The Walla Walla area is small-- and honestly, I was expecting to hate it. I didn't grow up in a big city, but I still definitely appreciate having places to go and knowing there are things that I haven't yet seen. So when I decided to go to school in a town with a name so ridiculous that strangers laugh when they hear it, I had to adjust my attitude a bit. Because Walla Walla is small-- if you drive around downtown around 11, everything is closed with all the lights off. If you want to go shopping beyond two departmental stores, there's about an hour drive ahead of you. Wheat fields are the scenery of choice, and the 'mountains' nearby are more like rolling hills. Basically, we're out in the middle of nowhere.
Although it has definitely been an adjustment, over the past year I have slowly come to realize the value there is in experiencing life in a different environment. Small towns for example have a certain charm that is hard to find anywhere else. There's a certain peace in walking down the street and not hearing a single sound. No cars passing, no construction, no sirens. Just silence. And by having such a limited options of things to do, everybody is forced to share similar experiences, creating a community of people who are bonded together through these shared memories-- it's an experience I simply wouldn't get in a big city.
Also, although I love the mountains as much as the next pnwesterner, and of course miss all that my home town has to offer, I would feel as though I would have missed out on something if I had simply stayed there and not expanded my horizons. Walla Walla is not glamorous. It's not Europe, or somewhere you would ever go on vacation. And yet it has expanded my world view by forcing me to learn how to embrace a way of living different from my own, meeting people from different backgrounds and interests, people who have definitely never visited Canada. It's a unique experience, and I feel like it has both made me appreciate what I love about my hometown more than I did previously, and discover that there is so much out there, even in the places that you would never expect.
Thanksgiving break is this next week, so I get to go appreciate the trees and mountains and hiking and rain, and everything else that makes British Columbia the beautiful place it is. I'll get to be with my Canadian friends, and go to all the familiar places we have always gone to. And while I know I will appreciate it all, and even though I didn't travel far to Walla Walla, I will see it through the lens of knowing that I have gotten a chance to see a sliver of the world elsewhere as well. I'll appreciate the things that make my home beautiful and unique, but I will also recognize that there are other forms of beauty out there, even in the most obscure pockets of the world.
