My Personal Experience

Living in the South for the eight months that I have been here has definitely supported my vision of what I thought the South was like. I have been living in Baltimore for the 18 years that I have been living so I have experienced the complete opposite of the everyday lifestyle of a southerner. Back at home, the majority of the people have attitudes and are always rude. When you go to a fast food restaurant in Baltimore, the workers do not have any manners and act as if people are forcing them to work there. However, when I came to Atlanta, it was a complete change. Everyone here has manners and have such pleasant attitudes. I must admit that I have always expected anyone from the South to have the classic southern accent that you hear in the movies. Of course not everyone has the deep southern accent, but the majority of the Georgians that I have met at Georgia Tech have the sweet, country-style, ol' southern accent that I absolutely love. The only thing that the south has proven me wrong about is the amount of open land and cornfields that I expected them to have. Since I have been in Atlanta, I have yet to see any cornfields or huge, open land. The closest thing to the stereotypical "cornfields" I expected the south to have, is the woods that my friends and I cleaned up for community service (see picture). The area that we cleaned up was a large, open space of wildlife. However, we drove a few miles to get to it because the majority of Atlanta's land is taken by buildings, schools, etc. Overall, the South has definitely impressed me and have met all of my expectations of what it's like to be in the south.