“Penn State? But that is so far! It is going to be such a big change!” If I had a dollar for every time I was told that when explaining my college decision I would be able to actually make a dent on my out of state tuition cost. Little did I know that the distance between my new home, and the place I have lived my entire life, 2556 miles to be exact, would not be the only thing that would take a little getting used to. From the minor details such as accents, to difference in music, to a preference in shoe brands, I’ve been on the east coast now for only 28 days, and I think it is safe to say I have seen enough differences within mannerisms and linguistics for an entire year. The first time I realized there were endless amounts of differences within specifically dialect from different parts of the country was when I was having a conversation with my roommates, two of which are from the east coast, New York and Pennsylvania, and the other who is a familiar face also from San Diego. She seems to be in as much disbelief as myself when we hear the obscure terms our new friends use. Discussing something as simple as what we refer to a carbonated drink in a can, is what sparked a fascination amongst my friends and I as to what other differences we could discover between one another. Soda or pop? Though I have heard only my grandfather, a seventy-one year old man from the Midwest refer to a coke product as a pop, I knew that for some odd reason there were thousands of others who did not take a second thought as to what term they use to reference the drink. As odd as I find the lack of acknowledgment of the pop people of the world, I began to realize that I, too, do not give the term soda a second thought. Though I may be biased, I believe soda just sounds the best, whether that’s due to me growing up in California, or my ability to listen for the best sounding term, I guess we will never know. Though the pop and soda debate is ones decades old, and I was expecting the discrepancy living on the other side of the country, there were a few differences that caught me off guard within my first few weeks in the eastern side of the country. One that I still have not grasped completely is the use of ‘supper’ in place of ‘dinner’. I believe the last time I heard the term supper was quite literally in reference to The Last Supper, in a religion class in high school. Already being overwhelmed by all of the new things about to begin in my life, moving into my dorm, leaving my parents, and preparing for my first week of college classes, the day after I moved in, my roommate, who’s home is no more than fifteen minuets away, asked what time we were planning on going to supper. After about ten seconds of silence and confused looks around the room, the three others in the room, including myself, asked her if she really just used supper in a sentence. The straight look on her face gave us our answer immediately, and after laughing and taunting for about another minute, we began to discuss what other terms we may differ from using coming from three different parts of the country. This list has continued to accumulate over the weeks, and includes differences from topics varying from how one orders in an ice cream shop to what a party in the daytime would be referred to as. I presume the list will continue to grow over the weeks, and expand into some very unexpected contrasts in daily language, as I am already shocked less than a month into the move. Over the course of this blog, I plan to discover and discuss differences in what is beginning to look like everyday life living on the west coast in comparison to the east coast. Varying from certain types of lingo, to brands of clothes, and even the pronunciation of words, the differences may be more vast than one would presume. I know there were definitely more than I personally anticipated. Aside from the differences in language and preferences, I also plan to acknowledge and evaluate the variety of certain actions I have seen, such as a connection between the way people may hold their phone to text, and its correlation between where they have grown up. Something as small as the hand placement on a smart phone, I have come to notice, could actually be influenced by which side of the country they grew up in. I am intrigued and excited to evaluate and respond to the many differences I continue to find over the period of this blog, and how it may impact my adaptation to a school located in a far different section of the country than I consider home.