On Being Stretched, Molded and Shaped

When we decided to come the USA, we had a certain picture in our minds as to what it would be like. Without going into too much detail, now that we're here, the reality is very different. It's not really how I had imagined it at all. Here are some things that I wasn't expecting or thought would be different:

• Money. I thought we would have more of it. I knew what my salary would be before I took the job, but I didn't take the time to investigate the incredibly complex US tax system. I'm sure I still don't fully understand the system, but it turns out that because I am on a J1 visa I am classed as a non-resident alien for the first two years of being here, which would be fine if I were here on my own. But being a nonresident means that Amy and I cannot file our income tax as a married couple or claim any dependents; so we are getting taxed at a much higher rate than I expected. The university admin are working on getting this changed to an H1B visa, which would make us residents provided we're here for more than half the year. I guess I should have looked into it a bit more thoroughly before coming here, but I trusted that the University's International Student and Scholar Services knew what they were doing. I suppose they didn't consider the full ramifications of a J-visa for my situation.
• Transport. Altogether Minneapolis and St Paul have a population of about 3 million. To serve these 3 million people the twin cities have one train line. There are buses as well, but they are fairly infrequent (and some routes don't even run on Sunday). I found this really surprising for such a large metropolitan area. That has made it quite difficult for us because we are yet to get a car. We were hoping to get one and initially drive using our international driver's permits and Australian licenses, but the insurance rates were just too high for that to be a feasible plan. I'm currently working on getting my Minnesota license. Hopefully I can take the road test later this week. The car insurance rates are generally quite high ($80-200 per month depending on the coverage and the vehicle) here, but the car registration is much less than in Aus (<<$100), so I guess it evens out. The upshot of all this is that it's challenging for us to go anywhere more than a few miles from our apartment, which is a little sad. We are immensely grateful for those who have given us lifts when we needed them.
• Friends. I miss my Australian friends quite a lot. It's not that people here haven't been friendly; I just miss my old friends. I miss having people around me I know I can trust 100 %.
• Family. Similarly, I miss my siblings, parents and extended family. I miss my Church family as well. Skype is not really a substitute.

All these things combined have made the past few months not a little stressful and challenging. But the way I see it, being here is a time of training. Not only is it a time of training academically and professionally but also mentally and spiritually. It's a time when all the things that I have previously used to find security, whether it be money, friendship networks, family, even Church (which are all good in and of themselves) are taken away; a time when I am stretched, molded and shaped into the person God wants me to be. A time when I learn the hard way to find my security in Christ alone. A kind of spiritual boot camp.

Integrating into a Church

We have now found a Church that we really like and will probably end up going to for the duration of our stay in the States. The story of how we came to this Church is an interesting one, so here it is.

We are yet to get a car so we first looked churches within walking distance of our apartment. They were no good (see my earlier post 'The Hunt Begins'). So one Sunday, after going to one of the closer churches, we decided to bite the bullet next week and take a taxi to a church that was a bit further away. During the week, however, I got in touch with a Christian group on the UMN campus called Graduate Christian Fellowship. This group meets altogether once a month, in addition to numerous smaller Bible studies and prayer meetings. I emailed the leader asking if anyone could give me a lift to the meeting on Friday. I got a lift with a guy named Chet. On the way, we were chatting about various things, including finding a church. He asked which church we were thinking of checking out. I said 'Calvary Baptist'. After which he told me that he and his family were part of that church and they could give us a lift there!

So when Sunday came Chet drove us to church and we met his family and were introduced to some other people in the church. The people at Calvary Baptist were very welcoming and we immediately felt comfortable in this church. It seems like a church where they have a strong sense of community, even though the congregation is quite large (1500 people over three services), which is a feat in itself. Afterwards Chet took us out for brunch with his family and some grad students. We feel very blessed to have met Chet.

From our experience with trying to find a church, it's become clear to me that it's really hard. It's hard to do on your own, because it's difficult to tell what a church will be like from their website alone. Knowing someone who is already in the Church also makes it easier. Unless you know someone 'on the inside' it can be quite difficult to break into a church community.

Better to be Poor and Pleasant...

Today we took the bus into St Paul proper and visited the Minnesota Children's Museum. It was great! Micah had a great time touching things, pulling levers, turning nobs, pushing buttons, listening to stories, climbing stairs and crawling through tunnels. The concepts being taught to children at this museum were surprisingly complex. For example, the device pictured below (bottom right) was showing how different 3D shapes could be created by moving a circle in different ways through space. By turning the wheel at the front of the machine the circle inside could be rotated around it's centre to make a sphere, moved left and right to make a cylinder and revolved about a coplanar axis outside the circle to make a torus. I'm not sure how much of that Micah understood, but I was impressed.

