Moving to Mountain View, CA, from New Zealand. What would you do?

Question

We have a 9 year old son, and I'm a Kiwi.

What would you do, as a newbie, to settle in and make a good life there?

Answer 1

Hi. I am very close to Mountain View, actually about 30 minutes up the pennisula near San Francisco. First thing you will need is a car, public transit around here is useless. And you will need a good job because it is expensive here. There are lots of things to do here. So much stuff you could not even do it all. You are only a few hours away from the snow, the beach is always close, there are casinos, big city entertainment in SF San Jose and Oakland, lots of good places to eat, plenty of parks and nature type things, good shopping, sports teams all of. I guess all you need to do is maybe find some new friends and things to keep busy and everything will be OK. You can try craigslist.com for a start, they have activities and an events forum for the area

Answer 2

Look around for good schools, (CA public schools aren't exactly the highest rated in the country, may want to go private). Study up on US etiqutte (There is a lot of truth here: http://www.ediplomat.com/np/cultural_etiquette/ce_us.htm only thing I'd add is be very careful about criticizing the US to AMericans, not all of us have figured out that our country isn't perfect yet :). I don't know how sociable Kiwis are, people from more sociable countries find americans to be very anti-social so it will be important to find a place you can get plugged in, be it a church, or club for other New Zealanders (I have no idea if there are any or not). The bay area is expensive, I don't know how the prices compare with NZ.

That's it off the top of my head, hope everything goes well!

Answer 3

You're in for a big culture shock. Mtn View is a very heavily populated metropolitan area, situated between San Jose and San Francisco, Ca. Very trafficky freeways, smog, very crowded, expensive area. I am so sorry for you. Try to spend as much time as possible in the outlying areas, away from the city. Shoreline park is nice. Visit san fran a lot.
Good Luck