At long last I have a moment to reflect on our trip to the states. This has been the first weekend we’ve been home since our trip. Spending the first weekend on a mini-vacation from our vacation in sunny Whakatane on the East Coast of the North Island, and the second making a trip down to Hawera to announce our engagement to family and friends, we are finally home for a while. On retrospection, these are the things we learned or discovered on our trip:
1. You can lead a planeload of foreigners to immigration, but you can’t always expedite their entrance. One of Jason’s greatest fears was going through customs, inadvertently violating some rule, thus raising the ire of an immigration official. Clearly this was not a unique fear, for when a security personnel attempted to expedite the processing of non-US citizens by having them go through the US only customs line, not one foreigner budged from their line. Of course, it didn’t help that the security person was bearing a gun, thus elevating the fears of all the foreigners to an even greater height.
2. Weddings are the same no matter which country you’re in. I must relay our trip was initially instigated by a request from a close friend to be an attendant in her we
dding. Knowing Jason would be coming with me, we decided to make the most of our time and spend two weeks, one in Seattle and one in my home town of Boise. We had two lovely days in Seattle, with minimal rain, exploring the main tourist sites of downtown. The week culminated in my friends wedding, nec
essitating Jason to spend more hours then desired in one of American’s greatest institutions, the Mega Mall, while I was busy beautifying for the event. I was curious to see if Jason thought our American weddings were much different, but he didn’t. The only major differences being that all invitees attend the entire event from ceremony to dinner to dancing (kiwis classically will only invite family and close friends to the ceremony, with another large segment of friends being invited to the after party) and the party stops early. In this case, the DJ shut down by 11pm, hours before any kiwi band would finish playing.
3. The price you see is not what you pay for. How easily I’ve forgotten about sales tax and tipping. One of our main stops in Seattle was the REI store for some comparatively inexpensive gear to take back to New Zealand. Looking at the price tag we were pleased with our purchases only to find the price went up by $12 at the register. Whoops! No added GST here. And then there’s tipping. I guess when you get $10-12 an hour wage in NZ, you don’t really need or expect tips for exceptional service. Not in the states. You better tack on a 15-20% gratuity, no matter how bad your service, or else the waiter might question if you’ve made a mistake.
4. Where’s the super sizing? Jason waited with great anticipation to see all the fat people, huge meals, and monstrous trucks that are archetypally portrayed as representative of America in non-US media. Alas, he was very disappointed. Although I emphasized to him that the two cities we visited were probably not representative of prototypical America, being much more outdoors inclined and, especially in Seattle’s case, more European focused with high pedestrian and bike traffic.
5. Traffic is a whole different ball game in the states. I had completely forgotten the number of motor vehicles and travel distances in the states. This was most evident in Seattle, where 30-45 minutes was necessary to travel to any destination and cars often slowed on the freeway for no apparent reason. This generated great anxiety for me on the day we were to fly from Seattle to Boise, as I hadn’t budgeted enough time to get to the airport and the rain finally made its typical fall/winter appearance, slowing down traffic to a standstill. Fortunately we made it to the airport on time (minus a large gas charge for returning the rental car with an empty tank), only to sit at our gate waiting for a mechanical problem to be fixed.
6. Don’t attempt to take a knife through security. In our rush to make our plane in Seattle, we regretfully forgot we packed a recently purchased Wusthof knife inside our brand new cast iron pot, until we were in line to go through security. Quickly realizing the mistake, Jason handed me the package, knowing that a declaration from a US citizen would be far better then one from a foreigner (see fear under #1). However, it seemed to cause more problems then solve them, with security personnel confused as to which bag contained the knife, even though I had clearly handed the knife to the x-ray scanner operator, requiring all our bags to be rescanned. Luckily our plane was delayed (see #5 above).
7. American medical system is definitely daunting. As part of our trip, I took the opportunity to do some preliminary interviewing for jobs in Boise. We decided our ultimate goal was to move back to Boise in 2008. However, through both interview days my anxiety levels rose with discussions of reimbursement, salary, work hours and call, all things that I’ve been free from during my time in New Zealand. Sure specialist referrals are slower and tests are less available, but patient outcomes are much the same. Of course my ideas stood in direct contrast to the Canadian who was staying at our hotel in Seattle, clearly having come across the border to receive treatment because of his dissatisfaction with the socialized medical system, who was loudly vocalizing his views to all that would listen.
8. Wood doesn’t always float. As a finale to our trip, we ventured two hours north of Boise, to my parent’s cabin in McCall, Idaho. It’s situated on a lovely piece of land on the lake with ready access to a state park behind (the same one in which Jason proposed to me). As a nice gesture, my father decided to leave his boat in the water so that we could take one final tour of the lake, its landscape and houses, before taking it out of the water. My father has a gorgeous, old wooden Ce
ntury touring boat. I will admit it looks beautiful touring around the lake on a nice day, waving to all the people on the shore. However, it’s had its problems over the years, with sinkings and multiple restorations, so I’m always a little bit leery when I ride in this boat. On this particular occasion the water level of the lake had been let down for the winter, revealing more rocks then usual along the edge. Despite my multiple warnings of shallow water my father assured me it was okay. That’s until, nearly at the end of our journey, we suddenly lost power and the boat began to fill with water. Quickly paddling as close to shore as possible, we abandoned ship in thigh deep water, wading safely to the nearest beach. While we walked away with only some dripping clothes, it is yet to be determined the fate of the boat and how often I will remind my father of this incident.
9. There’s definitely a home team advantage. As part of the trip, Jason really wanted to go to a live grid-iron (American football) game. Fortunately, my parents have season tickets to the Boise State University games and there were games on both Sunday nights of our trip. Of course, due to flight delays getting into Boise we missed the first half of the first game, and due to a flight cancellation we were able to go to the second game, a much more exciting game with four overtimes. However, one thing Jason noticed was the lack of support for the opposing team and strong sense of home team pride. Not only won’t the home team supporters cheer for the opposing team (a very un-kiwi thing to do), they often yelled derogatory comments to the home team if they let the opposing team make a move against them. That, combined with the ENTIRE stadium being dressed in home team colors (in this case orange and blue), it’s a wonder the opposing team even had a chance.
