We're not in New York anymore Todo
I have to admit picking up your whole entire life and moving across the country is a tough transition. Coming from my hometown of Lockport, NY being known for the Erie canal Locks and 20 minutes from Niagara Falls has been a culture shock to say the least. Lockport is just a stone's throw away from the Canadian border and very different from here. There were days when I felt more Canadian than American when I turned on the radio while driving to work and it was not strange to hear the weather in Celsius. It is especially true now when I see people drinking hot tea on a day when the heat is in 30's... oops I meant high 90's. Weather back home is considerably colder where our winters and falls never see above 50 and can go as low as –15 at times. Summers back home is the best time to be there, where it rarely goes above 90.
Food has been another leap for me when starting in a new place. I was used to driving down transit stopping at a Mighty Taco picking up a Super Mighty and a Loganberry drink for lunch. I find myself now looking for new places to fill up for lunch. Luckily many of the new cuisines and local flavors are quite delicious. The Onion Burger has been an interesting discovery, both when people ask you do not have this back home and my quizzical impression of what is it. Well I was delighted when I first tried it and it tasted quite delicious. I am finding myself becoming in love with many of the local places like Braums, S&B Burgers as well as Roxy's Ice Cream. If you could not tell I fashion myself a foodie.
Driving around Oklahoma has also been an experience when you notice you are not required to have a front license plate and a yearly inspection sticker on your vehicle. While speed limits on the highway are a good 10 to 15 miles per hour quicker. I know of a couple of people back home who are quite jealous after telling them this. I have decided to not tell them that the gas prices are about 20 cents cheaper though. I don’t like to brag. Changing sceneries is always stressful but at least I have landed in an OK place.
Have any of you recently relocated to Oklahoma? Leave your impressions in the comment section. I'm interested to hear others' experiences!
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When we moved here 30 years (can't believe its been that long!) from Albuquerque NM in the middle of July, I had 2 immediate shocks:
everything was so green! I couldn't quite get over the green trees and the grass and the flowers, I mean brown is the state color of NM, I'm pretty sure.
humidity - coming from a dry area like NM, we found ourselves unable to leave the house till 9:00 pm., it was so hot and stifling. (bear in mind, I'm originally from GA but 4 years in NM reacclimates you) Now, I don't mind it at all but find GA so humid when I go home.
Interesting story - we hadn't lived here quite a year when I had a coworker one day tell me I was an alien - I kinda looked at him and said, "excuse me!" He replied that since I was NOT born in OK, I was an alien. just never thought of it that way. so welcome to OK from one alien to another!
I've actually lived in numerous states, born in GA, lived in upper state NY (ages 2-3); back to GA (age 4-5), then AZ (age 5-7), MT (age 8-10), Bermuda (10-12), VA (12), GA (13), MO (just outside KC, Belton where I graduated from high school), TX for basic training & tech school; MS (18 mos - got married and added oldest daughter), Germany (3 yrs - added son), MT again (4 yrs - added youngest daughter and got my bachelor's ), NE (2 yrs), NM (4 yrs) and then here for past 30 yrs. Parents retired to GA but I tell people I'm from the USA!
I'm with you, Debbie - Navy brat who then married Navy. I've lived in Alabama (7 years), California (3 years), Florida (4 years, split between the Panhandle and the Everglades), Georgia (18 years in between all the others), North Carolina (3 years at two bases), Pennsylvania (2 years), Virginia (2 years Tidewater, 6 years in the NorVa/DC region), and now Oklahoma.
The nice thing about moving so much is you become very adaptable and get to experience so many cultural shifts!
Coming from the metro Atlanta area, the biggest difference I've noticed is the traffic - or rather, the lack of it. I've sent a few pictures back via Facebook of what the "rush hour" traffic from Edmond looks like here, much to the disgust of my Atlanta friends. For those who don't know - the heaviest traffic I've seen here has been about the same as midday traffic on the major roads in and around Atlanta. I've also been impressed at how very NICE the drivers here are; generally people allow room when trying to merge into traffic or switch lanes, which is a very welcome change from the racetrack feel of highway driving back in Georgia.
I'm still missing Varsity cheeseburgers and Miss Florence's chicken and waffles, though. ;)
I just moved to Oklahoma from Arkansas. Though it is a tad less humid here, my main shocks were the lack of trees and how flat it is! I came from a very small town in the River Valley where there were tons of big, old, gorgeous trees and small "mountains" surrounding us. I want to say it's greener over the border, but I'll wait for Spring to fully form that opinion. It is nice, though, to be able to see a storm coming from so far away. At home storms seemed to pop into the sky out of nowhere!
