110. Country Mouse: Write about someone who grew up in the country visiting the city for the first time.
Although Riverside isn’t exactly the country, it was quite the culture shock when I moved to downtown San Jose at the age of 22. I grew up in a working class neighborhood but always had to be aware of gangs and guns. In college I lived in off- campus housing university housing near downtown which was small in the 1980s. The tallest building was the county administrative building where my mom worked, towering at a grand 14 stories over the city. Although I did like Riverside, I could not wait to leave and accepted the grad school that was the furthest away as possible. Living smack in the middle of downtown San Jose was disorienting at first, trying to get used to cars, traffic, construction, and crowds. It was a bit of reverse “Green Acres” but I came to embrace the crush of stopped-traffic, the interminable amount of time it took to go anywhere, and the non-existent parking when I tried to go anywhere. Country and city both have their pros and cons and I can adapt to where ever I live.
