I’m back in Chicago.  I spent much of today dusting things and cleaning up the accumulated dirt that settles in on things after a summer away.  (Plus there was a good amount of construction on my building over the past three months, and so the dirt and things sort of seeped in through cracks.)

I’ve unpacked most of my things, put my new things away, and in some ways it looks like I never left.  But yet everything looks new, unique, and unfamiliar.

For starters, I know this will be funny to some people: I am now re-learning how to drive on the right-hand side.  In New Zealand, they have these big blue signs with white arrows pointing at the driving lane anytime one goes around a median of any sort.  (Similar to the U.S’s yellow sign with the black median and a squiggly arrow pointing around the right side of it.)  I’m somewhat instinctively looking for those signs as a reminder and finding none.  I’m switching on the windshield wipers every time I want to use the turn signal.

Everything looks bigger than before.  The cars, the roads, the buildings.  In New Zealand, things are smaller and — in some ways — more humane.  The roads there are narrower, the lanes different to maneuver.  The U.S. is louder than New Zealand.  And Illinois is so flat.

There are things I’m more appreciative for, however.  The familiar, missed feel of my bed and pillows.  Light switches that switch *up* for on.  The familiar smell of the winds off Lake Michigan.  The comforts of my apartment.

I have so much stuff.

New Zealand is a first-world, developed nation.  Yes, it’s small, and yes, it has a different lifestyle than the U.S.  But what I’m most offended, really, is my own materialism in my apartment.  As I was putting things away, I recognized in a different way just how much excess I own.  Here I’ve spent two months with everything I need (save for a few books I wish I had brought with me) on the other side of the planet, and as I opened up the closets I couldn’t tell anything was missing from them.  When I got back from India, I was offended by American excess in a different way; this time I simply see the excess and almost want to cry.  It’s excess for the sake of excess, not for the sake of convenience or anything else.

And the size of things.  The larger portions, the prevalence of gigantic SUV’s, minivans being driven around by single people.

I walked down the sidewalk and no one said hi, even to respond to my own “hi there.”  In fact, I got dirty looks.  The clerk at Walgreen’s when I went to drop off a couple photos for printing had the charm and personality of a stone.  I remember this; but do I live like this?  I suppose I do, and I suppose I will once again in the future, but right now it just sucks the energy out of me.  I stopped by to say a few hello’s at the seminary, which restored some of my faith in Chicago.

I can’t turn off my racing mind.  I feel like a stranger in my own country, and yet I was only gone for two months.  I both anticipate and dread the coming days and weeks of my return.

A lot has been happening here in Auckland and in New Zealand in the last few days.  We’ve had a lot of gale-force wind, so much so that 1,200 people were stranded overnight at the top of Mt Hutt in the South Island.  The race between who will become Supercity Auckland’s first mayor is neck-and-neck.  And the credit card scandals still keep popping up all across the country.

It’s rained, it’s poured, and it’s been sunny with fine stretches.  It’s been below freezing and it’s been above freezing.  And, in the meantime, Chris Hightower, his cousin Justin, and Bryan Anderson have come to visit me for respective weeks and departed.

In less than 48 hours, I will have also departed.

Let’s start from the beginning.  Chris and Justin came two weeks ago and spent part of an NZ-Aussie holiday with me and my host family in Auckland.  Neither of them had been to this part of the world before, and jet lag definitely had its way with both.  I took them around Auckland and enjoyed playing tour guide, showing off this place that has become a part of me over the past two months.  Then they went off on their own and took a quick tour of the North Island, down through Wellington and back up.  It was a lot of fun to have the two of them here, to catch up with Chris who I don’t see nearly enough of now that he lives in Boston, and to wind-down my time in such a fashion.

On Sunday, I preached for my last service at St Luke’s, and Bryan flew in just before we started.  He got to hear my sermon (in which he played a starring role) and he overlapped for one day with Chris and Justin.  That night the neighbors came over for a mini-driveway party; it was a great end to my official time at St Luke’s.

Monday, Chris and Justin left, and I got to play tour guide once again to Bryan, taking him all over the city.  It was low tide up off North Head, and so he was a clam in the ocean (literally) getting to go and explore all the marine life.  On Tuesday, Bryan and I flew down to Christchurch for a relaxing three days.  ChCh was a delightful city and a great time to relax, talk, explore, and catch up on our lives.

I drove Bryan back to the airport this morning, as he continues today up to Tokyo and Japan.  As I dropped him off and said goodbye, I knew that another, harder goodbye was next.  When the two of us spend a length of time abroad, whenever the other one shows up, it means it’s soon time to leave.  (At least that’s how it’s worked so far.)  This is my last weekend in Auckland, this was my last week in New Zealand.  In about 64 hours, I will be back on Minnesota soil, the soil that contains my roots, the land that supported my upbringing and allowed me to come to a place like New Zealand.  Yet that soil and those roots have mixed with others.  It’s time to say goodbye to this land, to this place that I have been in for what feels like both a moment and an eternity.

