Thoughts on Texas

Texas is starting to feel more and more like home.

This week has been the start of many changes for us. For me, it marked the first week of classes. I'm very excited about this semester -- but man will I be busy! Dan, on the other hand, spent the week diligently apply to jobs. He has well over a dozen applications out for some really promising jobs -- so keep your fingers crossed and send him some good vibes!

We are also starting to make friends with the people within are living complex, and from the university. Even a few who wanted to accompany us on a mini-roadtrip to Dallas to catch a few hockey games this fall =)

Many of you have been asking us to write down some thoughts about the differences we are noticing between Minnesota and Waco, Texas. So this list is for you!


-We have been really suprised by the complete lack of green or undeveloped space within this town. Dan likes to jokingly refer to Waco as a large, slightly more classy Superior, Wisconsin. We are really going to have to hunt to find areas within Waco to get our weekly outdoor fix.

-I know this may sound a little bit obvious.. but MAN is it HOT outside! We have been doing our best to be naive to the real temperature -- like Minnesota winters, if you don't know its -10 out, you don't feel *that* bad being outside. (And like Minnesota winters, that positive attitude can only do so much..) On the bright side, I think we are finally starting to acclimatize. Yesterday, Waco was only in the min-90s. And it felt SO GOOD outside!

-Dan and I are still trying to figure out the local accents. Everyone seems have at least a very mild drawl -- but if you have paid for a local radio or TV commercial, you apparently need to have an accent so thick, that neither Dan nor I can rightfully say what company you are representing or what it is you are trying to sell. One TV commerical especially has a rolling with laughter everytime we hear it. Even more strange -- employees from nerdy stores (like Barnes and Noble or Gamestop), have no accents. Not even drawls. They are like little slices of home!

-We are still amazed with how incredibly friendly everyone is. Every person, women especially, are extremely bubbly and engaging. Whether you are talking to the shelf-stocker at the grocery store, the waitstaff at a resturant, or the stranger you are in line with -- everyone is sugar sweet. And not in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, either. It's very strange. Stranger yet -- it's really the only emotion we have seen. No one is anything except friendly. Never excited or frustrated, or upset or disinterested.. nothing. Just friendly and engaging. And on that note, everyone loves a good handshake too. I've never (awkwardly) shook so many hands in my life!

-Even drivers have their own brand of friendliness. If you are driving less than 40 mph, nearly every road manuever you make involves some sort of hand waving gesture. 4-way stops, even if everyone knows the order they arrived in, involves everyone waving on each car as it goes. Same goes for pedestrians. They simply won't walk without a good hearty wave. As for the roads themselves --- the frontage roads are absolutely ridiculous! Once you are stuck on one, you can't get off of it and back on to the freeway for several miles. And when a frontage road meets a round-a-bout, don't even get me started. If you visit, let Dan drive. =)

-We have found a few funny Texas idiosyncracies. For starters, there seems to be a love affair with plastic bags. They are much smaller down here, and can fit all of one box of Kleenex and maybe a bottle of dish soap. Worse, there is absolutely no attempt to maximize packing space within each bag. If you are buying 7 small items, you will walk away with at LEAST 4 plastic bags -- 5 bags if you don't argue for your toothpaste to please be included with the paper towels, because really, they both don't need their own bag....

I got into an interesting discussion with a the grocery store attendant the other day over plastic bags. I had brought my own canvas bag from home as well as a plastic bag from WalMart to wrap my raw meat in -- this way I could carry everything home together without contaminating my veggies. She just couldn't understand why I didn't want her to throw away my WalMart plastic bag, and get a *new* grocery store plastic bag instead. I tried to explain to her that giving me another bag would defeat the purpose of me reusing one from home. But I think she thought I was from another planet. They will love me when I start bringing my produce bags back into the store so I can reuse those too.

-Speaking of grocery stores -- over 1/3rd of the store is.. plasma screen tv's, clothing, dvds and assorted dollar store items... I know, I don't get it either. But, they have CRAZY cheap food prices! While the choices for non-packaged or non-processed foods are extremely limited, what they do have available is exceptionally cheap. Meat and produce are also much fresher and cheaper than we are used to. Unfortuantely, it looks like we will have to be making trips to Austin to get gluten-free noodles, crackers and flours. Oh darn ;)

-We are also very aware that we are within the Bible belt. You don't say 'Have a good day!' -- it's 'Have a Bless'd day!'. Don't 'Have a safe trip'; instead 'Have to Lord see you home safely'. It's not 'Just my luck'; it's 'As the Lord sees it'. Small religious references and phrases are everywhere. The circumstances and contexts in which everyone mentions God, religion and the Lord are still quite suprising to us. While Christanity is definitely the norm, we haven't felt out of place or looked down on for not participating in casual religious references. I'm not quite sure how everyone would react to differing religious or political views -- it will be interesting to find out.

