It has been 6 months since I moved to upstate New York. In some ways, it seems like it hasn’t been that long, but in others, it feels longer. I miss Nebraska and my friends and family, but I am making a life here too, and that’s pretty cool. 

Moving from one part of the country to another has given me a unique perspective on local colloquialisms and word pronunciations. A few musings are below:

• They play the Canadian National Anthem before all sporting events, before the US National Anthem. It confuses me every single time.
• They call this area the “North Country” and it is everywhere. Businesses, on the radio, tv, etc. 
• Being from the midwest I call it “pop”, not soda. Here it is soda, but in Rochester or Buffalo, they call it pop too, and it makes my heart happy.
• People here have little cabins on the reservoirs that they use during the summer and fall on the weekends. They call these their “camps”. I would call them a cabin. For the longest time, I thought everyone was SUPER into going camping here and I was VERY confused by what they were saying. Now I understand, even if I don’t actually know why they call these nice houses “camps.”
• People put the emphasis on what I would say is the wrong syllable of words, including “Elementary”. They say “Ele-men-TARY” and every single time I want to stop them and ask them why they do it. I have asked a few of my friends who were born and raised here and it is just the way they say it. How very odd. Check dictionary.com. It will actually say it for you, and the emphasis is NOT on that syllable. Oy.
• People say “I seen” a lot here. Like a lot a lot. Makes my ears bleed every time they do it. *shudders* NO. Just NO.
• I know we had the conversation about what we call a winter hat, and I know that just depends on which part of the country you are from, but I grew up calling it a “stocking cap” or a hat. A lot of people here call them the Canadian “toque”, which I am just not used to. 

Those are just a few things that I have noticed in my 6 months of living here in the frozen North!