How does one transport their experiences?  Do they pack them as checked luggage, or in their carry-on?

Note: I wrote this update over a week ago; I’ve had visitors and have been busy socializing and entertaining and simply didn’t realize I hadn’t hit “publish.”

One of my favorite places to go in the middle of the day here is Mt Eden.  Whether it is raining or pleasant, windy or calm.  There’s a window of time from about 12 noon to 12.30 daily that there are few (if any) crowds of tourists at the summit, the traffic between the church and there is easily navigable, and I’m able to find a bench to sit and reflect.

Today was one of those days.  I needed to clear my mind, and I went to the summit.  I stood on this little mound, where I get to face the CBD but still look over the crater, and just looked out for a while.  The sun was in my eyes, so then I went over to the lookout platform and looked toward Newmarket, Mission Bay, Rangitoto, and the other places in the distance.  I looked for a while, closed my eyes and felt the breezes for a while, and soaked it all in.

What will be my new Mt Eden?

When I get back to Chicago, my busiest schedule yet awaits me.  Four classes.  Three jobs.  One internship.  Friendships and relationships.  Weddings, including one I’m officiating.  Traffic and appointments and writing my ordination paper and making concrete plans for the future.

What will be my new Mt Eden?

Obviously it won’t be a mountain, or really even a decent hill.  (The wind might be straight-on.)  I’ve been thinking about and wrestling with this, and I don’t exactly know if I have one in Chicago.  Is it riding the L and people-watching, traveling destinationless within a city I love?  Is it taking a book and sitting down at Promonotory Point next to the water?  Is it sitting on the pier at Museum Campus, looking back up toward the Loop with my feet dangling off the edge?  They all serve some of Mt Eden’s function, but not all.

Maybe it’s just wrestling with the idea of a reprieve from Chicago’s ~3 million people here in this comparable hamlet of ~440,000 in Auckland City.  Maybe it’s the connection with nature that exists in a city and country so much younger than my own.  Maybe it’s being no more than an hour from the ocean no matter where I travel on this island, or the still-evolving volcanic nature of this place.  Maybe those things connect with me in ways I do not yet realize.

I took a day trip to the north today, visiting Whangaparaoa, Shakespear Park, Waiwera, Warkworth, Snells Beach, Algies Bay, and some other stops along the way.  At one of the beaches in Waiwera, though, I looked out and there was this little island only about a hundred metres off shore.  (Google Maps informs me the name is Mahurangi Island.)

This island is really quite beautiful, in a way.  It is covered in native bush, does not look inhabited or tamed for tourist’s sake, in a way is a small reminder of New Zealand before canoes and ships arrived with people who now inhabit its lands.  It is a small reminder of a world long passed.

I like islands.  Even though I don’t think I could do so permanently, I always wanted to live on an island.  In fact, this was a common theme growing up in my family.  One of the lakes we would drive past on our way to the Twin Cities when I was a kid had a rather large island in the middle, and mom always declared that to be “her island.”  Likewise, I claimed a small little “island” (actually it’s a peninsula, but who’s counting?) on Pokegama Lake just south of my hometown as my own.

“I want to live on an island,” I’d say.  I had it all planned out — I’d have a boat, a cabin, a wood stove, and plenty of pop and Cheetos.  (Hey, it was my life on my island — I was calling the shots, and since mom wouldn’t let me have a diet consisting of pop and Cheetos, they had to come with me on my island.)  I would also bring books and a radio; these were the quieter, gentler days before the Internet, digital cameras, and all the rest.

So I saw little Mahurangi today and thought of those times, of my fantasy of living on an island.  I decided that Mahurangi was just as good a place as Lake Pokegama, and so when I live on an island it’s going to be that island.

The irony, of course, is that I actually am living on an island at the moment.

Include this realization in the, “Duh, table for one” category.  But it didn’t really dawn on me until today — in spite of making references to North and South Islands, in spite of talking about an island country — that I’m living on an island.

And so another childhood dream is fulfilled.  I’m living on an island.  I’m not drinking a bunch of pop, eating a bunch of Cheetos, and I have yet to be on a boat.  (A ferry will have to count, and I’ll be on one of those in the next two weeks.)  But I’m living on an island.  One more dream ticked off the life bucket list, even if I didn’t realize it until five weeks later.

