Just thought I'd write and let you know a little about Louisville.
Louisville is a city made up of a bunch of little cities. The original Louisville (now a suburb called "Old Louisville") was not very large, and is now an inner city suburb. Around it were a bunch of mini cities/towns that over time each grew to the point where the boundaries between cities was so blurred that they decided to make one large city called Louisville. Therefore, with the exception of a traditional central business district, Louisville feels like a very geographically dispersed city. It feels much much larger than Auckland, although the population is probably a little lower (population stats vary wildly for Louisville as it depends on which of the surrounding suburbs you include and don't include). The most general consensus is that the population is around 700,000 to 800,000.
However, it has an amazing inters ate/motorway system going both north/south (Interstate 65) and east/west (Interstate 64) plus two massive circular motorways, one circling the inner suburbs (Interstate 264, which as far as I can recall is at least 6-8 lanes in every part that I've driven on it so far), and one circling the outer suburbs (Interstate 265). This makes for a very efficient roading system. They still have heavy traffic in patches when going into the central city just as any city does, but these are very minor when compared to the likes of what Auckland experiences. All these motorways, and Louisville's not really a very big city for US standards.
Adding to the interesting layout of Louisville is the fact that downtown is located right next to the Ohio river, with the state of Indiana across the river. There are a couple of mini-cities just across the bridge from downtown Louisville in Southern Indiana which are, for all intents and purposes, part of the Louisville city, although unofficially. People who work in Louisville often live over the bridge and people who live in Louisville will often go shopping over in the Southern Indiana suburbs. It's really just an extension of Louisville, even though it's a completely different state. For that reason, the greater Louisville area is often referred to as "Kentuckiana".
We feel like we're reasonably enclosed here. We cannot see any mountains or hills, we simply see buildings, houses, trees and lots of big roads. We had been here a few months and went for a drive up into Indiana for an hour or so and suddenly realised, once up the top of a bit of a hill, that we hadn't been to any elevation for months. It's all just flat around Louisville... One of the really nice things about the city though (outside of downtown) is all the trees and greenery. There are lots of great parks and green areas, and all the suburbs are really old and so have lovely trees all through them.
Kentucky is a southern state with all the southern hospitality and friendliness that comes with that and has the largest protestant seminary in the world sitting in its suburbs (plus a couple of smaller ones). All this makes for a very interesting and uniquely friendly city. It's part of the bible belt but you'd really call this a bit of a bible bubble. There is an incredible number of strong and thriving churches around the city most of which having a large influence from the faculty, staff, or students of the baptist seminary. This makes for a very "Christianised" city. A huge number of businesses are overtly "Christian" in their ownership and operation, and everyone you talk to is somehow connected with a church. But it's the general warmth and friendliness of the people that has been the most interesting. I've often thought that New Zealanders were, generally speaking, a friendly group of people, but as a generalisation, these guys over here have us all beat. We're constantly surprised at the courtesy, politeness and friendliness of the average person on the street, even when they're driving on the road!
All in all, it's a really nice place to live. It's not a tourist destination at all, and while there is plenty to do in the city, there is nothing worth travelling a massive distance for. The possible exception to this is the massive new basketball/concert facility that has just been completed downtown. Although Louisville and Kentucky only have college basketball teams (they don't have an NBA team), their new facility rivals any of the famous NBA facilities in the US. College basketball is huge here...
We're really enjoying the city. It's a nice place to live, it doesn't get the consistent snow of the northern states, and it doesn't usually get the consistently sweltering temperatures of the more southern states. That said, it's far colder and hotter than we've ever experienced!! It's a really great place to have a family - somewhere that we're very happy to be for the next couple of years...
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Superbowl Sunday
This Sunday just gone a weird thing happened. About 6pm, the streets all around the city (and probably all around the US) went disturbingly quiet. Football mad fans (that is American football, not soccer) around the nation all converged on their respective couches, or the couches of their friend who has the biggest flat screen TV. And they sat there until approx 10:30pm, with only minor interruptions to go to the fridge to acquire more beverages, to the bathroom to rid themselves of those beverages, or to the front door to let in either their mates who had come to stare at their flat screen TV or to give the delivery guy some cash in exchange for some eagerly awaited pizzas.