-There is also a huge socioeconomic divide within Waco. Everything around and near Baylor University looks extremely well manicured and high-class. However, just a few blocks away is total poverty. It's very strange living amongst such a large divide.

-On a final note, everyone is a bit more restrained when it comes to nature. We have both received strange looks for taking off our sandals and enjoying the fresh grass between our toes. (Oh, and don't take off your shoes when you visit other people's homes.. they will think you are strange!). We have also been inundated with dozens of large black, flying crickets. They warned us everything was bigger in Texas -- it just didn't think it would apply to the bugs too!

Hope all is well on the homefront. Don't be a stranger!

-K

Making Home!

Home! That has been the primary topic on Kristin's and my mind this past week. Pretty soon our focus will have to turn to different things: Kristin will be Learning (and Teaching), and I will be Job Hunting and Networking. But for now, we are happy to be spending our energies on our living space.

Unpacking was the first and most difficult portion of our work. We did our best to not only maximize our space, but to also pack things in a logical way. I think we might have been a little naive from the outset; unpacking took a lot longer than we initially expected. Had we less time to work with, I think we would have been more comfortable cramming things into crannies. But, because we had the time and because we wanted to get it right the first time, we've spent about a week and a half arranging and rearranging our furniture. We've done our best to keep the living room and bedroom simple. We've maximized the closet space in our 2nd bedroom/office, and we have compromised on the closet space in the master bedroom. (Honestly, I'm just happy to have my wardrobe in the same room that I wake up!). In all, we have one of the best problems a couple can have: we have more furniture than we need. So, we have no worries about being under furnished, but, just yesterday we had to make a mercy run to Goodwill to give ourselves some elbow-room.

Now, you might be surprised that after detailing our problems with 'extra' furniture, we've actually made to (rather major) purchases since we moved our stuff in on the 13th. Our first purchase was a headboard for our bed. It's something that we've wanted for a long time. Luckily there was a small, mom 'n pop, furniture store just a couple miles away from our apartment that had the perfect headboard for us. It has a nice dark wood 'board' with black slats that attached pretty well to our frame. As an additional bonus, it also fits a Queen, so if we ever decide to upgrade, we aren't out another $120. The only bad part was that our bed frame was a bit low, and after attaching the board, the back wheels would not rest on the ground. We didn't want all of our weight to rest on the headboard, so we went out and purchased some booster cones for the bed. We are very happy with the result. The headboard and taller bed makes our bedroom look much more adult and less 'college'.

Our second purchase was quite a bit bigger: We bought a Sofa, along with a Coffee Table and two End Tables. A couch is something that Kristin and I have looking into for some time now, and with our new apartment, it was a very real necessity. Before deciding on our couch, I think we visited about five or six different furniture stores. There is an interesting dichotomy between the outlet places and the show-room places, but, honestly, the prices weren't that different, and we had our best luck at an Ashley Home Furniture store. We found a couch that was small enough that it wouldn't dwarf our living room but long enough to lie down on. One that was firm enough to sit up and read a book but also comfortable enough to really relax on. We deemed ourselves very lucky in these regards. Lastly, it's color is a pleasant beige with green undertones. It is a lovely muted tone that works very nicely with yellows and browns (heck even a Maroon might work with it...). Oh yes, and the coffee table has a wonderful two layer appearance that tapers at the bottom: kind of like a larger rectangle suspended over a smaller rectangle. The end tables are pretty much the same thing, but we are going to be using them as night stands in the bedroom to maximize our living room space.

Ok wow, so a lot of info there, but I think that you can see that we are very excited by our recent furnishing work.

Alright, once we got the bones of our structure up, we finally got to enjoy filling in the gaps. Art, photographs and pottery are great for fleshing out both tight and wide spaces. The kitchen has been receiving a lot of attention: We've found excellent ways to display some of our collected paintings and pottery on the walls and in the open cabinets. Luckily, the Kitchen has a lot of space for both cooking and eating (very different from our last place). We recently converted our old DVD holder into an open tea cabinet, and we have our tea pots and other pottery displayed in the open cabinets right above it. Sadly, I don't think we'll have as large of a pantry to use, but the appliances are nicely sized, and found room for all of our pots and pans!

Overall, we have been trying to make this place feel like home. And it a lot of ways, we've made a great deal of progress on this one. However, it never feels like you are done till all of the options are exhausted (or at least discounted). I think we've still got a ways to go until we are satisfied, but we are, at least, on the 'home' stretch. :)

Alright, I think I've just about covered our indoor adventures. As for outside the home, I think we'll have to save that for another post. Thanks for reading! We are truly blessed to have the encouragement and support. Thank you so much for your time, energy and love. If there is anything that you want to hear about, please leave a comment!

