I’m a self-described small town kind of girl. My hometown isn’t all that small at 400,000 people, but it’s nothing compared to the East Coast cities that everyone seems to want to live in. It’s the kind of place where you know every corner of town, every street, and you will undoubtedly run into someone you know at the grocery store/Best Buy/mall. To be honest, I love that. I like knowing people wherever I go, I like being familiar with the entire city, and I even like when all of my friends and their mothers know my business.
Moving to Philadelphia at eighteen with six or so boxes of stuff, and absolutely no idea what I was getting into, was daunting to say the least. I knew exactly three other people at Penn. That wasn’t enough to make it feel like home. A lot of my freshman year was spent being lonely and missing home. I remember waking up at some ungodly hour to catch my plane back to Philly at the end of my first winter break, wishing I could trade anything just to stay another day.
That said, in my three years at Penn I’ve come to appreciate it a lot more. The lack of anything resembling wilderness makes each day a mild struggle, but there is something to be said for the charm of age-old brick buildings (not that they compare to actual trees). And don’t even get me started on the weather! Rain is nothing to be afraid of, at least not when I’ve weathered snow storms that would make Jack Frost hide in fear. It’s water; you drink it, you bathe in it, and sometimes it falls from the heavens. There are people at Penn who complain about the weather like it’s something they can control (I’m looking at you, Californians). But it’s not, and you have to suck it up and put on a jacket like the rest of us.
Philadelphia may not be the small city I’m used to, but I’ve found a new home here, complete with friends, a sorority, and a sports team. And you know what? They’re more than enough for me.