The person with the biggest flat screen TV that I know around here also happens to be my neighbor, so shortly after 6pm I bundled up (it's still deep in winter here) for the 15 second walk from my back door to his, popcorn and Coke in hand.
To set the scene, this is pretty much the biggest and most eagerly anticipated sporting event of the year in the US. Cowboy's stadium in Dallas, Texas was the venue - a stadium that holds over 100,000 spectators and cost $1.2 billion to build (that's $1.56 billion NZD). However, Dallas has had bizarre weather over week leading up to Superbowl Sunday, and had struggled to cope with it.
It's interesting here in Louisville to see the reaction to snow. Louisville is approx halfway between the north and south borders of the US, and so doesn't see anywhere near the amount of snow that the northern states get. It is also in the Ohio valley, which somehow seems to limit the amount of snow we receive. Therefore, when we do get a good dumping of snow, schools close, people don't go to work (or at least go into work late) and everything limps along a bit slower. It does seem a little unusual to us NZ'ers observing, even though we're not used to snow on our roads at all. You see, every main road around the city is sprinkled with a salt-like chemical as soon as the snow starts falling, so by 7:30am when everyone's going to work, all the main roads are completely free of snow and are fine to drive on. Even so, things seem to close pretty easily as heavy snow is still reasonably rare (although the last two winters have been exceptions to that). Our Canadian friends here reckon that if they closed schools and businesses back in Canada like they do here, the whole country would be shut down for about 5 months of the year.
Anyhow, it seems that the guys way down south there in Dallas don't see much snow - far less than Louisvillites, and when they do see a few flakes of snow, they all freak out, buy up a bunch of milk and bread from anywhere they can find it, close the entire city, and hunker down in their homes until all the weird white sky dust disappears. Of course the organisers of the event had planned for bad weather. They had planned for two of the biggest weather incidents that could affect the lead up to the game - a snow storm or an ice storm. They just hadn't planned for them both to hit within days of each other. Mayhem ensued and the major metropolis of Dallas didn't know what to do with itself for a couple of days. There were airport closures (just what people around the country with $4000 Superbowl tickets in their airline luggage want), rolling power outages, roads frozen over for days... everything.
In spite of all this, the show went ahead, and we were all able to sit in the warmth of our (or our friends) lounge and watch the game. And it was a pretty interesting game. I haven't watched all that many American football games since coming here, but am getting to know basically how the game flows and a few of the intricacies of the game. All in all it was a good game, with the Greenbay Packers stretching out to an early lead and the Pittsburgh Steelers fighting back to get within 3 points, only to have the Packers hit them hard in the final quarter to round out the game. It was mildly exciting, but perhaps you have to get a bit more wound up in the tradition, the build up and the culture of the game to experience the full effect. I had an enjoyable evening with my neighbor, had the experience of a football Superbowl event and watched a pretty good game of American football. But was it worth a $1.2 billion stadium, $4000 tickets for not a great view of the game, and endless news bulletins about the theoretical chances of getting snow in Dallas? I'm not entirely sure. I'm picking that the game at Eden park on Oct 23 will far eclipse it. Interestingly though, I haven't met any Americans that agree with me on that point yet...
Ps. Sonia came over and watched a few minutes of the game. Her biggest excitements of the game were 1) Finding out that that Michael Douglas was still alive. She thought he died a while back, but he was sitting watching the game with Catherine in the stands in seats probaby worth a lot more than $4000; and 2) that Camerin Diaz is dating Alex Rodriguez - she saw them in the crowd sitting together. It's great to get a woman's perspective on a football game...
The person with the biggest flat screen TV that I know around here also happens to be my neighbor, so shortly after 6pm I bundled up (it's still deep in winter here) for the 15 second walk from my back door to his, popcorn and Coke in hand.
To set the scene, this is pretty much the biggest and most eagerly anticipated sporting event of the year in the US. Cowboy's stadium in Dallas, Texas was the venue - a stadium that holds over 100,000 spectators and cost $1.2 billion to build (that's $1.56 billion NZD). However, Dallas has had bizarre weather over week leading up to Superbowl Sunday, and had struggled to cope with it.