Bridget, what part of Arkansas are you from? I was born in Ft. Smith and grew up in Van Buren my whole life, until I went to college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. And I agree with you about the storms just seeming to pop up out of nowhere!
Hey Bridget, I'm also interested to know what part of Arkansas you hail from. I was not born there, but I was raised at the base of the Ozark Mountains in Clarksville. The first thing I noticed about OKC was also how flat it was. Like you, I was used to towering pine trees and rolling green hills with lots of natural streams. The music culture was what originally brought me here. :)
I lived all over the surrounding area, but my grandparents have always had deep roots in Paris, so I claim that as my hometown. We used to drive the 30 minutes Clarksville to see movies after the theatre in Paris burned down (twice!)! For anyone else reading this, Paris is at the foot of Mount Magazine, which is the highest point in Arkansas and (I think) is actually a plateau. I definitely miss the views, but the OKC area has so much to offer that wasn't available to me before!
I remember playing football against the Paris Eagles in the state playoffs. I didn't know that there were so many folks from Arkansas in the system.
My grandpa was the football coach at Paris in the late 80's and early 90's!
Paris is quite pretty! Our schools were sports rivals for sure, so we traveled there quite a bit (I was a band nerd). And yeah, I remember their theater burning down ... the rumor was that it was cursed! LOL And Magazine mountain is also beautiful. I lived at the base, on the other side, of the mountain for a while, in a little town called Waveland. Loved driving up to the chateau/overlook quite often, and making trips to Paris.
You're right, though ... OKC just has so much more opportunity. Although I sure do look forward to visits back home as often as time allows. :)
I went to school at Paris for a little while but graduated from high school in Magazine, Waveland's only slightly larger neighboring town! I went to college down the road at Arkansas Tech. I am in love with the scenery of that whole area! It's so nice to hear that you enjoyed your time in my tiny neck of the woods! I visited this weekend and it was a wonderfully pretty drive. Were you involved in the library system there?! I was the manager at the Booneville Library before I came here :D
When you say "slightly larger", I chuckled a little! A friend of mine also graduated from Magazine, in the 90's, and I remember calling her and getting my first experience with party phone lines. LOL
Everyone I've ever met from that area are super nice folks! I never visited Booneville's library, although I did spend a lot of time in town. I lived in that area directly after high school, and only for a little over a year. :)
I totally agree with my fellow Arkies...the views in the state are some of the most beautiful in the country. It truly is the "Natural State"! I still miss the towering pine trees!
Moving across the country is both an overwhelming and exciting time. After grad school I moved from Oklahoma to the DC area (Rockville, MD). Our work team hailed from all over the US, and even the world. Lunches with northerners, southerners, midwesterners, and west coasters could be quite entertaining as we all had our special "quirks." I am so grateful for the wonderful experience and still miss my east coast home of nearly 6 years. I'm happy to be back in Oklahoma, but there will always be some Maryland in me too!
BTW, I'm not one of those crazy high 90s hot tea drinkers you are referring to now am I? LOL! No, 'cause I'll drink hot tea when it's 110 degrees outside!
I moved here from Michigan two years ago and it strikes me that Debbie thinks it's green because when we moved here from Michigan we thought - wow, everything is so brown and red!!! :)
Things I miss: the Great Lakes. Trees. Black and Brown soil. Familiarity. There is very little litter in Michigan (I blame wind here in OK). Pickled bolongna. Yes. It's not gross.
What I love: Everyone is friendly. People let you in during traffic and aren't rude about it. Living 'out west' AND 'down south' and experiencing new cultures and histories. And I actually love the wind. All the foods. All of them...
Call it a draw: The weather.
If you every need to miss snow with anyone, we can have a Yankee party at my house. Welcome to Oklahoma and if you liked Onion Burgers have you been to Eischen's?
HI Heather, a Yankee party sounds like a great idea! I know what you mean about missing the Great Lakes and Black and Brown soil. I have to say when I first saw the red soil, I thought how colorful it looked. I have not been to Eichen's yet but I have it on my list of places to eat. A couple of the people over at MC have given it a very good recommendation.
I grew up in California and moving from southern California to Oklahoma as a tween was quite a culture shock. Especially since we moved here just after the May 3rd tornadoes. I have grown to love it here, for the most part, and even though I say I'm a Cali Girl I am more of an Okie at this point.
