Quote:
Originally Posted by Lotus
I had more culture shock when I moved to the deep South than I did when I moved to Japan.
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I didn't initially, as the North Atlanta suburbs I moved to were basically a carbon copy of the midwest, just with warmer weather. After all in the late 90's and early 2000's a lot of companies were relocating people from the North and Midwestern parts of the country to Atlanta thanks to the favorable business climate or something of the like. Dallas and Houston also started to get a lot more residents around this time.
I remember when I moved down here only people met a handful of people with a southern accent. We're talking maybe 3 or 4 people at most. One of which was our neighbor who was the only one in a house with his wife and two kids to speak with a southern draw.
Mind you this is a town with over 80,000 people in a 32 square mile area (60,000 when I moved here in 98). As of writing this there are 5,555 students at three different high schools within a 5 mile radius of where I graduated. Still don't understand though why the area has such terrible traffic problems.
It wasn't until I went to college deep in the heart of GOR-GEE-AH that I ran into virtually every other stereotype that you can think of in regards to the South. Eventually it got to the point where a friend of mine started calling them Nati-Lites because that seemed to be their drink of choice.
I will say this though, that for the most part southerners are extremely polite. Which can make it all the more shocking when they say...some of the stuff they say (think politics). Ironically I actually experienced culture shock going back to DC while visiting family, just from silly things like people either not holding doors for you or not even saying thanks when you hold the door for them as well as a couple other random things. Maybe it was my fault for standing in the middle of an automatic door but you really should thank someone that holds the door for you.
I think I even saw one guy push an old lady out of his way while using a crosswalk when I was stopped at a traffic light, and this was in Reston, Virginia lol. Based on this large sample size I think its safe to assume that the lot of you are nothing but old people beaters that relish in the lost art of door slamming.