It's interesting here in Louisville to see the reaction to snow. Louisville is approx halfway between the north and south borders of the US, and so doesn't see anywhere near the amount of snow that the northern states get. It is also in the Ohio valley, which somehow seems to limit the amount of snow we receive. Therefore, when we do get a good dumping of snow, schools close, people don't go to work (or at least go into work late) and everything limps along a bit slower. It does seem a little unusual to us NZ'ers observing, even though we're not used to snow on our roads at all. You see, every main road around the city is sprinkled with a salt-like chemical as soon as the snow starts falling, so by 7:30am when everyone's going to work, all the main roads are completely free of snow and are fine to drive on. Even so, things seem to close pretty easily as heavy snow is still reasonably rare (although the last two winters have been exceptions to that). Our Canadian friends here reckon that if they closed schools and businesses back in Canada like they do here, the whole country would be shut down for about 5 months of the year.
Anyhow, it seems that the guys way down south there in Dallas don't see much snow - far less than Louisvillites, and when they do see a few flakes of snow, they all freak out, buy up a bunch of milk and bread from anywhere they can find it, close the entire city, and hunker down in their homes until all the weird white sky dust disappears. Of course the organisers of the event had planned for bad weather. They had planned for two of the biggest weather incidents that could affect the lead up to the game - a snow storm or an ice storm. They just hadn't planned for them both to hit within days of each other. Mayhem ensued and the major metropolis of Dallas didn't know what to do with itself for a couple of days. There were airport closures (just what people around the country with $4000 Superbowl tickets in their airline luggage want), rolling power outages, roads frozen over for days... everything.
In spite of all this, the show went ahead, and we were all able to sit in the warmth of our (or our friends) lounge and watch the game. And it was a pretty interesting game. I haven't watched all that many American football games since coming here, but am getting to know basically how the game flows and a few of the intricacies of the game. All in all it was a good game, with the Greenbay Packers stretching out to an early lead and the Pittsburgh Steelers fighting back to get within 3 points, only to have the Packers hit them hard in the final quarter to round out the game. It was mildly exciting, but perhaps you have to get a bit more wound up in the tradition, the build up and the culture of the game to experience the full effect. I had an enjoyable evening with my neighbor, had the experience of a football Superbowl event and watched a pretty good game of American football. But was it worth a $1.2 billion stadium, $4000 tickets for not a great view of the game, and endless news bulletins about the theoretical chances of getting snow in Dallas? I'm not entirely sure. I'm picking that the game at Eden park on Oct 23 will far eclipse it. Interestingly though, I haven't met any Americans that agree with me on that point yet...
Ps. Sonia came over and watched a few minutes of the game. Her biggest excitements of the game were 1) Finding out that that Michael Douglas was still alive. She thought he died a while back, but he was sitting watching the game with Catherine in the stands in seats probaby worth a lot more than $4000; and 2) that Camerin Diaz is dating Alex Rodriguez - she saw them in the crowd sitting together. It's great to get a woman's perspective on a football game...
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Planners. Who needs em...me!
So I have just bought a planner! One of the highlights of a seminary course I just completed was seeing how Mrs Mary Mohler organisers her life. She has so many functions and things going on. Her husband is the president of SBTS, Mrs Mohler organisers the seminary wives institute, they have two children, they are constantly invited to various functions, they are constantly putting on various functions etc. And alongside all this how does she manage her own home?? Well I found out that a planner is the answer!
She puts absolutely everything in it. When she recieves something in the post she writes what she needs to down in her planner and then files it or throws it away. It seems way too simple but it seems to work. She plans her cleaning, meals, shopping, gift buying, thank you notes, prayer, scripture memory. Honestly her planner is full. However it seems to work. She carries her planner with her everywhere. And she says she goes to bed knowing everything is written down and she no longer has to store so much information in her head. I like the sound of that! So just this morning I purchased one. So I'm currently trying to consolidate all the little bits of paper lying around the house into one place and I am feeling incredibly liberated.
However, I have to confess that while I am writing this I am contemplating how I am going to get around double booking myself for tonight! Praise the Lord for the planner.
