**Everybody waves! The state motto is: FRIENDSHIP so that makes sense. But seriously, every time I'm driving through a neighborhood, the people, who are outside and clearly don't know us because we're new, all wave. It's so nice of them, but I'm not in the habit of waving to anyone outside of neighbors I've introduced myself to and people in cars who give me a wide berth when I'm jogging. The locals probably think I'm stuck-up and rude. I gotta start waving more!
**If you're under the age of 50, you're going to be called by anyone over the age of 50 some form or variation of: "Sugah" "Sweetheart" "Honey" or "Darlin" with a southern drawl.
**This northwestern Hough crew painfully sticks out like a sore thumb when it comes to southern manners and respect. My kids aren't necessarily disrespectful by worldly standards. But by southern standards, we're cutting it close! We have got to train our offspring (and ourselves) to say "Yes ma'am and sir" when responding to others...no matter how old or young we or those we are speaking to are. We've already been pegged as "not from around here" when we failed to do so!
**We bank at Aggieland Credit Union, the closing on our new home is at Aggieland Title Company and our ward blog is Aggieland Mormons. Any questions? :)
**We live in Brazos County. It took us a few times and I still have to say it in my head once to be sure, but we finally learned, it's not Bray-zohs or Brah-zos. It's Brah-zuhz. Likewise, we live where Wellborn, TX was adopted in by College Station. The local water tank and post office are still labeled Wellborn. It isn't Well-bORn. It's Well-bURn. Makes a difference to the locals and if you wish to assimilate into the area :)
**The main road to our duplex (and new home) is Wellborn Road, but it's official name is FM 2154. FM means "Farm to Market Road" which, as the name suggests, is a state or country road that connects the rural or agricultural areas to market towns. So even though the locals call it Wellborn Road, the signage, while driving around town, designates it as FM 2154. We also have FM 2818 (Harvey Mitchell Parkway) and FM 60 (University Drive) and FM 158 (Boonville Rd.). I pretty much just memorized where those roads were, ignoring the numbers. I learned that in 1995 an effort was made to change the FM roads to "Urban" roads. They are all paved and speed limits can be as high as 75 mph. But residents opposed the effort arguing that removing the FM distinction would be "un-Texan" and the cost of changing the signs was not justified.
**Speaking of driving--for one who is severely directionally challenged, College Station is SUPER easy to navigate. I haven't gotten lost once! I may have missed an exit because I wasn't paying attention, but it's virtually impossible to get lost here. There are frontage roads (which I first experienced while living in Anchorage) in between every exit from the Texas 6 (highway). So if you get off too soon...you just keep going straight through the light at the exit and take the frontage road to get back on the highway or just keep going until you get to the next exit. And you can go as fast as 55 mph on the frontage roads! If you get off too late, you can turn around. That was
**Believe me when I say about 1 in every 3 vehicles that I see when driving, have at least ONE of the following, if not more...a "Texas Edition" distinction on their trucks/SUVs or a "Texas A & M" decal or a Dallas Cowboy decal or something Texas related (license plates not included).
**With cable at the duplex, we got hooked on the local news--the only College Station news channel we could find. There might be one more but we liked the look and feel of KAGS. It's not K-A-G-S. It's K-AGS (of course! They love their Aggies!) The news anchors and meteorologist are really young, too. It finally dawned on us that they are probably Texas A & M students in broadcasting. They're fun to watch.
**We never thought having the air conditioning set at 77 or 79 degrees could feel SO amazing! We felt like we were dying of heat stroke if it was at 72 in Oregon.
**Having a remote starter for our suburban that sat outside the duplex was a mom-saver. It got to a point where Calvin refused to get in the car unless or until the A/C was on and going. He can't stand the smell of a hot car. It didn't stink though. He just didn't like the way it felt--stuffy and suffocating. This is where leather seats aren't so great either.
**Sitting in the pews at our church building is like sitting in the exit row of an airplane. There is SO much leg room!! It was one of the first things we noticed.
**College Station has a HUGE post office. Massive. The one I went to in Beaverton was a cracker jack box. I think the longest I ever had to wait here in Texas was less than five minutes compared to the average 15 minutes as the fastest encounter I had in Oregon. It was usually a much longer wait. I dreaded it and avoided the post office at all costs. Granted, I have since learned that if you want to mail something to your neighbor, just take it to them. All the mail in CS gets rerouted through Houston first! It took three days from my house to my friend's house about 1/4 of a mile away!
**The CS library offers you a library card AND a small key chain with your bar code on it. I can't even begin to describe how awesome that is! Whether I'm alone or with kids, I can just jump out with my keys and pick up my books that are on hold or we can get what we need and they can scan my library bar code off the key chain without having to mess with a bag, purse, wallet and digging out a card while keeping track of kids and books. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!
