A Bronx Holiday (Two, Actually)*

So we’ve hit some milestones since moving to New York City:

• Bethany and I have had opportunities to give people directions. That’s a great feeling. “Hey! I know more than nothing!” 
• Riding the subway and knowing where to change trains without having to look at the map
• Recognizing – and being recognized by – people on the street
• I don’t need street signs to tell where I am on the Bx12 bus – I can just take a quick glimpse at the passing storefronts and locate my position.

Those little “wins” mean a lot when there are still so many things that seem foreign and unattainable. We still feel a little lost even walking around our neighborhood, not because we don’t know where we’re going, but because it seems sometimes that we’re the only ones here who don’t speak Spanish. (We’re working on that, albeit slowly) Or when I get pulled over and ticketed for making a left turn at an intersection where I’ve been turning left for three months now and never once saw the little no-left-turn signs. Oops. [Now I’m paranoid: What else have I been doing wrong that I didn’t realize??]

Princess Anna, Silvermist,
and a skunk

In any case, we have reached two more milestones: we have seen both a Bronx Halloween and a Bronx Thanksgiving. Are our experiences authentic Bronx, the way that most people here experience them? Maybe, maybe not. But we did learn some things.

Halloween

In the city, at least where we are, kids don’t go trick-or-treating by knocking on the doors of houses. Instead, they go where the stores are: restaurants, hair salons, shoe stores, convenience stores, Laundromats, and even liquor stores all hand out candy to the throng of kids who live in the area. They also go pretty much right after school is out, so from 3:30-6pm or so. We had purchased a bag of candy in case someone came knocking at our apartment door, but it proved unnecessary (we had to eat all that candy ourselves, unfortunately). We followed the crowds of Elsa’s, Iron Men, zombies, and Super Mario brothers to the shops on 198^th, and the couple of individual homes here and there where the residents had a supply of candy for the kids. Our girls each got a bucket of candy, and we met a couple of our neighbors – easily the best result from the evening, neighbors we can now greet and have some kind of history with. We also learned what we want to do next year: After our girls get their trick-or-treating out of the way, we’ll come back to the stoop of our building and hand out our own candy. Hey, gotta go where the people are, right?

Thanksgiving

Three generations of Gliddens

We decided not to return to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, opting instead to turn the Christmas vacation into a whirlwind family-visiting marathon. Part of the reason was that the break from school wasn’t very long – New York City has no “deer days,” so school started back up again on Monday. My parents were also able to come up from Pittsburgh, which was a blessing, and Amber, Priority 1’s Children’s Ministries Coordinator, spent the day with us as well. Coordinating food is always a challenge, and one issue for us was figuring out what to do with the frozen turkey, since keeping it in our tiny freezer was nigh impossible. Amber had enough space at the P1 apartment, so she kept it for us, and that worked out. We** also had to coordinate crock pots and coffee pots and toaster ovens and microwaves, because we can’t use too many at once, lest we overload our outlets. 

It all got done, we had a great meal, we watched some football, and we even saw some snow fall. It just happened a little differently than we were used to.

And no, we did not go to the parade. Our warm, comfy beds were much too comfy and warm to abandon at 4am or something to go stand on the street for 8 hours. Perhaps in the future, when we’re all a little tougher.

We look forward to more milestones, big and small. Let’s just pray I don’t get any more traffic tickets.

*Here I am using the term “holiday” in the sense of “any significant day.” We could debate for a while as to whether or not Halloween qualifies as a “holy day,” but I’ll save that for a later time.

**And when I say “we,” I mean, of course, Bethany.

Soggy Socks and Sandwiches

The day had finally arrived.

We were ready, had a strategy.

After more than two months of preparing and waiting, WE FINALLY HAD A TEAM TO HOST.

From Thursday to Sunday, the 9^th to 12^th of October, a team of Messiah College students served with Priority 1. This weekend had a big circle around it on our calendars, because this team was the first that we would help to lead around the city. This team, Lord help them, would also serve as an experiment of sorts: we didn’t know exactly how it would all work out, how the roles would be divided, how Ginny would get to school, etc.