Sonia :)
She puts absolutely everything in it. When she recieves something in the post she writes what she needs to down in her planner and then files it or throws it away. It seems way too simple but it seems to work. She plans her cleaning, meals, shopping, gift buying, thank you notes, prayer, scripture memory. Honestly her planner is full. However it seems to work. She carries her planner with her everywhere. And she says she goes to bed knowing everything is written down and she no longer has to store so much information in her head. I like the sound of that! So just this morning I purchased one. So I'm currently trying to consolidate all the little bits of paper lying around the house into one place and I am feeling incredibly liberated.
However, I have to confess that while I am writing this I am contemplating how I am going to get around double booking myself for tonight! Praise the Lord for the planner.
Sonia :)
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Snow, gloriously snow!
Well what a treat to wake up to a sprinkling of snow on our thanksgiving holiday morning. Well actually we awoke to Ashleigh's squeals of delight and quickly realised what the excitement was all about. We promptly got on as much snow gear as we could find and were outside by 7:15am playing in the snow. The kids were fascinated by the snow the entire day however after going for a bike ride in the afternoon Jack very adamantly declared "I do not like cold".
Just the day before we had spent thanksgiving with friends from seminary who cooked a massive turkey and various other sides and desserts. It was a lovely day and we have been made aware that thanksgiving is in many ways a feast of great proportion, more so than even Christmas. It's a time of being thankful, spending time with family and friends and eating massive amounts.
We were also told the morning of the snow arriving that some shoppers had camped out overnight in the snow to be the first through the doors of some of the bigger shops that were opening at 3am! Apparently the day after thanksgiving has become the biggest shopping day for US retailers. Similar perhaps to NZ's boxing day, just a whole lot bigger.
So the kids have had their first taste of thanksgivng, their first taste of snow and also their first real break from school since starting in August. It's been quite a special few days.
Just the day before we had spent thanksgiving with friends from seminary who cooked a massive turkey and various other sides and desserts. It was a lovely day and we have been made aware that thanksgiving is in many ways a feast of great proportion, more so than even Christmas. It's a time of being thankful, spending time with family and friends and eating massive amounts.
We were also told the morning of the snow arriving that some shoppers had camped out overnight in the snow to be the first through the doors of some of the bigger shops that were opening at 3am! Apparently the day after thanksgiving has become the biggest shopping day for US retailers. Similar perhaps to NZ's boxing day, just a whole lot bigger.
So the kids have had their first taste of thanksgivng, their first taste of snow and also their first real break from school since starting in August. It's been quite a special few days.
Friday, November 26, 2010
"I fought the law and the, law won"
You'll never guess where WE were the other day. Of all the places we had imagined going and visiting both since being here in the US and prior to our adventure here, we did not anticipate a US court house being one them. But, the other day that's exactly where Sonia, Jack and I found ourselves.
You see, Sonia had a little mix up as to which red lights you are actually allowed to go through here, along with a little confusion regarding left and right, all while not having her license with her in the car, and then, what do you know, I find myself sitting at the back of court, rising with about 100 others in the courthouse as the Judge enters the room and resides. I can't quite recall her name, but something in my memory is telling me that her name was Judith, so I'll go ahead and call her Judge Judy.
So I'm sitting at the back of the courtroom, trying to supress urges inside me that want to yell "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" and other lines from famous court room movies. However, the grumpy looking sherrif at the door with his hand far too close to a Glock 9mm helped me to keep my seat and my voice down.
Despite not really wanting to be there, I was fascinated with the process. Like most processes that we've observed so far over here, the courtroom process involves a lot of people (many of them not doing much), a whole lot of time, and a vast array of steps in the process that must have taken someone a long long time to dream up. However, despite all these things rallying together to prevent us from making progress in the system, our decision to bring Jack along to the courtroom suddenly paid off. One of the guys near the front of the room who were yelling out names of the accused seemingly at random, looks over in our direction, and says "You! The lady with the baby - what's your name". Sonia very wisely contains her natural reaction to point out that Jack is in fact almost 4 years old and tells the man her name. He finds her file (yes, in a big box of paper files - only Judge Judy is important enough to get a computer in this courtroom, and even then she doesn't seem to use it), and asks her to come up to the front of the room. After a brief discussion, he realises that this case is pretty simple and that all Judge Judy will want of Sonia is to get her Kentucky drivers license (we are still on NZ drivers licenses and haven't been able to get Kentucky licenses yet - that's another story - we're still doing battle with that particular system). He says that he'll suggest that the Judge postpone the ruling date until later in the new year which will give her time to get her license (hopefully enough time - it will only give her 6 weeks) after which she'll only have to pay the $20 fine for the red light incident. Sonia then returns to the pews in the back of the courtroom to await the call from the dreaded (but very young looking) Judge Judy.
