September Update! (Finally)

Allo allo!
Well, it has been a busy month (September was anyway), and we can't really believe how time has been flying by. One thing we do know however is that it is about time we gave you all an update! 

Josh's story is currently pretty straight forward - he is studying. Ha ha, that hasn't really changed. He has a couple of exams this week, and in the weeks ahead - so he is just really focusing on that and making sure that he has things clear in his head. Primarily he has been focusing on the languages. Greek he found relatively straight forward to learn - and I think that his year at Uni studying Latin perhaps helped a little with that. Hebrew has been trickier, especially as the characters are new too. Thankfully, there are a couple of guys in his class who have already learnt Hebrew, and are good teachers themselves - so he has been able to study with them which has been a great help. He seems to be able to cover more ground that way, and because they can test him on it it speeds up his learning process a lot. 

As for me, I have been (mostly) keeping out of mischief. ;) As I have perhaps mentioned in my last post I have been volunteering as an art teacher each week for a homeschooling group. This has been really fun - they are a great group of kids, and boy do they have amazing imaginations! Ha ha! I was working with the 3-7 year olds last week drawing a imaginary trip that we had thought up - I got them to think of a place they wanted to travel too, how they were going to get there, and who they were going to see. One very creative young man was flying to Canada in a jet plane, which was being attacked by missiles from all directions (he's only 4, and you know what - his drawing was very good). It's interesting seeing what the boys come up with in comparison to the girls. :D

Each fortnight on a Thursday morning I have also been helping out taking care of a bunch of about 8-10 3 and 4 year olds for an hour and a half while their Mum's go to Bible study. That is definitely an interesting challenge! They are super cute, but it is an age group that I haven't worked with much before, and they are quite different! We have been working on the Armour of God - which is lots of fun. So each time we are making different parts of the armour. Last week we made helmet masks so they put their masks on and then to occupy them for a while we did things that soldiers do. So marching, riding horses (more fun than pretending to be in a jeep or tank ha ha), flying in aeroplanes, and then by that time I was exhausted, so I said that the other thing that soldiers do is sleep so they can recoup their energy - so I managed to get them lying down for about 5 seconds before we were up marching again. : ) The week where we make swords is going to be an interesting one...

I have also had the opportunity to start up some piano lessons again! I figured out that I haven't actually had lessons since I was about 13 - which is slightly scary, but I have kept up playing. So we thought that this is something that we could invest in that may come in useful in the future. It has been really great to learn again. Unfortunately we don't have a piano (I don't think there is any way we could get one into our flat anyway, ha ha) however some very generous people from church have said that I can go around to their place any time and use their piano to practice on. Plus I was given a little keyboard that I can use at home to practice with when I can't make it to the piano. Generous people huh!

Piano practice time!

The trees are all changing colours over here now - and the weather has been a lot cooler - and actually really nice over the past couple of weeks. Although the weekend was unseasonably warm. 

Morning walk - doesn't really look that different from NZ huh? :)

I also got to go with another lady from church last week to the Westfield Mall that they have over here. We just had a mooch around the stores and stopped for a coffee. In the middle of this mall they have a full sized, double story merry-go-round! It's pretty cool. 

So otherwise it's been nice to have time to spend with people from Seminary and church, there are some very very cool people over here, and we are so thankful for the opportunity to get to know them better! Experiencing their generosity and thoughtfulness has been a massive learning curve for us - in so far as learning to graciously accept it, as well as hopefully learning how to do it ourselves. So that, Lord willing when we are in a position to be able to be generous in the future we will be able to do so in a similar way to these people. Unrestrainedly. 

I was also given a ticket to attend a conference the other weekend - so a lady from church who was going took me along. It was really encouraging and challenging stuff. With a focus on being thoughtful and loving towards others from a Biblical perspective - and selflessly giving of our time and gifts to other people. As you can see - it was challenging! But we got to hear Paul Tripp, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Susan Hunt and Elyse Fitzpatrick - all who have written books that I have read, so it was pretty cool to be able to actually get to hear them speak. They were all really good. Very humble people - which was pretty cool. 

You can tell it's Autumn (or Fall) over here when all the Pumpkin flavoured stuff starts coming out. Not to mention all the Halloween decorations show up in people's front yards. I got to try some of these cookies at someone's house, and managed to discover them on sale at the store this morning - so I nabbed some. They are soooooo delicious. The American's know how to do good cookies, that's for sure. Good for Josh to be able to snack on while he's studying huh. I was thinking of him. ;)

Drooooool.

