Brandon BedoreKant Response3/23/14Hello, Ey! Being from a rural town in New York (often mistaken for Canada), living in D.C has been a big culture shock. Kant explains that I can only know the world as I experience it and for the first 17 years of my life I lived in a town with no diversity, no culture (unless huntin drinkin maple syrupin, and fishin count), and no sense of city life. I had never used public transportation, we did not have a Starbucks (GASP), and I had only seen non-Caucasian people on TV. (When the reception was cut out by the 100 feet of yearly snowfall). I can count on one hand how many times my school was cancelled because of snow in my 13 years of school before college. Since then I have had six cancellations in one winter (which I thought was a light one). I had never experienced a world where 40 degrees constituted a jacket and the phrase OMG where is your coat it is freezing?! has come up more than once. On top of that and perhaps more dismal, I had known the same 50 people my whole life so I had forgotten how to make friends. I had never been a stranger to anyone because in rural towns, you can sneeze and it will be in the newspaper before lunch. I never realized how little people actually know about each others business on such a big campus, how sensitive normal people are to the cold, and how amazing it is to have civilization. I am a maple syrup loving, moose riding, Canadian from New York and I will probably never be able to understand the city folk and their hatred of cold but ya know, what are you gonna do?