We sit in silence at the back of the room. The hussle and bustle of the courtroom activity blurs and fades out into a dim muffle in the background, and time seems to slow down. Somewhere in the room a clock ticks slow and loud. I turn my head to look at the sherrif by the door and he looks my way and flexes his fingers near his hoslter. Suddenly the muffle is broken by the ballif calling Sonia's name for her to stand before the bench. Sonia approaches the bench, Judge Judy continues to ignore her computer and picks up the paper file, reads it for a moment and tells Sonia that she needs to come back early January for a continuation of the case. Sonia thanks the Judge, turns around, walks back to me, and we pick up our stuff and walk out of the courtroom, making sure that I address the sherrif as "Sir" on the way out. He manages a fake smile, barely masking his apparent annoyance, probably due to the fact that he hasn't been able to shoot or threaten to shoot anyone yet today.
However, as we walk out the door I reflect on the fact that the whole ordeal has actually turned out OK, and that it won't cost us much, and even that we won't have to pay until next year. Just as I was reflecting upon this, a young guy in a sharp suit walks up to me, shakes my hand and says "Bradd - have you been getting into trouble here already?" It's a guy from Immanuel (our church here in Louisville) who I didn't know was a lawyer - very embarrassing. The bad situation that had just a moment ago gotten all better, just took a dive again.
It doesn't take us long to get over our embarrassment though, and as we tell him what's happened he laughs and offers to take care of the rest of the process for us so that we don't have to come back into the courtroom again for the next hearing, all for no cost. And he can get the date of the hearing changed for us if we need more time - brilliant! It was all working out good again.
I drove home glad to have the whole thing behind us, and making plans to make flash cards for Sonia with red and green lights and left and right arrows on them. It's been an interesting experience (although Jack says it was all completely boring), but one that I'm not keen to go through again in the near future. The guy with the Sherrif's badge and the trigger happy index finger put me off the whole thing.
Bradd
Ps. A small amount of poetic license has been used in the above narritive, despite the fact that I'm not in any way poetic. 1) I have no idea what the Judge's real name was. There is a chance it may have been Judith or in fact Judy, but it's a pretty minuscule chance. 2) There may or may not have been a clock in the court room. If there was, I couldn't actually hear it. 3) The sherrif at the back of the court house was in fact a reasonably nice guy, although stern when he needed to be. I have no idea what sort of gun he had - I was just impressed by the fact that all the sherrifs in the room were carrying them. I had no inclination to give him a reason to draw it so that I could read the brand.
Pps - this is now Sonia. Wow talk about poetic license. Drama, drama, drama :) I just feel I should explain this wee incident. He has been dying to tell this whole story however I have still been a little too traumatised to speak of it. However just to shed a little light on the picture. The cop told me that you can never go through any red arrows, period! But in Louisville here if you sit at a red right arrow you will have not only one or two people honking their horns at you but five or more and this has happened to me so many times now I can no longer count. So after three months of observing everybody treating red right arrows as give ways, early November I very innocently went through my first red arrow treating it simply as a give-way. Unfortunately it was a left arrow which is far less tolerated ....and well you now know how the rest of it went!
You see, Sonia had a little mix up as to which red lights you are actually allowed to go through here, along with a little confusion regarding left and right, all while not having her license with her in the car, and then, what do you know, I find myself sitting at the back of court, rising with about 100 others in the courthouse as the Judge enters the room and resides. I can't quite recall her name, but something in my memory is telling me that her name was Judith, so I'll go ahead and call her Judge Judy.
So I'm sitting at the back of the courtroom, trying to supress urges inside me that want to yell "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" and other lines from famous court room movies. However, the grumpy looking sherrif at the door with his hand far too close to a Glock 9mm helped me to keep my seat and my voice down.