In the meantime we can say that we are still so thankful and feel very privileged to be over here. We are being massively blest by being able to live here and experience the culture and build relationships over here. Plus the seminary is so great - Josh is learning a lot and is enjoying his studies. We have a lot to be thankful for! Speaking of thankfulness - Thanksgiving is coming up in a couple of months and we are really looking forward to celebrating that for the first time. :)

Right well, that's about everything up-to-date for now. I promise that I will try and be a little more regular, but our lives are kind of ticking along in a routine now, so there isn't much that is newsworthy right at this moment, however you never know from week to week what could happen. ;)

A new week...

...and more blessings!

Saturday was an exciting day because we got a car! God has been so good to us, and particularly in this regard. The car is very nice, and we have been told that the particular type of car holds it's value really well, so hopefully taking care of it over the next three years means that we will be able to resell it at a minimal loss. So now we are just praying that the Lord will take care of us as we drive it!

And we both have been doing a good amount of driving - so far so good. We have both found that we have managed to adjust to driving on the other side of the road pretty quickly. I still find that I get a little nervous before getting out on the road, but once I'm driving things fall into place, and it helps to just follow everyone else!

The next thing that was important was to get a GPS, which I think will become our best friend in our time over here. 

Well we had another really great Sunday at Redeemer church. If anyone is interested in where we are attending church over here, you can check out the Redeemer website here. We heard two excellent sermons, and got to meet some more members of the congregation. A bonus was also that after the evening service we got to see the Holtslags from Dovedale church in Christchurch. :D It was nice to see another couple of Kiwis. 

On our way home from church on Sunday night the sunset was A-mazing. We attempted to take a picture of it, which gives a bit of an idea how cool it was (but doesn't quite do it justice).

Amazing sunset Sunday night

You can even see our good friend the GPS in the pic. Josh has set the little icon representing us as a monster truck - which is getting into the American spirit. :)

On Monday Josh started Intensive Greek! He was pretty excited about this - he has been waiting to start studying for a looooong time now, and he is loving sinking his teeth into it. He is going to write an update on how he is finding the class later this week, so stay tuned. :)

Over the past couple of days I have been working on menu plans for dinners/lunches so that I could put together a grocery list and go shopping. Finally I got it done today and worked up the courage to go on my own. It sounds silly, but I was nervous about using our new bank card - you know, there is nothing much worse than getting to the supermarket checkout, go to pay and your card doesn't work, or you haven't got your wallet or something like that. :P So I was praying like crazy as I walked around the aisles that the card would work ok. As a backup I had a check that I had brought along - which is really weird to me, we've never used checks before (it's what our parents did back in the day) but here they are still really prevalent. 

Grocery shopping is quite an experience here. In many respects it's very much the same as home; standard aisles, trolleys, etc. But there are subtle differences - for one thing there is quite a bit of range. Say you want some mustard - great! But good luck choosing which mustard you want. There is a whole shelf, floor to ceiling a good meter wide full of about 40 different mustards. Thankfully my job is made easy because we go pretty much by what is the cheapest (with most things anyway). 

There are also people who pack your grocery bags for you (and often double or triple pack them), and then they wheel them out to your car for you on these little special trolly things. It was nice, but I had to kind of get used to it, considering I felt quite capable of taking my own groceries to the car. Haha. :)

Some of the food is super big too. You should see the tubs of ice-cream. 8-O And I got some veggies today too that were impressive. Such as the capsicum...

...and the zucchinis...

...and I didn't get a picture of them, but you should see the onions! They are humungous! Seriously, one is about the size of a baby's head! (Sorry, I couldn't think of another size comparison :p)

Prices vary compared to back home. Some things are really cheap - like 18 eggs for $2.40 (cheap right!), and a gallon of milk for $2 (in all seriousness). And I got a pretty good deal today, at least I'm pretty sure it was a good deal (compared to home anyway) - three massive chicken breasts for $3.45! That will go towards 3 meals, so at only just over a $1 for meat per meal - I'm thinking that's a good deal. 

With huge vegetables and my thumb placed next to it for scale. 