There comes a point, usually within the first two months, after I’ve moved to a new apartment or city when I do something that feels so completely ordinary I realize it and feel a sense of the extraordinary.  I remember most of them:

• After I left home for college, while living in my first dorm room, I was doing laundry.  I had a feeling of, “This is my life,” not in a negative or degrading way — but in a sense that I was on my own, doing something that I had done previously (but not frequently), responsible to no one but myself for accomplishing whatever I tasked myself to do.
• When I moved out of the college dorms into a house I was sharing with four other friends, I was driving from the house to the grocery store.  I had gone to that particular grocery store numerous times before, but for some reason that time stuck out.  I was listening to the rock station on the radio, it was a fairly relaxing Saturday afternoon right after the school year had started.
• When I moved into my apartment in Milwaukee, it was driving from my office back home again along National Ave.  As I passed Miller Park, something clicked and I suddenly felt like that was home.
• When I moved into my present apartment in Chicago from my previous one, it was coming home from last summer’s job, turning on the air conditioner, and walking into the kitchen for a glass of water.

Add another one to the list: today, as I was on my way into work this morning and turned off Dorchester and into St Johns/Remuera Road, something clicked and felt like all was right in the world.  After the fact I realized I didn’t take a double-look over my shoulder to make sure no one was coming as I turned across what would be the forward lane in the U.S., I didn’t have to think about keeping left, I wasn’t worrying about traffic or what was going on with my day or anything else like that.  It felt like I was simply commuting, and that the experience was just as common and ordinary as I would consider it to be otherwise.

In short, it was a recognition that I had created a new routine.  Things in Auckland are now “familiarly foreign,” as I’ve been saying recently.  There’s still something about things — and I imagine there will remain, as my time here is so limited — that looks off.  The way the traffic signs are arranged, the differences in branding colors, the extra L’s in counsellor or traveller or jewellry. They don’t catch my attention as they did a month ago, however.  I recognize (or recognise) them as part of my surroundings and new expectations.  If I look at them directly, I see the differences and will have to “translate” in my mind accordingly.  But if I look at the whole, it appears just as it ought, looks comfortable and familiar.

I have a new routine.  I’ve had the appropriate feeling of, “I live here,” if even for a short period of time.  This is comforting and reminds me of the incredible power of the human condition for adaptation and change.  This is also challenging, because I fear now a heightened culture shock upon my return to the U.S.  Perhaps that is a good thing; perhaps it was foolish of me to consider myself somehow more able or equipped to compartmentalize my experiences in a way so as to prevent culture shock in either locale.  Perhaps that is a good thing, too, because it means I have allowed myself to be immersed here, to recognize the differences as well as the similarities, and to appreciate each on their own.

But for now: I have a new routine.  That’s all I can ask.

On Sunday, I’ll preach my first of two sermons at St Luke’s.  (By the time you read this, it will likely even have been finished.)  It’s been a couple months since the last time I preached, and since it is one of the things I most enjoy about professional ministry, I’ve missed it.

Preaching in a new community is an intimidating thing, however.  Even when one has, like I have in this circumstance, a bit of a head start within the congregation, having worshipped, broken bread, and been in the company of them now for three weeks, it is still intimidating.  The pulpit — literally and figuratively — unfamiliar.  It is unnerving to consider their expectations, to speak in a fashion that merges adequately the responsibilities of being both prophet and priest.

In this situation, there are the fears of the actual speaking patterns to contend with, as well.  Will my accent be an obstacle to the words I hope to deliver?  Will my choice of words translate in the way I hope they do?  I am a temporary immigrant in this culture, will the message I bring offend sensibilities and cross boundaries in a way that moves beyond the prophetic and into the colonial?  Will I make too many assumptions that I take to be universal which are really cultural?

And then, of course, there are the theological questions to deal with — and the fact that I’m preaching to a room full of retired clergypeople and other professional theologians!  ”Pressure phoning on line 1!”

I am cautiously optimistic, however, and walk forward with tempered anticipation.  After all, this isn’t the first time I’ve preached, and even if I should entirely bomb this time I have one more chance.  I’m not going to transform others’ thinking or being (for good or bad) in one sermon alone; and chances are no one except me will even remember the details of my sermon come this time next week.  Preaching is not just delivering a prophetic yet tender word; it’s also about expectation management and self-care.

One of the biggest obstacles for Americans traveling or residing abroad is the use of the metric system.  Regardless of one’s views as to whether or not the U.S. should go metric, the fact remains: stepping outside and thinking it feels to be about 55 degrees is not the same as stepping outside and thinking it feels to be about 12 degrees.

The last few days have changed that.  Being immersed in the New Zealand culture now for more than three weeks, I’ve adopted a hybrid approach to metrication.  I’ve got 0-15 C down for its feeling, and the rest I can mentally convert to Fahrenheit in my head.  I can visualize metres almost as well as I can visualize feet; though the 4.26m underpass clearances still don’t translate the same as 14 ft.

I’m asking people how they’re going, and more than once I’ve asked if someone is sorted.  I find “quite” and “rather” sneaking into my vocabulary, and I’ll ask where the rubbish bin is located.  It’s still ketchup, however, and except when giving Internet addresses it will remain “zee.”

