Seattle vs. Brinkley

Seattle vs. Brinkley

For 13 years I lived in Seattle, Washington. I loved it there and was very involved in my school and church. Then one day my parents decided they wanted to move to Brinkley, AR. So we slowly started packing. Once everything was packed and moved onto the truck, my parents put our house up for sale and we made our move of over 2000 miles across the country. We arrived at our new property around the end of June in 2007. I had only been to Brinkley for Thanksgivings but never did I imagine I’d actually be living there.

When we first arrived to Brinkley, I immediately noticed a big difference in the weather. It was so hot! I had never been to Brinkley during the summer so it caught me by surprise. In Seattle it rarely ever got over 80 degrees. I also noticed a difference in the rain. Though people think it rains more in Seattle than it does here, that’s not true at all. The rain in Seattle is more mist-like whereas the rain here is more often heavy. In fact Arkansas is ranked number 10 in most rainfall in the US; Washington is ranked number 30.

I also noticed how nicer the people were in Brinkley. Whenever we would ride down the highway I’d always see people waving at our car. I knew my parents didn’t know all these people so I figured they were just being friendly. I was right because even to this day random people will still wave at our car. In Seattle, don’t expect anyone to wave unless you know them. When I started school I noticed most of the kids had more respect toward adults. Most of them would reply, “yes ma’am” or, “yes sir” when answering a question. Even to this day I never really caught on to this. I bet some of the teachers thought I was crazy when I would reply “yeah” with my northern accent.

Once the excitement of a new environment wore off, the little town seemed to get drastically boring. My niece and I soon discovered there was nothing to do in this little town for people our age. In Seattle we had...