There are other things that seem to be a lot more expensive though - like herbs and spices can be up to $4 each (although I haven't managed to shop around a lot, and I also scored some for 89c), and yoghurt is kinda pricey. 

Apologies to anyone reading this who really is not very interested in the ins and outs of grocery shopping over here - I realise that it is kind of a menial subject - but it has just been so interesting learning what little things are different about here vs. NZ. Plus hey, at least you got some silly pictures. 

We are coming up to the 4th of July (obviously) but that is kind of a big deal over here in the States which is fun. So there have already been some fireworks going off, and we are looking forward to walking down to a local park on Thursday to check out the festivities. Fireworks are banned from public purchase in Illinois, but what is funny is that they are legal in Indiana, the border of which is just about a 5-10 minute drive away from us here in Lansing. So all the residents of Illinois drive over the border to purchase fireworks. But apparently in the past cops will wait just over the border and stop cars to search them for fireworks and confiscate any that they find. I wonder what they do with all the fireworks that they confiscate? Burn them? *snigger* Maybe they have a big party of their own (with the Indiana police of course, because it's legal over there). Anyway, that is going to be fun to experience the celebrations.  

Oh and I mentioned the other day that I had been baking some chocolate chip cookies that were a bit of a fail because it was so hot that the choc chips melted into the batter. Well I baked them, and they came out delicious! Even though they were more like "Chocolate with a little bit of Chips Cookies", I was still very happy with them. 

So if you are interested in trying some yummy cookies check out the recipe at the Sally's Baking Addiction website. Apparently the trick is in refrigerating the dough for at least a couple of hours before baking. That's all from me for now - over and out. :)

We're there!

So we made it! 12 hours flying from Auckland to San Francisco, 4 hours in transit there, then another 4 hour flight to Chicago and everything was smooth. I was praying like crazy throughout - that our bags would be safe and we wouldn't get held up at customs, that our plane would stay in the air (it was a really bumpy flight across the Pacific, but we got used to it after a while). 

We made sure to fill Josh up with a coffee at San Francisco. ;)

The medium sized coffee was easily the size of an extra-large in NZ, so I was glad I didn't pop to the full-size.

And now we are here in Lansing, Illinois. Our first impressions...
- Lansing is a really pretty area. The neighbourhoods are tree-lined and the houses are very cute and well maintained. And they pretty much all have beatiful lawns. There are also quite a few parks around. There were a couple of houses that had letter boxes that were made as little model replicas of the house they belonged to. :)

- We walked around for 2 hours this afternoon to the grocery store which was really nice (although its hot here at the moment being the start of summer) and it is going to take some getting used to crossing the road and making sure we look the right way!

- A minor thing, but having come from winter it's strange for it to be currently 7.30pm and its still light and sunny outside.
- Money. They have a lot of it. In so far as there are just so many coins and notes! Plus they all pretty much look the same. We handed over a big bunch of $1 bills at a grocery store this afternoon and I was compelled to apologise for all the change (like you would in NZ), but the cashier just took it in his stride, they must be used to it. :)

- Just thought I'd throw this in there; we woke up today (at 2pm hehehe) ready to have some breakfast, and our super amazing NZ friends whose house we are staying us left us a very fun bag of goodies to keep us going. In which were some breakfast cereals the likes of which you can only find here in the States ( they definitely didn't have them in the UK that's for sure. So we got to have Cheerios and Peanut Butter Toast Crunch cereal for brekkie! Here it is pictured with the humongous gallon bottle of milk. :) I'm always up for trying new things, so I had a bowl of each. :D

- Yes the cheese is orange (more orange than we are used to anyway). Some very generous people supplied us with some milk and bread, blocks of cheese (and some exciting US candy :D), and there is this very cool block of marbled cheese. 

We used it on our dinner tonight. ;)

- Also the drivers seem to be very polite. We were waiting to cross a road at the head of a 'T' junction, and a guy had just driven up to turn out of it. He saw us and then went so far as to reverse back to let us cross! Then we came up to a driveway where a guy in a truck had pulled up to leave from, and he apologised to us out of the window for not giving way to us. Seems really nice that way (unless its just a road rule that I don't know about). :) I don't think you find it as much in NZ.

All in all we are loving experiencing different things. It's a great adventure, and we are so thankful to have the opportunity! Tomorrow hopefully we will get to go and visit the seminary, so we are looking forward to that. :) In summary, a great first day in the States.