This was our first trip into downtown St Paul. There are many things that I could say about St Paul, but what really stuck in my mind as we rode the bus home was the people. Even though many of them seemed to be of fairly low socioeconomic standing, they were lovely. The people living in our apartment complex (several miles from downtown St Paul) and the surrounding area are the same. I find this situation far preferable to living in a 'richer' suburb, where no one talks to anyone.

Likes and Dislikes

After 6 weeks of living here, these are the things I dislike about America:

Door-stoppers on the back of doors instead of on walls. What is the point of this? The point of a regular Australian door-stopper is to stop the door handle from slamming into the wall and damaging it. A door stop like the one pictured just moves the point of impact away from the door handle to the top of the door and does nothing to protect the wall.

Toilets that don't flush well. Before coming to the States, I had never seen a toilet get blocked. Now I've seen it four times.














No free-to-air TV. Seriously. If you want TV you have to get some form of pay TV (cable or satellite). Or, if you're smart, you'll get a streaming media player and subscribe to Netflix.







4-way stops. These are ridiculous. They cause much confusion and faffing around and all this could be avoided with a simple roundabout or traffic lights. Still, I guess they are better than a four-way uncontrolled intersection, which has, I'm sure, been the cause of many a collision.

Hot cross buns with icing! I bought some hot cross buns for Easter, expecting the normal water-and-flour cross on top. I was wrong. It was icing. It was like a Boston bun. It seemed sort of wrong for the occasion, considering what we are remembering

Pedestrian lights with no audio signal. This is something that I've grown accustomed to in Tasmania, and it's only when there was no audio signal that I realized that I had been listening for the signal and not looking at the light at all.

Allegedly 'healthy' breakfast cereals that are loaded with sugar. I bought a box of the pictured cereal. It looks healthy, doesn't it? All those bran flakes, the words 'whole grain' and 100% RDI of 11 vitamins. What they don't advertise is it's actually 32% sugar (according to the Nutrition Facts on the side of the box, which I really should have read before purchasing it) and ingredients 3, 5 and 6 are sugar, corn syrup and brown sugar syrup, respectively.








The IRS. It seems not many people are fond of the IRS. I'm especially not fond of their treatment of non-resident aliens, such as us. My pay is taxed at the highest rate and I can only claim one allowance (for myself), even though I have two dependents (who would normally also get an allowance). What's with that? Are non-resident alien dependents  less expensive to look after or something? It just doesn't make sense and seems quite unfair. I know we aren't citizens and citizens get more perks than non-citizens, but come on! I'm not sure of the tax rules in Australia for temporary visitors, but I've not heard any complaints from my international friends. Nevertheless, I suppose America has to recoup it's huge debt somehow.


And these are the things I really like about America:
Easy access to bagels. Seriously, bagels are awesome. They are poached in boiling water briefly before being baked, which gives them a soft crust and a chewy crumb. Everyone here eats them with cream cheese. They're really common to eat for breakfast. I'm a huge fan of this tradition and it must be introduced into Australia when we return. I used to make them in Australia when I had more time. I will again soon. But in the meantime, the ones from shops are pretty darn good.

The spelling of 'jail', 'gray' and the 'ize' sound at the end of words like 'realize' and 'initialize'. I know it's not 'the Queen's English' but these spellings actually makes more sense.

Pop-tarts! Two pastries for two slots in the toaster. What's not to love?















The people of Minnesota. Generally speaking, they are really friendly. They'll say hi to you in the street. They comment on the weather and how cute Micah is. This aspect of Minnesota feels like home.

Super-fast internet. I'm loving my 20 Mbps at the moment. And our unlimited uploads and downloads for only $38 per month.

Cheaper access to internet shopping sites. I like particular kinds of clothes and gadgets, and since all these sites are US-based, the postage within the US is heaps cheaper than sending stuff to Australia. I hope to take advantage of this while we're here.

The University of Minnesota. This is where I work and they've been good to me so far. The people there are really helpful and friendly and really want to see me succeed.

Thrift shops. We've only been to one, actually. But it's great. We've found lots of good stuff there for very cheap (which is important). It could just be due to the size of the city, but this shop seems to have way more cool stuff than the ones I'm used to in Tasmania.

Customer service. Particularly in restaurants, but also in grocery stores take away places. Sure they are probably just doing for a tip, but it's still very nice.

So there you have it. My likes and dislikes of America so far. I hope the latter list grows much longer.