I, Greg, did as much as I could without actually staying in the Priority 1 apartment with the team, while Bonnie (Priority 1’s Director) and Amber (P1’s Children’s Ministries Coordinator) both stayed with them at the apartment. Our own apartment is either a 10-minute ride or a 30-minute walk away, depending on whether buses show up regularly or not. I learned that the buses don’t come nearly as often at 7am on a Saturday as they do during the week, and thus I had a half-hour stroll in the dark morning drizzle. I also learned that my shoes are insufficient as rainwear.

The first two evenings the team helped out at the after-school program run by the school where Ginny attends. They split up among the different classes and helped with homework, singing and dancing, crowd control, and, of course, snacks. The kids were really excited to have some volunteers, especially when they found out they would be there two days in a row!!

Friday morning was spent at the World Vision Storehouse, a facility that collects lots of corporate donations and then distributes them in the South Bronx and beyond, and in particular they help school teachers who don’t have enough supplies. We sorted jeans and polo shirts into bundles, then did the same with boxes full of hats. It’s admittedly tedious work (especially when we discover that we had packed all the bundles wrong and would have to re-sort and re-bag them – an issue that may or may not have been my fault), but it’s a good reminder that building up the Kingdom of God often takes the form of doing manual, unskilled labor for little or no compensation. Those bundles of clothes and hats will go to organizations that work with the homeless, domestic abuse victims, underprivileged kids, and on and on, and someone had to package them up.

Sandwich-making fiends

My personal favorite activity took place on Saturday morning (despite my aforementioned soggy socks). We caravanned to the HQ of Manna of Life Ministries, a group who provides food and love to the homeless. The Messiah group got their gloves and hairnets on, then made a whole bunch of PBJ and tuna sandwiches. We then caravanned to three different sites, spending the longest time at a homeless shelter called The Living Room. I didn’t know exactly what to expect: in the past we had been permitted to go up and talk and pray with the people staying there; other times we were only allowed to hand out the food down on the sidewalk outside the building. This time, after handing out the food, we did indeed go upstairs. After the team sang a song they had (hastily) prepared, Jasmine, a woman who works with Manna of Life and who had herself once been homeless, stood and basically preached a salvation message to the people. She spoke with passion and excitement of our need for Jesus to forgive and transform us. Then the team spread out, with prayer request cards in hand, and had the chance to talk with some of the people there. It was wonderful. Several of the team even had the chance to pray with people there. I am grateful to have been a part of this time.

Two of our stops were at gas stations where day workers gather, waiting for work. These guys stand around hoping that someone will come by and offer them work for the day: sometimes they get work, sometimes they don’t. We came, lined up with sandwiches, stew, fruit, and juice for any and all who wanted some. At the last stop several of the men joined our group as we circled up and prayed.

It's New York, right? Gotta get some pizza.

The last major component of the weekend was a photo scavenger hunt that we call the AmazinGrace. We hand the team a list of landmarks throughout the city to pray at and photograph, then pat them on the head and wish them well. They get a chance to navigate the subways themselves and see how well they can get around on their own.

They all survived. They even all made it back to the P1 apartment in the Bronx!

They were a wonderful team, and we look forward to hosting many, many more.

I slept well after they left.

17 More Things We've Learned Since Moving to New York City

1. We’ll have to get used to going food shopping once a week or more. Our fridge/freezer and pantry are simply not big enough to hold much more than that.
2. If you do have to go to the store (an Aldi just opened ten minutes away!), go when you have to move your car anyway for the street sweeper.
3. Make sure you carefully read posted parking signs. Pay particular attention to start and end times, if there are any. Failing to do this may cost you sixty bucks.
4. Public schools (and street sweepers) in New York City observe all kinds of holidays. Students had two days off for Rosh Hashanah a couple of weeks ago. (Ginny’s Christian school was, however, still in session.)
5. Just because you live within yards of dozens of people doesn’t mean that you’ll see them very much, if at all. Walking back from the bus stop last week Ginny and I met a woman and her two kids who live on the 5^th floor. In two months I’d seen the son once or twice, but never the mom.
6. Be prepared for the cost of your car insurance to triple. Yes, TRIPLE.