Hi George!
I'm coming up on one year in OKC, after spending four years in rural NW Arkansas, and the entirety of my life prior to that in SW Missouri. I've now lived in three of the "Four States" (what the news folks in Joplin, MO, call MO, AR, OK, and KS) and I'm determined never to live in Kansas. Three out of four ain't bad!
The biggest pro of moving from a county of 27,000 to OKC is the convenience - everything is SO CLOSE! We used to have to drive 15 minutes to WalMart (the ONE in the county), 45 minutes to Aldi (in Harrison, home of the KKK, so yeah, that was always fun!), and often over an hour to the Fayetteville area for assorted "big city" culture. I love how close everything is here. It's been an interesting experience that I'm sure is common where the city started out feeling bigger, but over time seems pretty compact to me. In my first week, I looked up the closest hardware store, and was appalled to find it was over a mile away - seemed SO huge! And I clung to my GPS the whole way so as not to get lost! Now I'm like, "Ahh, SW 23rd and Council?" Ain't no thang! I live near Village Library, btw.
It was funny that Marna talked about how great the traffic is here (after Atlanta), because that is the single thing that fills my heart with despair almost every time I leave the house. I think people here drive like insane, impatient, homicidally selfish maniacs (for the most part!). I have had SO many close calls because people couldn't possibly bear to wait an extra 15 seconds behind someone making a left turn.
Speaking of...where are the freaking turning lanes? LOL. That's a question I ask myself literally every time I leave the house.
The only exception is Sunday mornings - Sunday mornings are AMAZING for running errands. I have the city all to myself, and EVERYONE working at WalMart is there just to help ME! I still never ask them for help, though!
I've lived in college sports havens before, but never seen a place that literally shuts down when the young men pad up and hit the gridiron. It took several times of going to empty restaurants (or sitting in empty - or nearly empty - library programs) before I finally thought to ask - "Where IS everyone?" The lonely souls forced to work during the big game would look at me like I had sprouted horns. "Uh, OU is playing tonight?"
"Oh, okay..." I would hedge my bets, not push my luck, and just leave it alone. I don't understand it, but when in Rome, don't question how they do things or you could end up with a spear in the neck. Right? I mean, am I RIGHT?
Overall, though, it's a lot of fun to live here. People from AR would ask me what it was like to live in OK, and I would tell them I honestly didn't know, as OKC is not representative of general like in Oklahoma. It's great to live in a place with so much diversity, culture, and restaurants!
I wholeheartedly agree with your comments about the drivers and traffic! It's insane!! It sometimes takes me 15 minutes in the morning to drive the 1.2 miles to work, if I can make it through the obstacle course of terrible drivers, too-short green lights, and college students wandering out into the road.
"It was funny that Marna talked about how great the traffic is here (after Atlanta), because that is the single thing that fills my heart with despair almost every time I leave the house."
Commuting from Norman to OKC fills my heart with despair on a daily basis as well. I have to remind myself how lucky I am not to live in a place like Chicago, IL or Austin, TX where a 25-mile commute could take 3 hours.
The difference in perspective on traffic is definitely entertaining! I'm used to 3+ hours to go 45 miles at 5 am (when I was going from Athens, GA to the Midtown section of Atlanta). The absolute worse was when one of the major artery roads in Atlanta would get shut down for an accident - it took me over 6 hours to get home one night when I-85 was closed, and that was AFTER riding the metro train fro 25 minutes to get to my car. Or DC, where it would take over an hour to get the 5 miles from my house to the start of the train line to ride that in to LC - DC doesn't allow single passenger cars on the commuter routes inside the beltway during the work day, so you either had to find a rider or take the Metro in.
I live in Bethany, between MacArthur and Rockwell, near 23rd - it took me almost 25 minutes to get to Belle Isle (7.5 miles) each morning but now that I drive to MC (15.4 miles), it only takes me 30 minutes, so thankful for the new I-40. It's a definite improvement over the old one, where I would have flashes of the road caving in before me (back in 2006-2007, when I drove to MC for 6 months we did ALM rotations)
I moved here from North Texas in 2002. Oklahoma is basically identical to North Texas except that in Oklahoma people are always saying terrible, insulting things about Texas. I couldn't help taking it personally for the first few years. My feelings are less easily hurt now.
I grew up in SOUTH Texas, which is a completely different place from North Texas and Oklahoma. THAT is a different culture!