Extreme Couponing

Grocery store coupons are not really a thing in Australia. Things go on sale at a reduced price each week and you can hunt out bargains, but grocery shopping the US is a different experience entirely.

It all comes down to coupons. You can get coupons in the Sunday newspapers and they sometimes appear in your mail box. You can also download them from various websites and you often get Catalina coupons from certain stores when you purchase something. Manufacturers also issue their own coupons, which can be used at most stores, in combination with the store-specific coupons. And often retailers will double (or sometimes even quadruple) the discount on a manufacturer's coupon. All this means that, if you're smart about it, you can get your groceries for next to nothing. I sometimes wonder how the grocery stores make their money. Also, I can't understand why everyone doesn't utilize the coupons. Sure it's a bit of a hassle and if you're making a lot you don't really need to worry about coupons, but every dollar saved on food is a dollar that could be used for something optional. And, let's face it, optional things are far more interesting than necessities like air, water and food.

The Hunt Begins

Last Sunday we started the hunt for a new church in our new city, Saint Paul. Actually, I had been doing a bit of research prior, but last Sunday was the first time we physically went to check things out. In Hobart we were part of an excellent Presbyterian Church, with great teaching, approachable teachers, a welcoming community, an earnest concern for the people of Hobart and an enthusiasm for the things of God. I don't like to define individual Churches by the denomination they belong to, because I know each Church will have it's individual quirks, strengths, weaknesses, flaws, emphases and foci. And I knew that American Churches would be vastly different to Aussie Churches. So we were willing to give most churches a chance, provided they had no obvious contradictions with the Bible.

We decided to visit a Lutheran Church, close to our new apartment. I've not had much to do with Lutherans before, but Martin Luther was pretty awesome, so we were happy to give it a go. That was a mistake. We arrived on time, perhaps slightly early, but as we entered the building, the 'welcomers' moved rapidly from the foyer into the main building, as if they had just remembered something important they had to do. They eventually gave us a bulletin, but there was no recognition that we were new, no directions on where we could hang our heavy Minnesotan coats, no offers to introduce us to a regular. Nothing. Just a bulletin. And it must have been fairly obvious we were new, because there were only about 40 people there.

But we stayed anyway. We reasoned that just because they weren't very good at welcoming, doesn't mean their not good people; it doesn't mean that this is a bad Church. We took seats towards the back. After the opening preamble, the band struck up, and the singing was OK; a bit too 'Hillsongy' for my taste, but not all bad. The weird and annoying thing was that the songs all ended rather abruptly, leaving a newcomer wondering if something had gone wrong and if there was to be another verse.

Nevertheless, we persevered. Then came the preaching. The passage was John 12:1-11, where Mary anoints Jesus with expensive perfume. The preacher's main point was something about extravagance. God's extravagant love for us or something, which is quite a poor exegesis of this passage. At one point she was asking the rhetorical question, why did Mary do this? Why did Mary pour perfume on Jesus feet and then wipe them with her hair? She offered up several possibilities (none of which were taken from the text) and then concluded that 'we don't really know why she did this'. But if this preacher had actually bothered to read the passage carefully, she would know that Mary did this to anoint Jesus for his burial (v7). It would have been really helpful to everyone, including me, if she had noted this and then unpacked what it actually means, instead of focusing exclusively on her chosen them: the extravagance of God's love. God's love is extravagant, but I don't think it''s a prominent theme in this passage.

We'd heard enough, and we left before the end of the service.

I know not all Lutherans Churches are like this. Surely they can't be. And I know there must be some good Churches in America. But this one wasn't one of them.

However, I think I now understand a little better  how difficult it is for new people to come to a church meeting. If it was difficult and weird for us, how much more for a non-Christian! It's so different from everything else we do in life and we as Christians should bend over backwards to make it easier for the newbies.

The Surprising Prevalence of the Check

With the advent of direct deposit and internet banking, I kind of thought cheques (or checks in the US) would be a thing of the past. Not in Minnesota. Unless they opt-in to direct deposit, University of Minnesota employees receive pay checks. We have to pay our rent in checks. As far as I can tell, checking accounts are the most common type of bank account. Some people even pay for their groceries using checks. It seems kind of backward for a country that is so advanced in so many other ways.

The most confusing part is in restaurants. After your meal, you ask for the check. You can then pay the check with a check. Or with a bill. And when you receive bills in the mail, you can pay the bill with a check or a bill. It seems that 'check' and 'bill' are interchangeable and the meaning must be determined by context. Why not have two different meanings for the two words? I dunno. I'll ask an American next time I see one.