   

   Friends from PA--a family of 

   6--visited one weekend

7. Finding a church that preaches the Bible is non-negotiable. The weekly smacks in the face are necessary.
8. If you choose not to put your 4 year-old in Pre-K, be prepared that there will be NO other kids her age at story time in the library, because pretty much all the 4 year-olds in the City are in Pre-K.
9. It is indeed possible to fit an additional family of 6 into your already tight 3-bedroom apartment. For one night, at least.
10. Doing laundry at the laundromat will get easier each time.
11. Setting up life in a new place takes time. More than two months here, and we’re still working on car insurance, setting up doctors, registering our van, getting new driver’s licenses, and figuring out where to put stuff in our apartment.
12. Having so much in walking distance from your house is awesome. Here’s a partial list of what we can walk to: bank, pharmacy, doctors for all five of us, post office, parks and playgrounds, coffee shops, Chinese restaurant, pizza places, numerous restaurants, several big stores, and probably hundreds of smaller shops.
13. We discovered, quite accidentally, that we can go out onto the roof of our building. There’s not much up there but satellite dishes and exhaust pipes, and the view isn’t as spectacular as I had hoped – I was holding out hope that we could at least see the Manhattan skyline, but alas – but it was still pretty neat to be up there.
14. Phone calls, texts, emails, Skype and Facetime sessions, and visits from friends and family are wonderful encouragements. (To be fair, we already knew this, but it bears repeating.) 
15. October is a wonderful month for parking. They suspend the street sweeping on 8 days this month, and if you play it right, you can leave your car in the same place for almost three weeks!
16. Prayer is vital to, well, everything. Big and small, “spiritual” and “ordinary.” We knew this as well, of course, but we are repeatedly reminded of it.
17. Even though our home is significantly smaller than our previous one, we still manage to lose things. Currently, we have misplaced one of our cell phone chargers.

    

    Sunset view from the rooftop of our building

"That's Just How We've Always Done It"

Stopped in traffic on the 207th Street Bridge

We used to poke fun at locals in Pennsylvania, both in Juniata County (where we taught high school for two years) and in Franklin County (where we lived for eight years). Though born-and-raised Pennsylvanians ourselves, we each hail from different parts of the state. And we saw everywhere a kind of indigenous logic that the "natives" simply seemed to know, but which non-natives such as ourselves struggled to comprehend. Have you ever gotten directions from someone who included landmarks that no longer exist? (Our favorite in Franklin County was “Turn where the Sheetz used to be.”) Bizarre intersections mock common sense (“Stop except left turn”), but somehow traffic flows through them without incident (most of the time, of course). If you’ve ever been frustrated by local “traditions,” bristled when someone pines for “how it used to be,” or – worst of all – states the dreaded words “That’s just how we’ve always done it,” then you know what I mean.

New York City is completely different. Completely.

And by that I mean, of course, that their bizarre traditions and cultural oddities are different than the bizarre traditions and cultural oddities we had to learn in other places.

It doesn’t surprise us, really, that we’re still dealing with this stuff up here. We knew that we would become OAFs (Outsiders/Aliens/Foreigners) when we moved, and that learning how to do NYC life would take some time. And I should say that it has not been all weirdness and stress since we’ve been here – not at all. But the weird things do stand out, of course.

We haven’t been here long, and I’m sure we’ll have more examples as time goes by, but for us so far, the most glaring example of this cultural weirdness has to be parking. It’s crazy and terrible and stressful. Most places, outside of big cities, take parking for granted. Wherever one goes, whether to Walmart, the post office, the grocery store, or a friend’s house, there will be parking; when I go home, I will park in my garage/driveway/etc. Not so in the city.

Parking is a crapshoot. Unless you pay exorbitant fees for reserved spaces, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find a convenient parking spot anywhere, including where you live. As a general rule, if you can take public transportation somewhere, then you should take public transportation. We’ve been to a particular church four times now, and haven’t driven there once, even though it would definitely be faster than taking the bus. But there’s hardly anywhere to park, so we bus it.

Complicating everything is the misery that is alternate-side parking. This video from the New York Times explains it much better than I would be able to: Swept Away: The Parking Dance in New York City (I am all for the councilman's proposal, incidentally).

I am constantly thinking about our van and where it’s parked. How long can I leave it there? Did I fold back my side view mirror? After I come back from dropping Ginny off at school, will there be a spot on the right side of the street? If not, what am I going to do for the hour and a half when I can’t park there? What about if someone comes to visit us? Where will they park?

