In-Class Writing, Feb. 12

I recently went back to New York. While it does not seem like this trip would incur culture shock, it truly did. I was raised in New York until I was around ten years old. After that, I moved to Arizona briefly and then spent the remainder of my time in Indiana. While I had little memory of what New York was like, I often thought of it a lot like how I had grown up in Indiana. 

The sounds of New York was what struck me first. Someone was always rushing somewhere, twenty-four hours a day. The businesses stayed open longer, lest they inconvenience a customer. All the people I spoke with talked faster, laughed louder (mostly at the "cute" accent I had acquired), a walked with a brisker pace. I remember that the town was much larger than I had thought, holding many more people than I remembered and taking more than five minutes to drive through (unlike the town I had grown up in in Indiana). The culture seemed more rich. There were more people outside playing, the park was occupied with small children and parents, instead of teens smoking or adults playing in their adult leagues. You could walk anywhere, to a local grocery store, the park, the school, down to the Mohawk River, just like one could in Indiana, although here it may not be safe. I remember constantly feeling on edge, as though being here was much less safe and comfortable than where I had spent the remainder of my childhood. Here in New York, you didn't walk down the street and run into at least five other people you knew, were neighbors with or went to school with. You could be completely anonymous if that was what one wanted. It was a completely different style of life here.