Is it Nelson or just small town life?

We are about ready to celebrate our six month anniversary of arriving in New Zealand. We’ve been in Nelson about five months now, though it sure feels like it’s been a lot longer. One of the stunning things to me is that we live in a place where we see so many familiar faces, people we know or have just met, walking on the streets nearly every day.

When Don walks around town he sees half-a-dozen people he’s interviewed for jobs at his work. Tonight we went to the movies (The Departed, very good but no Goodfellas) and on the way to the movies I saw someone I work with and on the way out 3 hours later I saw someone else I work with, both just walking along on the street on a Tuesday night.

During a Saturday morning on our way to market, we will inevitably meet 3 or 4 people we know and stop and say hi. This is a very odd phenomenon for me, someone who has never lived in a small town. I like to think that Kiwis are just so friendly, this is what they do. But the reality is, we live in a town of about 40,000 people (Nelson proper) and this is probably just the way of life here. Seeing people we know (and we don’t know that many) nearly every time we head out to the movies, to shop, or to the market, is very bizarre. Friendly and nice, but new and a bit bizarre.

My mom lives in Santa Fe, it has about 60,000 people she was telling me. I would venture to say that she could not walk out in the town centre area and see people she knows every time she does so! Maybe this phenomenon has even more to do with geography as we Nelsonians are squeezed into a space between hills and the water, so we’re on top of each other and very friendly about it!

On the other side of the coin, we have to be very, very careful not to burn any bridges here. I was told by a co-worker as just a matter-of-fact side note, don’t do anything wrong here because people may never forgive you, and they sure won’t forget! Doesn’t sound very Kiwi-like, but it does sound like we live in a small place.

But, it really has been a wonderful place so far. It is ‘the’ place we’d want to be, and so far it has lived up to—and even exceeded—all expectations. Especially the friendly people we see everywhere!