For the past three weeks, however, I catch myself when turning right still looking over my right shoulder immediately before the turn, assuming I will cut in front of the car coming from that direction.  I realized this morning that I didn’t do that, which is a different level of acculturation altogether.  Walking through the double doors going into the common room at church, I catch myself routinely using the left-hand door now instead of the right.

(I still, however, cannot comprehend driving clockwise around a cul-de-sac on a dead-end street as opposed to counter-clockwise.)

So how are things, now that I’m at the halfway point?  I know what 12 feels like.  I can’t sum it up better than that.

I’ve traveled to this part of the Pacific before.  I knew the day would come.  You’re standing in queue for your fish ‘n chips, the young person behind the counter takes your order, notices your accent and can see a number of strange cards emerge from your wallet.  As you pull out your cash, stuck in between are a couple of bizarre-looking pieces of green-ish cotton.  You don’t process their existence as anything abnormal; after all, you might want to grab a quick bite on your way through LAX, and American currency usually does the trick better than Kiwi dollars.

But to the young person, this is a fascinating sight.  He’s only seen them on television before.  He’s heard of this iconic Greenback, and his friends from school who have taken holiday to the States have gotten to touch its strange surface.  Who would dream of making cotton paper?

For Kiwis and Aussies, you need to know that currency is not paper.  It is a polymer plastic banknote, complete with the ability to see through it at parts for counterfeit protection purposes.  For many young people, this is the only currency they have ever really used in exchange, having been introduced in 1999.

“Oh, it’s not like paper, really,” this young man said after I gave him a single to try out.  ”But you can rip it, right?”

That’s one of the fascinating things about the polymer notes.  They don’t tear easily, but if they do they are likely to break in two pieces and you will need to exchange them for a whole.  They don’t disintegrate in the wash, they are significantly more difficult to counterfeit (and thus easier to observe improper notes), are more vivid in printing and color, last up to four times as long as paper-printed notes, and generally more pleasing all around.

(Interruption: Canada will be introducing polymer banknotes in 2011.  Mexico has printed some peso denominations on polymer.  They are present in North America, though not in its most populous constituent, and I would suspect aren’t coming to the U.S. soon having just redesigned most of our currency in the past decade.)

So if you travel in this part of the world as an American, carry a couple bucks with you.  Not only will it be puzzling to others in the world to know that a single dollar is printed rather than coined, but the young people will be fascinated by this antiquated way of living.  Let them feel your money, and don’t be offended.  It’s another way to open two peoples’ eyes to the wonders of cross-cultural travel.

I was made aware this morning that I’ve been in Auckland for a week.  I marked the event by pulling the rubbish can up the driveway to the street to be collected.  (A couple pie wrappers, the stickers from apples, and an ant-infested donut tray; I’m sure the rubbish collectors will enjoy the light week.)

It’s interesting to think of the past week, what I know now that I didn’t then:

• The city is not as unfamiliar, though I recognize how much I have to explore.
• People are genuinely interested why one finds themself in New Zealand, being at the end of the world as it is.
• 111 is 911, should I need to make use of it.
• The presence of sunshine does not equate the absence of rain.
• “Paracetamol” is what acetaminophen (Tylenol) is called in these parts.
• I do not like lemingtons, but asparagus wrapped in buttered bread is a good nibble.
• Using US credit cards, which do not have PINs as Kiwi ones do, will annoy most shopkeepers.  They understand, but they’re still annoyed.

Last night I spent some time with the church youth group; the kids were asking me what famous people I had met in the States (since there are a lot of them), and drilling me on the various Kiwi foods I had or had not tried.  Mafia is a church youth group game on both sides of the Pacific, and so it was fun to be re-introduced to it.

Yesterday afternoon, we also had an agape meal for midweek Communion, and I enjoyed hearing wonderful stories of St Lukes’ past.  Represented in the congregation are many pacesetters in the New Zealand church, including both the first woman ordained in the PCANZ, as well as the first woman who was elected moderator.  One of the forefathers of New Zealand psychotherapy was at the table, as well as other leaders in science, medicine, and society.  It was both humbling and awe-inspiring to be in their presence to get just a glimpse into their experience.

And yesterday morning was breakfast with the kindergarten staff.  One of the staffers spent some time in the states — of all places, in Wisconsin and Illinois!  So it was good to listen to her experience and be able to “talk Midwest” with her.

I’ve made a number of other connections, too.  I’ll be meeting up with a fellow Minnesotan that is here in New Zealand next week, a connection made through one of my former colleagues in Milwaukee.  I’m making appointments with church leaders in the coming days for conversations for my papers.  Other than that, I’m generally settling into life in Auckland.

It’s been a week already.  Glass half full view: I’m just getting started.  Glass half empty view: only five weeks left, and I haven’t even done all I want.