Despite not really wanting to be there, I was fascinated with the process. Like most processes that we've observed so far over here, the courtroom process involves a lot of people (many of them not doing much), a whole lot of time, and a vast array of steps in the process that must have taken someone a long long time to dream up. However, despite all these things rallying together to prevent us from making progress in the system, our decision to bring Jack along to the courtroom suddenly paid off. One of the guys near the front of the room who were yelling out names of the accused seemingly at random, looks over in our direction, and says "You! The lady with the baby - what's your name". Sonia very wisely contains her natural reaction to point out that Jack is in fact almost 4 years old and tells the man her name. He finds her file (yes, in a big box of paper files - only Judge Judy is important enough to get a computer in this courtroom, and even then she doesn't seem to use it), and asks her to come up to the front of the room. After a brief discussion, he realises that this case is pretty simple and that all Judge Judy will want of Sonia is to get her Kentucky drivers license (we are still on NZ drivers licenses and haven't been able to get Kentucky licenses yet - that's another story - we're still doing battle with that particular system). He says that he'll suggest that the Judge postpone the ruling date until later in the new year which will give her time to get her license (hopefully enough time - it will only give her 6 weeks) after which she'll only have to pay the $20 fine for the red light incident. Sonia then returns to the pews in the back of the courtroom to await the call from the dreaded (but very young looking) Judge Judy.
We sit in silence at the back of the room. The hussle and bustle of the courtroom activity blurs and fades out into a dim muffle in the background, and time seems to slow down. Somewhere in the room a clock ticks slow and loud. I turn my head to look at the sherrif by the door and he looks my way and flexes his fingers near his hoslter. Suddenly the muffle is broken by the ballif calling Sonia's name for her to stand before the bench. Sonia approaches the bench, Judge Judy continues to ignore her computer and picks up the paper file, reads it for a moment and tells Sonia that she needs to come back early January for a continuation of the case. Sonia thanks the Judge, turns around, walks back to me, and we pick up our stuff and walk out of the courtroom, making sure that I address the sherrif as "Sir" on the way out. He manages a fake smile, barely masking his apparent annoyance, probably due to the fact that he hasn't been able to shoot or threaten to shoot anyone yet today.
However, as we walk out the door I reflect on the fact that the whole ordeal has actually turned out OK, and that it won't cost us much, and even that we won't have to pay until next year. Just as I was reflecting upon this, a young guy in a sharp suit walks up to me, shakes my hand and says "Bradd - have you been getting into trouble here already?" It's a guy from Immanuel (our church here in Louisville) who I didn't know was a lawyer - very embarrassing. The bad situation that had just a moment ago gotten all better, just took a dive again.
It doesn't take us long to get over our embarrassment though, and as we tell him what's happened he laughs and offers to take care of the rest of the process for us so that we don't have to come back into the courtroom again for the next hearing, all for no cost. And he can get the date of the hearing changed for us if we need more time - brilliant! It was all working out good again.
I drove home glad to have the whole thing behind us, and making plans to make flash cards for Sonia with red and green lights and left and right arrows on them. It's been an interesting experience (although Jack says it was all completely boring), but one that I'm not keen to go through again in the near future. The guy with the Sherrif's badge and the trigger happy index finger put me off the whole thing.
Bradd
Ps. A small amount of poetic license has been used in the above narritive, despite the fact that I'm not in any way poetic. 1) I have no idea what the Judge's real name was. There is a chance it may have been Judith or in fact Judy, but it's a pretty minuscule chance. 2) There may or may not have been a clock in the court room. If there was, I couldn't actually hear it. 3) The sherrif at the back of the court house was in fact a reasonably nice guy, although stern when he needed to be. I have no idea what sort of gun he had - I was just impressed by the fact that all the sherrifs in the room were carrying them. I had no inclination to give him a reason to draw it so that I could read the brand.
Pps - this is now Sonia. Wow talk about poetic license. Drama, drama, drama :) I just feel I should explain this wee incident. He has been dying to tell this whole story however I have still been a little too traumatised to speak of it. However just to shed a little light on the picture. The cop told me that you can never go through any red arrows, period! But in Louisville here if you sit at a red right arrow you will have not only one or two people honking their horns at you but five or more and this has happened to me so many times now I can no longer count. So after three months of observing everybody treating red right arrows as give ways, early November I very innocently went through my first red arrow treating it simply as a give-way. Unfortunately it was a left arrow which is far less tolerated ....and well you now know how the rest of it went!
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