**What I don't love is how small the library is. About 1/6 the size of the Hillsboro Main Library--just where the books are. Forget about the space for classes and studying and meeting rooms, etc. The lack of books and movies available here is pretty disappointing. I'm grateful we have one in town, but it really is sad that of half the books I look up, they have "no record" of that title on file. :(
**The storm drains are humongous!! I know there's no frame of reference here, but all three of my younger children: Karcyn, Calvin and JJ could slip through that opening--that's how big the gap is. We always walk in the middle of the street when passing a storm drain because my kids are just crazy enough that I could see them getting too close and with the side of the road slanting towards it...yeah. No thanks. It can eat someone else's kids.
Even with these storm drains, we live in an area that can have some really bad flooding. Almost every time we get any remarkable rainfall, we are always under a flood warning. It's nice that those alerts come through our cell phones. Unfortunately, I have yet to learn which roads are prone to that flooding...
**The sky is ENDLESS here in Texas. On days with white, fluffy clouds, the sky looks like the "Toy Story" wallpaper in Andy's room. The sunrises and sunsets are breathtaking! It's like each morning and evening is a new, blank canvas for God to share his artwork with us and we live in "painted sky" country. I will never get tired of seeing such beauty.
**It is easy to get disoriented out here in the rural part of town without a mountain as a fixed point. The one time I got lost, a week after Jared left, I ended up 15 miles south of our duplex one afternoon, driving down the road that runs directly past our duplex, just trying to get to the grocery store a couple miles away! True story.
**Speaking of store...H-E-B is what's hot here in College Station. I thought the acronym stood for "Here Everything's Better" the motto you find on the outside of the brown paper bags, but apparently it's the initials of the owner, Howard E. Butt. I think I'd call the company H-E-B, instead of Butt Grocery, also!! Here's the backstory on it according to Wikipedia. It's a family owned and operated, privately held supermarket that started in San Antonio, Texas back in 1905 in the downstairs level of a woman's home for $60. Pretty cool!
**I wasn't sure I'd like H-E-B after my first trip there. It's a far cry from the Winco I grew to love. It's like a Fred Meyer or Kroger grocery store on cultural steroids. My budget prefers Winco, not those higher end grocery stores. And it's overwhelmingly huge! They give out samples in several different parts of the store, they have cooking demonstrations, they have an Asian team who makes fresh sushi/California Rolls every day and gives out samples, they have cooking classes for kids, they have a large screen TV near the appetizers that will always show the current Aggie game or another team from the SEC. They've got so many different kinds of foods and specialty items that either I've never even heard of before or that you could only get at an ethnic store in Oregon. Maybe this is just Texas, but there is one whole side of an aisle devoted to BBQ sauces and marinades. And the other side of that same aisle is strictly hot sauces. Yes. Hot sauces only. The $1.08 bottle of Tapatio is all I need, thanks. And sadly, no bulk food bins like Winco has. When it comes to nuts and spices and things that you only need a little bit of at a time or pasta and rice that you want a lot of, this aspect was so appreciated!
**My shopping time has escalated exponentially because I can't find anything! After a few trips to the store I realized that I'm coming off of a whole decade's worth of shopping at the SAME store, week in and week out. I had it down to a science. It'll take me some time to get my new "path" down at H-E-B. I'm just not very patient!
**What I DO love about H-E-B are these super cool things that I've never experienced before:
Parking spaces close to the store entrance for those of us with little kids!
And some parking spaces up front for those who have already paid their dues in life!
This rocks. They have fresh fruit in baskets for kids to munch on while you shop. Only 25 cents. JJ always enjoyed a banana.
The grocery carts are like Costco--two seats up front! Finally, a grocery store that gets it! They also have the fun car carts (that are impossible to steer) for little ones.
They have "Meal Deals" every once in a while, where if you buy one main thing like fajita meat for example, you got the sides/extras like tortillas, chips and salsa, sour cream and soda for FREE! Once, with the purchase of a frozen lasagna, you got frozen steamed veggies, frozen garlic bread and a pint of ice cream for FREE! I bought 2 or 3 of those to keep on hand for meals to give to people that could use a lift. On a regular rotation, they have buy 1, get 1 (or 2) and "buy this, get that." Such as, buy a bag of Oreos and get a half-gallon of milk for free. It's pretty awesome.
The employees are very friendly! They have youth and college students to bag your groceries for you (and take them out to your car as well, if you want the help!) I also love that there are "big wigs" (you can just tell they are more executive) out in different parts of the store, helping those who are stocking or cleaning or they mingle with the store patrons. They always say hi and ask how I'm doing when they pass me. They know their employees by names and interact with genuine kindness.
