there's no place like home....

The Old Well at UNC

Much of the time, I find myself missing New York. More specifically, Manhattan. I lived there twice; once on the Upper West Side when I went to Columbia for a year, and once on the Upper East Side, when I interned at MSKCC. I consider New York to be one of my homes...it is one of the few places where it immediately, instinctually felt like home the minute I arrived. Whenever the "homesickness" gets to be too much, I find myself reading the NY travel guides I have. Despite having lived in North Carolina for over 2 years, I still subscribe to New York magazine and regularly buy Time Out New York, when I can find it. No cupcakes here will ever live up to Buttercup Bake Shop or Crumbs, no bagel here will be half as good as H&H, and don't even think about giving me a black and white that isn't from the city.

Though not a native New Yorker, I am definitely a Northerner, born and bred. I walk fast, talk fast, can be an aggressive driver, and often find myself (unfortunately) short on patience. So how on earth did I find myself making Chapel Hill my home? When I applied to grad schools, I mostly applied to Northern schools, with GW and UNC being the exceptions. Oh yeah, and Emory. I was headed to GW when I got the acceptance to UNC, and found myself south-bound, not quite sure what to expect. The friendliness was disarming at first, and the unspoken social rules hard to decipher. The fact that many people don't lock their house doors until they go to bed at night blew my mind. I'd never been to a school the size of UNC before, and never lived in a college town like Chapel Hill. When I first got here, I liked it, but was pretty sure I would move back North when I graduated.

Long story short, over the 2 years of my MPH program, I found myself liking the slower pace here, liking the friendliness, LOVING the affordability, and feeling...well....feeling like I could adopt this town as a home. Graduation came, and I knew I would stay in the South, unless a dream job in NY opened up - and even then, it would have been a tough decision.

Chapel Hill is often called "the Southern part of Heaven", and I can see why. I love my neighborhood, which is a New Urbanist neighborhood (although some people think it's too Stepford-esque), I feel safe here, and there's a quaintness to the town that I can't fully place. When I first got a Chapel Hill address, I loved the fact that I could write "Chapel Hill" - it had been a place I'd heard of over and over, with Tar Heel sports, but actually living there was something different. Although I read NY Magazine, I also find myself regularly reading Chapel Hill Magazine. Over the past 2 and a half years, I have made this town my home. I have found favorite restaurants, cupcake haunts, and people who remember me at coffee shops. Though I miss my family often, I know they are a short plane ride away. Last summer I had the opportunity to show both my mom and my grandparents, and my dad, around Chapel Hill and where I have lived, and yet nothing I showed them could adequately portray why I like it here so much. I can never fully explain to people up North the intensity of the UNC-Duke rivalry. Or why, when basketball season rolls around, I suddenly turn into a sports fan. (although the fact that my other fave team, UMiami, is also in the ACC, sometimes poses a problem).

My driver's license, registration, voting record, and in-state tuition status all point to the fact that I am a bona-fide North Carolinian. Am I a Tar Heel born and bred? No, not exactly. But right now, I am a Tar Heel, and that's good enough for me. In fact, I just found this article written by - of all things - a native New Yorker who goes to UNC. She describes many of the same sentiments.

Maybe my sweet nephew will become a Tar Heel - he already loves Ramses the ram!