DJC

Long Overdue Update!

I can't believe how long it has been since we last updated our blog. In our defense, life has been very crazy the past few weeks!

The last week of July began our long, bittersweet goodbye to Duluth. Stewart (our beloved Honda Accord) went in for road trip tune up, and was proudly pronounced road worthy for our long drive south. While I was tied up with finishing my Master's thesis manuscript and seminar presentation in addition to studying for my oral defense, Dan dilligently packed all of our belongings into dozens and dozens of boxes. (Did I mention how amazing Dan is?)

By Thursday morning, the set arrival date for our ABF U-Pack half semi-trailer, we were *nearly* ready to go. Unforunately, nothing ever goes quite as planned. Duluth is notoriously terrible for finding parking.. and finding enough space for a 28' long, 14' tall trailer is no easy task. We had two choices, hope and pray for 3 empty parking spots in a row the day of our move -- and risk having to walk our belongings a block or two away to our trailer, or get permission from our rather overbearing landlord to park the trailer in the driveway. Despite getting permission from our landlord, and the promises from all of our housemates to have the driveway empy by Thursday morning -- we woke up to find one car blocking our path.

With the trailer on the way, Dan and I began the horrible task of walking up and down the blocks hoping and praying for a spot big enough to hold our trailer. The closest one we found was a good block up the hill, or two blocks away with no hill. As our trailer rounded the corner to pull up to our house for parking directions, two other people on our block came out of their houses to start their morning commute. And just our luck, they had cars immediately before and behind our little Stewart! I cannot express how happy we were to see those people leave! The parking space was still incredibly tight, and took our highly skilled truck driver a good 25 minutes to manuver into. We had only 8 feet behind the trailer for loading, but we didn't care. We only had to cross the street, and move boxes 5 car lengths away from our front door. That's worth celebrating! It took Dan and I nearly 14 hours to load our trailer and completely empty out our apartment by ourselves.

The next few days just flew by. Tom and Diane gave us the Minnesota gift of a hotdish, so we wouldnt have to worry about cooking or going out to eat (just thinking about it makes me homesick for good, creamy Minnesota meals). We said our finals goodbyes to a few friends, had a goodbye/congratulations BBQ party with my lab collegues at the EPA, and enjoyed a last leisurely evening walk on the Lake Superior boardwalk. But mainly, I studied studied studied and Dan single handedly cleaned our apartment to our landlords anal-rententive standards (Seriously, Dan is absolutely amazing. But I'm sure you all know this by now!).

Monday morning, the day of my thesis defense, came way too soon and yet, not soon enough. I felt so incredibly honored and proud to have all of my family there to support me and hear my thesis presentation talk. And after a grueling 2.5 hour oral exam/defense, I offically earned my Master's degree!!!! What a huge weight off of my shoulders! We capped off the evening by celebrating with family at Mom and Getey's farm. It was so hard saying goodbye to everyone, especially my amazing Grandma Ellie. Anytime you want to visit, please let us know!

The next morning, bright and early, we hopped on the road and started our drive south. Honestly, the drive was not as long and boring as people complain. On our drive, we planned two main stops to visit old friends. First, in Ames, IA to visit my high school friend Shannon and her beautiful little family. And again, in Kansas City, KA to visit Dan's high school friend Nick. It was great getting to catch up with old friends and enjoy some great food (what they say about Kansas City BBQ is definitely true -- yum!). After a little empty gas tank scare, we made it all the way to Emporia, KA before finding a hotel for the night. Despite being absolutely exhausted from a long day's drive and the emotional rollercoaster leading up to it, we were both awake and chipper by 5:30 the next morning. Thinking that Witicha may have a rush hour, we decided to hit the road. (Hah! No one is ever on 35!). By 5pm, we found ourselves in Waco, Texas with a signed lease.. meager amounts of groceries and an inflatable mattress that was just begging to be slept on.

Our moving truck was dropped off the next morning, a good half block away from our new apartment. Which really doesn't sound like much, until it tops 100 degrees and you realize this is Texas we are talking about! We busted our chops and managed to unload our trailer in 4.5 hours, with only suffering a little heat exhaustion. Our past couple of days have been spent unpacking, and making small exploratory trips around town. We made our first adult furniture purchases -- a new headboard for our bead, and a brand new couch. After we clear out the last few boxes, we will take a few pictures for our blog so you can see our new home!

We have also been trying to collect our first impressions of the town -- but that is for another update.

Skype will be up and running soon, and of course you are always welcome to give us a call or drop us a letter in the mail.

Love and Miss you all!!

-Kristin and Dan