think of Mayberry, but it is 11-12K per year.
I don't believe the figure of 10-15% Japanese ethnicity, except in the sense of those reporting pure Japanese blood (and after 4-5 generations, that is still a reality). There used to be not much Japanese inter-marrying with other ethnicities, but I think that has been changing now, and the mixed children don't see themselves as purely Japanese anymore. I would say there is a 40-50% Japanese influence on the society and culture in general, and in some neighborhoods, more like 66-75%. But that doesn't mean those places look and feel like Japan. There are some behaviors that seem more typically Japanese (like tidyness around the house, and obvious cultural events such as bon dances in the summer), but to me they seem fully integrated into (and constituent of) contemporary culture in Hawaii. In other words, the Japanese descendents in Hawaii seem "Hawaiian" now (in the sense that they make Hawaii what it is now) and not Japanese.
Finally, there was some really good insight in this thread about Hawaii being a socially-oriented culture, which is more Asian than the more generally individualistic mainland. Similarly, the native Hawaiian culture was very socially and community oriented, so they meshed easily. This may be the biggest, fundamental cultural shock that transplants feel, even though it is not so overt that it is easy to identify, because all the institutions and laws are still North-American. This is perhaps why mainlanders often feel like Hawaii is a "different country," because it has the social values not typical of the USA. What this translates to is that people who are like the "rugged individualists" don't often feel integrated (and conversely, left-leaning socially-minded people claim to be drawn here). For some individualists, that suits them fine, though usually it's the ones who have enough money to live independently, not needing to integrate socially for work. My perception is that there is more space (physically and socially) on the Big Island for the individualistic types. But in general, such a person doesn't feel connected to society here, culturally and politically, and it can be a major factor for wanting to move away again.
BTW, there are some motor sports in Hawaii, though mostly dirt-biking. But it is limited, not like the wide-open spaces on the mainland. And Kaua'i does have a drag strip, and I bet other islands do too. But shipping over extra cars and maintaining them here is expensive, something to do only when you're established. However, if you are into that, you can find a like-minded community and this can help give you contacts. As mentioned in another thread, any hobby can help you integrate into the local community.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