You can use your credit card for grocery purchases! It was a real drag to not be able to use my credit card at Winco to help build up our bank of airline miles or the money we could get back.
H-E-B also has a drive-thru pharmacy and gas station.
**I actually tracked the price of our groceries for a month or so before leaving Oregon because I was curious to see what things cost more or less between the two states in different parts of the country. Interestingly enough, the prices were pretty similar. I didn't see any glaring discrepancies. Some things cost a little more in Oregon, whereas some things cost a little more here. It seemed like, more or less, it was a wash.
**When registering Jake for his freshman year at High School, he was able to get right on the basketball team because it was a class period. How much playing time he got was a different story, however, but everyone was on a team. Which I thought was pretty dang cool so even though he's not been playing basketball for very long, he can continue his love for the game and to learn skills. The same opportunity would not have been available in Oregon. They also have the students focus on a "track" for their high school career--Jake chose the STEM route--science, technology, engineering and math field. It seemed a little early for them to have to hone in on specific interests now, but I won't question it. The schools seem to be doing just fine without my input.
**Keyboarding/typing was not offered until high school in Oregon (I'm assuming) so Jake planned to take it there as an elective (like Jared and I did). But it's not offered at the high school level here in CS. It's actually a requirement at the middle school level. Fortunately for Jake, it's not a graduation requirement and he can do it on his own. And it frees up an elective.
**The school district follows the same calendar as Texas A & M to accommodate parents who are professors. We start the end of August, Labor Day is not observed (I've been told it's because it's a union holiday and Texas doesn't recognize unions), and we go until Christmas break. Spring Break is the 3rd week in March and the kids are out of school the end of May. Works for me!
**We've been told the boy scouts don't camp during the summer here due to the heat. They camp the other nine months out of the year. That's so weird to us because the Oregon summers were the prime time to camp, though our boys did go on camp outs in November and February. And scout camp is held the first part of June to make it as tolerable as possible.
**We actually live in Bryan/College Station (BCS). But we live in the College Station part. University Drive, up north where Texas A & M sits, is like the border. The second you cross University headed north into Bryan, it's like the town aged 30 or 40 years. There is a definite distinction. It's more, "ghetto" if you will, as my kids would say. College Station is the newer part of the area that continues to grow...especially south near the CS "border" where we live where there are wide open spaces. Construction companies can't keep up with the demand. When we signed our lease for the duplex, the manager told us that they have planned that subdivision (Creek Meadows) to hold eight hundred homes! They have only built about 200-ish.
**There are not monthly stake dances. They have three a year. Likewise, there are only two youth baptism trips to the temple each year. August and February. They meet at 9am and are back by 3 or 4. But the ward treats them to lunch at Chick-fil-A and ice cream on the way home, so that makes it a fun, well-rounded experience. I hope the youth back in Oregon never take their monthly temple baptism trips for granted--even if they have to be up before 5am.
**It takes about 10-12 minutes to drive to church. It's not the 60 seconds it used to be, but it's not too bad. There are actually three wards in College Station and one in Bryan. On our way to the chapel, we pass two streets. One is "Hannover," but for some reason, the first time I saw it, I read it as "Hangover." Then the next street is "Fraternity Row" (makes sense) and the one right after is "Deacon"...the street our church building is on. When I drive to church, I always have this silly thought run through my mind: The peeps on Fraternity Row with Hangovers finally saw the error of their ways and found a Deacon :) Our little kids believe the church was built first and the city of College Station named the street after the chapel. The physical address is actually on Welsh, the cross-road to Deacon.
**Even inside an air conditioned duplex, when shredded cheese hits the floor...it melts within a couple minutes. It doesn't turn to liquid, obviously, but it gets soft and translucent and adheres itself to the floor making it a bit of an "un-sweepable" mess to clean up.
**Instead of seeing law enforcement vehicles driving around town labeled "Police," they have "Constable" on them. I wasn't sure what the difference was and had to look it up. This is what I found online: A Texas constable is a law enforcement officer who is elected by the county residents they serve. The first constable was appointed in 1823 and was the first law enforcement officer in the history of Texas. A Constable and the Constables deputies are the enforcement officers for the local Justice of the Peace. They and their deputies are peace officers and they have a lot of authority. Though they do act as bailiff for the Justice of the Peace, they also serve civil suit notices, and subpoenas and can execute arrest warrants. The Constable and Deputy Constables can make arrests, issue citations and are authorized to investigate any crime or traffic offense that happens in their presence or that a citizen reports to them. Like other law enforcement officers, Constables have state-wide authority to make arrests for any criminal offense they may witness. So a [Brazos] County Constable who sees a theft occurring in Dallas County can arrest the criminal despite not being in their home county. Very interesting. I'm half expecting to see a Texas Ranger now! :)
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