Culture shock in Washington, DC

Nothing like solitude in nature...

Before I went into Peace Corps, I really had no idea what culture shock was. I studied abroad in Scotland my sophomore spring, but I was not in a vastly different cultural environment. It took no effort at all to adapt to life in a dorm room with a view of the North Sea in a place where I could legally drink a casual pint (or three?) every night with an intoxicating group of English-speaking friends from around the world. I may have offended someone at some point with my brash “American-ness”, but if I did, I was having too much fun to notice. 

It's kind of funny, then, that I would feel some culture shock in my own country. From the moment I stepped out of the airport, the hustle, bustle, and formality felt very distinct from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

First of all, let's just get this out of the way: I moved from a county with a population density of 36 people per square mile, to one with a population density of 8,500 people per square mile.  Yes, wow. Erm. Hmm.

A few other differences:

Dress Code

DC: Most people who go to work at an office building wear professional dress. The streets bustle with people in formal business attire. Appearance and style are cultivated. Your office-bound husband trims his beard, or shaves, preferably.

Michigan:  There are maybe twenty people in town who have a regular need for a business suit or black panty hoses. The streets bustle with flannel and jeans. A university administrator I know wears crocs to work. My Michigan-living husband currently has a four-month beard going. (Hi, honey!) 

Cost of Living

DC:  I'm paying $1000 per month to live in a one-room basement. $10 per drink It’s easy to drop $25 per person in one sitting for brunch. These are good prices to pay for those things.

Michigan: We pay $500 for a spacious two-person apartment. A microbrew pint is $2.50. It's hard to pay more than $7 for an omelet.

Sharing is Caring

DC: Don't make the rookie mistake I did: you get in the back of the cab. Always. Your driver conveniently proceeds to your destination before taking up another fare.

Michigan: They charge a flat $3 per cab ride (cash only), but you will probably pick up two other random strangers along the way, both of whom are going to different places from you. One of you will end up in the front seat. The only rookie mistake here is not allowing 45 minutes to get picked up.

Pace

DC: You walk “efficiently”. You quickly learn the peculiar calculus of how many seconds on the walk signal are really necessary for safe passage. (If you thought that flashing orange hand meant “don’t walk”, think again.) 

Michigan: You cross the street when the cars clear, which is most of the time. People mostly move fast because it’s -10 degrees F outside.

Transportation

DC: Rush hour is a bloated two-hour period around 9 am and 5 pm that regularly slows highways to a creep. Public transportation is plentiful (and glorious) along certain main corridors.

Michigan: “Rush” “hour” means 10 minutes of traffic at 9 am and 5 pm. Traffic means more than ten cars on the road (and all of them are Subaru Outbacks). Good luck getting anywhere without a car or snowshoes.

Weather

DC: 2” of snow provokes preemptive mass buying sprees at the grocery and a government snow day. 

Michigan: The average snowfall is 180” per year and there are rarely snow days. For those counting, 180" = 15 feet. I will leave that to your imagination.

Forest

DC: Trees exist here in parks and back yards. The tree to people ratio must be far below 1:100.

Michigan:  There are trees in parks and back yards and pretty much everywhere else.

Philosophy of Life
With so much diversity here and in Michigan it's difficult to make generalizations, but I will say that the push here to "make a difference" and define oneself by career or social status is a lot stronger. That has been an interesting influence... more on that later.

Now that I've adjusted, the bustle of DC city culture is pretty pleasant and the costs are fine. I may never embrace paying $10 for a beer or $6 for a dozen eggs, but life here comes with its own benefits.

For one thing? Lots and lots of interesting neighbors.

On the road from upstate New York to Washington, DC

I love landscapes. Crikey, I can’t even describe the peace it gives me to look out on rolling hills or mountains. Lots of peace. I love rocks and all, but I think maybe subconsciously that’s what turned me on to geology. The lectures featured lots of soothing landscapes.

This post is a photo recap going all the way back to my journey here in late January from western upstate New York to Virginia through Pennsylvania and Maryland. (Technically the journey began with a puddle-jumping flight out of snow-laden Michigan to see my folks in New York, but that went without photo documentation.)

On road trips I always have this strange sense of loss as the landscapes pass me by, and it occurred to me that it would make an interesting memento to take a random picture of the road every 15 minutes.

Here is the result, chopped down to every 30 minutes. (With a few pics taken every 15 minutes when things got interesting.)  We left upstate New York around 11 am, and arrived in NoVa around 7:00 pm.

Ta-da! 

It was challenging, but also fun, to give up creative control and let the landscape speak for itself. There were a few highlights that we passed at the "wrong time", but it was an interesting exercise to let them go by.

Would it be corny to say that these country roads fill my heart up?