What an ironic blog I created two years ago and never touched...

When I came to "create" a blog on Blogger I discovered I had one already that I started and then forgot about. Ironically, the title and theme is exactly what I wanted to discuss after the experiences I have had over the last two (+) years. I did some traveling to places I was familiar with and some that I was not. All of them in our very own country and all of them vastly different from one another. It has helped to form my perspective on how people treat each other and how we can all work on doing better at this. I finally realize that the so-called "Seattle Chill" (sometimes referred to as the "Seattle Freeze") is very real. People here are friendly in a sort of noncommittal way, whereas in California I noticed people are less friendly, but more honest (except in L.A. - that's a whole different world!) Then there was the South. People are friendly and people are honest, but at the same time I was privy to some of the most blatant racism I have ever experienced in my life. Some of it was so engrained into their culture that it didn't even feel racist. For example, for the older population the term "colored people" was just their word for black. I could tell these individuals were not bigots, but just from a different time and place. The term "African-American" wasn't uttered once in the three months I spent South of the Mason-Dixon line (there is an actual line, by the way). Still, no matter where you went down there you were greeted by everyone you passed. Southern hospitality exists. We should try and bring that to the North. I will discuss the Seattle Chill more later and how that is detrimental to this area. - AdRock