Quote:
Originally Posted by abaya
Other than Seattle (which is still a kind of home for me, though I'll have to get used to it again since it's changed a lot in the last 5 years), I felt very comfortable in our grad school town, which ktsp mentioned above. It was a fantastically neutral place for all of us in graduate school--landlocked 3 hours away from any major city, it was a little small-town haven to just build great friendships and explore our surroundings. I felt very awkward there the first few months, but I settled in very quickly. I think that has more to do with being a student than anything, though, because as a student you have a ready-made community, and activities on-campus are simple endless. The entire atmosphere is one big "Welcome" tent. Hard to compare that to a "real life" scenario...
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What's really interesting, abaya/ktsp, is that in my community, there are at least a few people I know of that deliberately chose to relocate here because of its resemblance to State College, including a couple of my clients.
I think one of the biggest things that made a difference to me in getting to know my town was the frequency of community events. We have two major festivals a year, Saturday Market every weekend, and all sorts of things--concerts, plays, the symphony, town hall meetings, etc.--that give people the opportunity to get out and get to know other people. Plus, we have a really good Parks and Rec department with tons of sports and activities for adults to participate in. Additionally, it being a college town, people are
very welcoming of new folks, simply because at one time, almost all of us were new here. All of these things made it easy to integrate, even as an adult.