Some thoughts about my first couple weeks living in Midwest College Town, USA:
- There are hills here. Not steep ones, but still: hills! This sounds totally insane, but the one thing I was dreading about moving back to the midwest was the total flatness of the place. Something about it just really bummed me out when I lived in Chicago. But it turns out that my understanding of the midwest was paltry, because some parts of it are not as flat as a pancake.
- Real winter is kind of great. I always knew that DC was the south (and it is, no question) but living there for so long I forgot what it's like to live in a place where snow isn't considered a natural disaster. You can check back with me about this in April when it's still snowing, but for now I'm enjoying my first actual winter in a long time.
- There appears to be no crime here. I am kind of stunned by this. I mean, people leave strollers and shovels and furniture out on their front porch and assume no one will steal it! And no one does! In the parking lot at the grocery store the other day, someone left their car running with a dog inside and just walked away. And as far as I know no one got in the car and drove away with it (and the dog). Josh still insists on triple locking every door, but I'm fairly certain we could just leave the doors open and be totally fine.
- There are so many grocery stores here, it almost feels like overkill. Within a ten minute drive of our house we have a Kroger, an enormous Meijer, Whole Foods, Target, and three nice independent grocery stores. I had a great grocery set up in DC, but this kind of choice boggles my mind. I honestly don't understand why a smaller town would have more grocery options than a big city? It seems counterintuitive.
- My life as an unemployed person looks very similar to my life as a graduate student. Granted, living in a college town means it's hard not to feel like everyone is at school, but it's undeniable that my default lifestyle is very grad school-ish. Right now, for instance, I have a whole stack of books to read (what else is unemployment for? when else will I have time to read Paradise Lost?) and a nice comfy spot in the graduate student library. I'm carrying my backpack around campus and buying terrible student coffee, and...it's pretty great. The best part: none of these undergrads are at all interested in asking me questions about their paper on Rousseau.
2 comments:
There is a whole library just for grad students?
We also have this grocery store situation, but the result for me has just been increased aggravation b/c milk is cheaper in one place, OJ in another, produce is superior in another, etc. but there is no all-around cheap and good grocery store. You cant go to 5 grocery stores in one trip, so you just buy lots of slightly more expensive and inferior products at the most comprehensive one and feel cheated. The worst is when that one is Trader Joe's, where everything sucks except the snack foods which are SO GOOD that it justifies going there at all, but then you leave with bad produce and overpriced milk in addition to like five bags of the healthier version of flamin' hot cheetos that they have - geniusly! - invented.
Yep, a whole library for graduate students, and from what I've seen the undergrads really do avoid it. It's pretty great.
Your mention of Trader Joe's reminded me that I forgot to count the Aldi that's 5 minutes from my house, so that's 8 grocery stores in a 10 minute radius. Thankfully the TJ's here is 15 minutes away, which means that it's just far enough that I probably won't go there and get sucked into their ingenious snack food traps. But you're right, I do end up making multiple trips anyway because no one place has all the best options. The thing is, though, I always did that—so even when I lived in New York and it was a huge pain the butt to get to Whole Foods, I still schlepped up there fairly often. But now I have 8 choices (more than any reasonable person needs) and they are all super convenient. It's a whole new world out here.
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