It’s weird that I am constantly thinking about parking. But ironically, stressing out about parking, I’ve found, makes me fit right in with car owners in New York City. Everybody deals with this! It’s reassuring to find out that you’re not the only one who has a problem, that someone else (or in fact, everybody else) has the same issues you do.

Our first busted mirror

So yes, it’s weird, and the system has lots of flaws. But we’re learning some strategies, some little tricks (we found two nearby grocery stores that do have small parking lots, so I’ll go when they sweep the street).

And I’ll never again take a parking space for granted. Even if all the locals are weird. 

It's a Slide Puzzle Life

For at least the first two weeks of our new life in the Bronx, we felt as though we were living in a slide puzzle. 

When we moved all of our stuff in, we literally (and yes, I mean that word literally) couldn't walk from one room to another. Boxes, dressers, tubs, lamps everywhere. There was an armchair that we couldn't find for two days. It was a total mess.

Because we didn't put the rugs down before we brought in the furniture (a mistake that we will NOT make again!), we first had to take everything out of the room. But to take everything out of one room, we had to make space in another room. But there was no space in the other room!! See what I mean about a slide puzzle?

Before & After: Girls' room

Slowly but surely, room by room, we got rugs down and furniture placed. We got the girls' bunks together first so they wouldn't have to sleep on the couch or on the floor in the living room (as Bethany and I did for two nights). Then we cleared a space for Juliet to sleep in her room. The living room was next, then our room last. There were still no curtains or blinds on the windows, so we had to be somewhat careful, but at least we were all in our own beds. As each room came together, this little apartment began to feel less like some strange enclosure in a strange place and more like our home.

We still have boxes sitting around whose contents mock us: "Ha! You'll never find a place for ME!! Mwahaha!!" But they are fewer and quieter each day (either that, or we're just learning to ignore them). We have some things up on the walls, but not a lot. But we're functional, homey, and settled, and -- let's be honest -- are just about as unpacked as we were in 6 years at our previous home.

Before & After: Living/dining room

So now the new challenge: get out of the slide puzzle. Slide puzzles have four sides and contain all the pieces securely -- they don't leave. It would be very easy for us to enter our new home and be completely shut off from the people and the world around us, even with literal millions of neighbors. Very easy for us to focus on sliding our own pieces around and making them fit, rather than getting out of our walls and seeing what -- and who -- God has in front of us.

So, who wants to go to the playground??

19 Things We Have Learned Since Moving to New York City

Briggs Ave

1. Don’t trust reservations on rental truck websites. They have a vastly different definition of the word “reservation” than does the rest of the English speaking world. http://youtu.be/WKpt2E2Lqcw
2. People who help you load an 18-foot truck, drive 5 hours to a different state, and unload an 18-foot truck up to the 4^th floor are really amazing people. http://youtu.be/0siRMEEY8rc
3. Your four year-old just may decide to throw up in the back of the van right as you cross the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, where there is absoLUTEly no place to pull over and tend to her.
4. Despite your extensive downsizing efforts, you will still have too much stuff and will still be trying to figure out where to put everything (“Well, I guess we can just keep that in Juliet’s room…”).
5. Do your best, when moving in, to put the rugs down before you bring all your furniture, boxes, and tubs in. I REALLY wish I had understood how vital this principle is.
6. Just because there are plenty of parking places on your street at noon, there may not be a single one when you try to come back to your apartment building at 9pm on a weeknight. http://youtu.be/egsdc7tZ_xc
7. Apparently New Yorkers believe their city has no bugs, and so screens do not come standard issue in your basic apartment window. [Author’s note: New York City does indeed have bugs. Ask mosquito-magnet Bethany.]
8. There is also no requirement to provide a phone jack.
9. Everything looks significantly different when you walk around than when you drive around.
10. The seemingly random emotional breakdowns your young daughters have about meaningless things (a potato chip that breaks, for example) just may be the result of being psychologically drained by a major life-change, even though they are unable to understand that.
11. Your four year-old may have believed for the last two years that the place identified by the words “New York” is no more than the Priority 1 apartment where we host teams. Correcting this misconception may prove difficult.
12. We absolutely should work hard at learning Spanish.
13. Hot water from a boiler is REALLY hot.
14. The ice cream truck may come by as late as 9:30pm.
15. Someone a couple of buildings over greatly enjoys his Spanish pop music. And he desires that entire neighborhood enjoy it as well. At midnight.
16. The Chinese place half-a-block away isn’t half bad. Prices are comparable too. http://youtu.be/E1OvVKAga2k [I couldn’t resist linking to this scene :]
17. A 2-liter soda costs $2.25 at the market half-a-block away. A gallon of milk is $3.50.
18. The fact that water – including the hot water – and trash and recycling removal are included in the rent makes us feel a tiny bit better about how high our monthly payment is. A VERY tiny bit.
19. Moving from medium-town Pennsylvania to the Bronx, NY can have a similar psychological effect to moving from the US to China, as we did in 2003. Overwhelmed, a little helpless, surrounded by people yet lonesome, excited to see and try new things yet wondering if you have done the right thing. In other words: culture shock.

