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<p>I just moved from Nor-Cal to the Houston area. The most noticeable thing that Im having to adjust to is the weather. The weather absolutely SUCKS here!!! Its so humid and nasty and it always rains here even in the summer. Im used to seeing bright blue warm skies 3 months straight back home.</p>
<p>Another thing thats different down here is everybody's passion for sports, which I love. Ur either a Longhorn (GO HORNS!!!!) or an aggie (puke).</p>
<p>Oh, and u know that "everything is bigger in Texas" saying is true. Especially the egos!!! The bragginess and looking-down-upon by these Texans is sickening. And honestly, I dont see one thing to be bragging about down here.</p>
<p>I grew up a military kid and so lived north, south, east, and west. I think it is correct to say that in general the similarities are far greater than the differences.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>The things that I found the most different were the lack of eye contact with strangers on the street in the northeast as compared to California....<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>This is correct and very striking. Unless the sidewalk is so crowded that you can't keep up, passing strangers will usually make eye contact here in SoCal. Not so in NYC and maybe other parts of the east coast. Everyone there is locked into their own world. </p>
<p>This difference is especially striking among runners. Here in SoCal there is a loose brotherhood among runners -- any runner who fails to give a little nod or wave or other little sign of recognition to other runners as they pass will be regarded as stuck-up. Apparently this is not the case on the east coast.</p>
<p>And among all the places I've lived where did I find the friendliest people? --> New Mexico, hands down.</p>
<p>We love New Mexico! H's parents used to live at the base of Sandia Mountain in Albuquerque, and we always enjoyed visiting. The people really are warm.</p>
<p>College is a great time to explore. It is temporary - a very short time. </p>
<p>Nothing turns people off more quickly than a new person coming to town complaining how it is not as good as where they used to live. Everyone is partial to their home. When moving to a new area, find something to compliment - whether it is the weather, the landscape, the people, or all of the above. Also, there seems to be more positives when you are actively looking for them. Everytime I've moved, I genuinely missed something about the place I left. But I was too busy discovering the new place to dwell on it.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the comments! We have spent a lot of time in northern CA, but have made several visits to SoCal in recent years (as well as trips up the PCH to Ore. and WA, which is a much nicer drive, IMHO...but that's another thread!). We're in the mid-Atlantic in a vibrant, diverse community; my kids have always lived here, but I was an Army brat and lived everywhere. I took the moving in stride, and I guess our family habit of traveling a lot has rubbed off on the kids, if going 3,000 miles away isn't a biggie. Said son doesn't always notice what's going on around him (he reads books when crossing the street....), so I wasn't sure if the culture issue was something we should Point Out.</p>
<p>To the poster who talked about north-south culture shock: I spent the first two weeks in Bio my freshman year of HS trying to decipher my teacher's Low Country accent. And not saying "ma'am" and "sir" got me lots of grief, too. (No flames, please! This was 30 years ago, and most of my immediate family is still down there!)</p>
<p>-------------Read this simple post</p>
<p>I'm of the opinion that all suburbs across the US of A are identical. I've met people from NY 'burbs, LA 'burbs, im from CHI burbs, ppl that lived in small town Iowa or Ohio or North Carolina. There is no disinguishable difference b/w these ppl at all. Even some ppl are from Hong Kong, and Moscow and Im like ***???. Heh I won't put too much stock in where you grew up (it has its own culture!) Yeah ppl won't know what your talking about when you talk about Childhood Rumination #1, but yea we all get the same tv stations and Ronald McDonald is more recognizable than Santa Claus... It's all the same. The weater change isnt big deal either IMO- yes we've all been hot, we've all been cold, yes it irritates everyone, no people in alaska dont like freezing their balls off either (so im told).</p>
<p>BTW one of my professors has australian accent and lingo- it's like *** in holy hell? I don't think professors like that have any specific location they tend to- aka do u find more aussies in north, south, east, west of USA- irrelevant.</p>
<p>Heh, heh. They gave us a spelling test the first week in high school. The word was "Refuhhhhd". I was baffled. I asked for a sentence. "He refuhhhd it to me." I was still baffled and finally wrote "Refud." This was in northern Virginia by the way.</p>
<p>LOL, mathmom! During one of our first parent/teacher conferences here in Massachusetts, the teacher kept saying something about it being an "honest" class. I couldn't understand what he meant -- weren't all the classes honest? It turns out that he was saying "honors" class! I have finally figured out the MA accent, but it wasn't easy.</p>
<p>mathmom, second that LOL!! Truly laughing at the keyboard. I hope you got credit for creativity and phonetics at least! My friend in central Virginia has (or used to have) a recording on his office voicemail...."If you are from north of the Mason-Dixon line, please speak slowly and spell your name.....". This is the guy who still refers to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. When I told him "we" won, he said, "It is not over yet"......</p>
<p>I also grew up in a military family and have lived all over. I've subsequently traveled even more including to almost every state (somehow I've skipped Alaska, Kentucky, and Arkansas). I agree with others that there are more similarities than differences in the people. </p>
<p>One thing that's noticable in California and much of the west is that one finds people 'from' everywhere else and people who have relatives in the east. </p>
