For me this past year has been a new experience for me in travel and culture. I moved from Rochester, MN to Overland Park, KS my senior year of high school. I have been staying with a host family that lives here in town and I would say that is a big culture change.
One of the biggest things that I have noticed that is different about this part of the country versus where I am from is the winter. Here the winter is nothing, one day it is 70 degrees and then the very next day it will be 20 degrees. The weather seems very weird to me because I am expecting there to be five feet of snow on the ground and it to be cold all year long during the winter. Not only are the winters different that in Minnesota, the summers are also a lot different. Minnesota gets really hot and humid in the summer but here the words hot and humid are taken to a whole new level. The temperature here in the summer is always around 100 or above and it is about 100% humidity.
Living in a new state is just different. The people here all think that I have a funny accent and that is what I think of all of them to. That was one of the first culture things that I had to get used to when I moved here. Also this area is a lot bigger than what I am used to. The Town of Rochester is about one hundred thousand people which is very close to Overland Park, but in OP we are basically connected to downtown Kansas City, and that is a huge city and all the traffic and just the big city atmosphere I am not used to.
Moving down here to play hockey has allowed me to travel all over the country and go places I otherwise probably wouldn’t get a chance to see. We have been to the east coast this year, Texas, Michigan, Chicago, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. Those are just a few states that we have traveled to this year.
It is really cool to know that I moved to a different state to play hockey and to stay with a host family and travel all around the country. Living in Kansas has been a different experience for me because it is different in the weather and the way the people here talk. I am really glad that I made the decision to get to experience the ways other people live in other parts of the country.