These are merely a few of our initial observations; stories with more depth and detail will follow. We’re still figuring things out, learning our way around. It will take some time. But we are excited to be here and have to pinch ourselves occasionally that everything around us is actually real.

And as you may have divined, we’re Seinfeld fans. One day we’ll go to the actual café that was featured on the show. It’s down on Broadway and 112^th. 

Apartment Hunting, Part 2

So, did you find a place?

Yes! Well, sort of.

Part 2 of our Great New York Apartment Hunting Venture (or GNYAHV for short) was, well, a little odd. I, Greg, drove up to the city first thing Monday morning, after having beseeched everyone who would listen the day before to pray for us to find an apartment, because, as I kept saying, "Once we find an apartment, everything else will start falling into place." 

On Monday I saw exactly one apartment. One. I did have the strange feeling as I walked in that I had already seen this one -- the previous time we'd come up to the city, though we saw it with a different broker. I think. Am I seeing this place twice for a reason?? It was decent: quiet enough neighborhood, parked pretty easily, fourth floor, 3 bedrooms. Hm.

I absolutely wanted to see more, but each broker we encountered lamented our limited budget and told us they didn't have much to show us.
Yep, that's right: $1700/month is a limited budget. Sheesh.

Tuesday I saw a couple with a different broker (who has been exceedingly helpful to us the whole time), but no real options. I told him about the aforementioned 3BR apartment, and his immediate response was “Why didn’t you get it?” Hm.

Lots of discussion, prayer, waiting, and simply a dearth of any viable alternatives led Bethany and me to conclude that this was the one to go after. On Wednesday I made copies of all the documents I needed (driver’s license, Social Security cards for all five of us, W2’s from last year, 3 recent pay stubs, and a letter from Priority 1 confirming our employment and salary), and was ready to meet the broker. After waiting almost the entire day, I ended up having to meet her down on 149^th when she was between appointments. I packed up my stuff, drove carefully down 32 unfamiliar blocks, met her, and filled out the lease application in my car, idling by the curb as rain began to fall. I signed, shook hands, heard the words “ten to fourteen days,” then whipped out my phone to figure out how in the world to get out of the city.

Crazy NYC rain

Sweet New Jersey rainbow

Rain fell harder and harder. I’ve only driven in such bad rain for such a long time a couple of times before, and this time I was trying to get out of New York City during rush hour. It was a stressful drive, but God gave me quite the light show driving home, complete with a New Jersey rainbow at 8:42pm.

Technically, our search is not over. We have to schedule a face-to-face meeting with the management company for the apartment, then presumably sign the lease. We’re hoping and praying that these things are merely formalities.

Will there be a GNYAHV Part 3? We’ll let you know.

Apartment Hunting, Part 1

Could our dreams be at the
end of this hallway??

Well, we learned a lot.

Our first foray into the big-city-apartment-hunting process produced no concrete results. The best we can say is that, well, we learned a lot.

Here’s what we’re looking for, and yes, this is our ideal wish list: 3 bedrooms, not on a main road, available and free parking, 3^rd floor, decently quiet, located between Priority 1’s current apartment and Ginny’s school, and family-friendly. Oh yeah, and “affordable.” [Author’s note: That last word is in quotation marks because what New Yorkers consider “affordable” is what most others may call “exorbitant,” “ridiculous,” or “highway robbery.”]