<p>Of course, the weather is great (by my definition) in most of California - especially Southern California. There's also great variety in the geography from fertile valleys to sunny beaches to fog/rain-shrouded coast and rain forests (NorCal on north) to deserts to huge mountain ranges. From one point in California one can see the highest and lowest points in the contiguous states. The weather factor doesn't just make it warmer, it encourages more outdoor activities year-round. One can go surfing or scuba-diving on Saturday and snow-skiing on Sunday. In most areas one can mountain bike, hike, jog, picnic, sail, etc. year round. Within a short drive one can generally find the climate they're interested in including in the winter a 12 foot base at Mammoth. </p>
<p>As you can tell, I really like California and the west in general and I'm not a native.</p>
<p>I think your son would do fine and the biggest factor would be the distance. It tends to make visits less frequent and more expensive. And then there's the other thread I started about the worry of the kid settling thousands of miles away after college. One shouldn't forget the parental selfishness factor.</p>
<p>The culture shock from east to west is mild. The opposite, not so much. I've heard first hand from people who grew up on the west coast who went to east coast schools, and some were so miserable about the way they were treated that they transferred back home. One person I knew told me they were always careful to say they were from Portland, and nothing more, in the hope that people would believe she was from Maine.</p>
<p>My West Coast D has done just fine in New England. She likes it but finds it a lot more "tribal" in her words--what town you're from, what kind of hyphenated-American you might be, the notion of "who your people are"...this one always offended me...all pop up in conversation that doesn't signify around here.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it's taken an internship in D.C. for her to determine that what constitutes "dressy" is on a completely different scale.</p>
<p>My thoughts on this might be a bit irrelevant but I'll post anyway.</p>
<p>I moved from mid-west of Canada (Saskatchewan) to the east (Ontario) and had quite a difficult time adjusting to the attitude of the people there so I would say that it depends on your son and his perception. The school I was at was full of a lot of Ontario students (though of course those from the west and intl.'s as well) but it really bothered me that people mocked where I came from and had little understanding of the issues that affect people outside of Ontario - that in fact there is world outside of Ontario. That was part of the reason why I left, though obviously a contributing factor, not a main one.</p>
<p>fyi, I live abroad in the UK now and thus adjusting to different people is not the issue. I think it depends on the school, the type of people who go there, and your own son/daughters person thoughts/feelings.</p>
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She likes it but finds it a lot more "tribal" in her words--what town you're from, what kind of hyphenated-American you might be, the notion of "who your people are"...this one always offended me...all pop up in conversation that doesn't signify around here.
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<p>We also have similar experiences...... my S said within the first 10 minutes of conversation with acquaintances he just met, he was often asked which school he matriculated from...he thinks they just want to know what your social station is or will be.</p>
<p>I agree that it depends on the student body moreso than the area. I went from rural Georgia to a school in Manhattan, but it was a lot smoother than it could have been because of all my friends, only two are actually from Manhattan: one is from NorCal, one from Atlanta, one from Long Island, CT, etc. Because no one here is from Manhattan, it's less about your new location but where you came from. Apparently I have a Southern accent (that's news to me because where I come from I certainly don't). There are a lot of reasons I left, but now that I'm out of that element, I realize there are a lot of things I miss, and friendliness is at the top of the list. I know more about a waitress I've had once in Georiga than I do about some of the people who sit next to me in class everyday. I also only became fond of the accent since I've left, so I've been watching a lot of Paula Deen (if you watch the Food Network, you'll understand). I think unless you're going to a state school or a school in which most of the student body is from the area, there will be relatively little culture shock. I wouldn't put culture shock at the top of a list of concerns, and it would certainly be lower than distance even though they are sometimes related.</p>
<p>An aside to the Canadian- I have heard about the two Canadas, east and west, and some of the problems westerners have getting the politicians to legislate appropriately for vastly different regions. I first heard the Canadian accent when I had a chemistry TA from Alberta who said "about" as if it were "a boot"; fun detecting the accent on HGTV.</p>
<p>CA daughter, attending college in PA, has come to hate the traffic and congestion in LA. She loves the availability of mass transit back east. In fact, she took the train this morning to spend the weekend with high school classmate at Princeton.</p>
<p>My Northeast-raised, Stanford-educated, son is now working in LA and my husband and I just got back from our first visit to our son's new location. I can definitely agree with Archermom's daughter's observations about the LA traffic and congestion! It seemed to take forever to travel a short distance. However, I must say that it was very easy for us to find our way around LA, and I think that Philadelphia would be much harder for a driver who was new to the city to navigate without becoming lost.</p>
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<p>You may encounter culture shock--as in being branded as a tourist--if you ever call it that within a radius of several hundred miles of that place. It is San Francisco, or The City. The only two choices :).</p>