A new track... A new life

Some of the members seem to dislike the health insurance slant this Group has taken. We can leave those discussions out there, but let's start a new Story. As someone who has lived in three different sections of this country, and has moved several times within those, how about some moving or new life/lifesytle stories? Since I started this idea, I'll start.

I was born in the heart of farm country in central Illinois. When I was just a young squirt (less than two), my family moved to upstate New York. Of course, I was too little to remember. My parents, though, both born and raised in the midwest, raised us that way. Let me tell you, I didn't always fit in with my classmates in school, as I saw things entirely differently than they did!

Thus, when I graduated, I scampered back to the place I felt most comfortable, where we had visited my grandparents nearly every summer when I was growing up - central Illinois; Champaign, to be exact. Those four years of undergraduate studies flew by. I hoped to get a job somewhere in my new home region, but the best offer I received was in Downstate New York. Not all the way to New York City, but close enough to live with folks who DID work there. Talk about culture shock! Putting aside the fact that EVERYTHING cost nearly three times as much as I was used to, I suddenly found myself a rock, gradually eroded by a harsh salty tide. When Illinois was a communal feel, where block parties and neighborhood barbecues were common, and you could always find someone who would ASK if you needed help, I encountered a community where they'd rather shoot you than talk to you, and even ASKING for help was a life-threatening experience.

I finally adjusted, thanks to the help of some wonderful people (almost NONE of them native New Yorkers)- first coworkers, than friends from an educational company called Landmark Education, but I can now see why Moving is considered the third most common source of stress and depression.

How about it? Anybody want to share their culture shocks and experiences? I'll expand on mine (god knows I have over twenty years worth of em; 40 years if I go back to feelings of alienation in school) as time goes on, but it'll be fun to hear about others' experiences.