Yes, our wish list is long. We know this. We understand that whatever place we ultimately choose will have positives and negatives, and that there is very possibly no place at all that meets all of those wishes. Our primary concerns are the location and the cost, and after satisfying those two, the other stuff is negotiable. It’s funny, though, how our definition of a “good price” has changed since beginning our search. “Really? That 6^th floor walkup 2-bedroom 1-bath that needs new floors, paint, appliances, and fixtures is only $1510 a month? Wow!”

Juliet and Amber, our Children's Ministry Coordinator

So Bethany and Juliet (our 13 month-old – the older two girls stayed home with their grandma) and I saw at least four different places with two different realtors on Monday. We weren’t overwhelmed by anything we saw. The next morning I, Greg, awoke before my alarm went off, confused that I was no longer asleep, but also increasingly concerned with the growing sensation in my stomach that something was wrong. Skipping ahead in the story, I had picked up a stomach bug and was rather useless for the remainder of the day. Bethany, remarkably, was still able to see a couple of apartments in the same building where Priority 1 already maintains an apartment. On Wednesday we squeezed one more apartment in, but none of the four realtors we had interacted with had anything else to show us, nor had anyone we had contacted on our own through various Internet searches responded to us. So we got out of town, stopped for bagels along the way, and returned to our older two daughters.

So we felt a bit stifled, but we knew that it was highly unlikely that we would come back to PA having signed anything. We did learn a lot about the process, about what paperwork will be required of us to apply for a lease, and what questions to ask.

There will be a Part 2 of this blog. In fact, I’m going through Part 2 as I write this: I’m in the city once more, this time wife-less and baby-less, and may well return to PA with a signed lease under my belt.

That, or there will be a Part 3 of this blog. We’ll see.

Clearing Out Our Junk

As the days gradually bring us closer to departing for the Bronx, we look around, sigh a little, and say to each other:

“What the heck are we gonna do with all our stuff?!”

 While I don’t think we’d even register on the scale they use for hoarders, we have managed to accumulate a good amount of stuff (junk?) in the thirty-something years we’ve lived on this planet*, and now we need to find different homes for most of it, whether it be with a yard sale customer, in a trash dump, in a consignment shop, or given away to friends or family. A friend of ours who knows what he’s talking about recommended we have two yard sales to get rid of as much as we can. So Memorial Day weekend we borrowed some tables, got as much as we could out of our attic, put up several signs, and waited for customers.

Our living room pre-yard sale

A few came. But only a few. Mostly what sold were paper goods: folders, binders, different kinds of paper that we had gathered over the years. Odd, huh? We were hoping our proximity to the post office would bring in more people. It didn’t.

The next day in church a couple in our Sunday School class offered to let us sell our stuff in the community yard sale happening in their neighborhood the next weekend. So we took them up on it and put out our books, a bag of stuffed animals, a big lamp, an old TV, and some other random things.

We made less than we did over Memorial Day, but we did sell the lamp and the TV! (Both of which could be described as “beasts” and we were very pleased not to have to transport them home.)

Halfway through July we will hold an actual Moving Sale that we’ll advertise better than our first one. The stuff that’s left over after that – well, let’s just say we’ll be calling the aforementioned friend who knows what he’s talking about.

Yard sale family picnic!

I jest, but we really do need to downsize. It’s healthy! It’s good for us to look at our things and say, “You know what? I don’t need that at all. I haven’t worn that shirt in 10 years – why do I still have it?” It’s hard to miss the correlation between the junk that accumulates in our attic and the junk that accumulates in our souls, the stuff we don’t know what to do with so we shove it somewhere out of sight. Someday though, we will have to deal with it, and better that we deal with it before it becomes a crisis.

So we’re cleaning out stuff. There’s a lot more work to do, but little by little, we’re clearing it out.

Next time: We’ll tell you all about our apartment-hunting venture coming up June 16-18!

*Seriously, in one box I found a film canister (kids, ask your parents what that is) that contained all the teeth I’d lost when I was little. Why do I still have this???