Differences

So we have been living in GA for about a month and a half. I have noticed there are some pretty big differences; some good, some bad.

The Good:

People are more family oriented here. Everywhere we go we see people out with their families, not people in business suits trying to make their next deal.

Life is much slower paced. Everyone in our neighborhood seems to be home from work and enjoying themselves by 6 pm. In NOVA, many neighbors, and often ourselves, were not home until 10 pm.

Everything is cheaper. Gas, food, hairbrushes (why???)... We knew that the housing would be cheaper, but we did not expect everything would be so drastically cheaper. I think we may have left NOVA a lot sooner had we realised. It's like getting a major raise in pay, or winning the lottery.

The Bad:

There are way more bad areas. I have no idea why people choose to live in the ghetto when there are places that are nicer and cheaper to live.

People drive like homicidal maniacs here. One of my colleagues had told me how surprised he was driving around DC for the couple of months he came for the transition. He said everyone was so polite on the road. I had assumed he was making some kind of joke because I thought that there were a lot of rude drivers in DC, but they are nothing compared to the general population here. On the highways, traffic moves much faster because there seems to be drastically fewer cars on the road. Unfortunately, what that means is that all of the people who want to drive faster than everyone else now have to do 100 mph. I know this because without The Bean in the car, I tend to do around 80 mph. I have to do this in the slow lane, or my life is regularly threatened by thugs, bumpkins, soccer moms, accountants, little old ladies, and the like. I have not been able to narrow it down to an arch-type because they all drive super aggressive. Also, they do not believe in driving slowly through parking lots. You can walk through a parking lot and almost get hit by several cars because they are doing 40 mph to hurry to their parking spot (most parking lots are not super-crowded like in the DC area.) Then a well manicured and dressed genteel older woman will pop out of her massive car, smile and wave with a sweet little "Hi, ya'll," aimed in your direction. It's very surreal knowing that very same woman just attempted to kill your entire family with her gas-guzzling over-sized car of which she is the only occupant.

On another subject, we have not heard back from the CHI Ethiopian Director on our adoption yet. I would really like to move forward in the process.

Today's picture is from D's B-day earlier in the week. We didn't do anything he wanted... He wanted to go to an art museum on a beautiful day, I vetoed.