I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I’ve already come to real­ize that Con­necti­cut (at least New Haven) is a weird place.

It isn’t just that they have tag sales instead of yard sales, or that recy­cling is required by law and fail­ure to do so is pun­ish­able by death a fine, or the spar­sity of their Red­boxes, or the num­ber of jerks that think their noisy motor­cy­cles make them the shiznits of New Haven, or their abun­dance of nor­mal Wal­marts and short­age of Super Walmarts.

It might be the dri­ving. Peo­ple always joke and say that Cal­i­for­nia has the worst dri­vers, or Vir­ginia has the worst dri­vers, or <wher­ever you live> has the worst dri­vers, but I swear, Con­necti­cut truly has the absolute worst dri­vers. For exam­ple, let us say that you want to make a left turn, so you pull up to a red light in the left lane. Before your car stops mov­ing, some­one dri­ves around you on the right, and turns left in front of you. At a red light. This isn’t a fluke event, I’ve seen sim­i­lar things hap­pen sev­eral times in the few weeks I’ve been here. The road signs in gen­eral appear to be less than sug­ges­tions for what the dri­ver should be doing. Going slower than 65 MPH in a 55 MPH zone will get you honked at, even if you are in the far right lane. It wouldn’t be appro­pri­ate to post on my blog the things they do if you drive that slow in the left lane.

But before you think I’m super neg­a­tive and hate Con­necti­cut, I’d like to men­tion a few of its perks. It has a wide vari­ety of gro­cery sto­ries that carry a wide vari­ety of fruits, veg­gies, and other yummy food, includ­ing our beloved Koala cook­ies that we weren’t able to find in Williams­burg. Every­thing (includ­ing sev­eral other states) are within a few hours drive. The Man­hat­tan tem­ple is only a 2 hour train ride away. I got to hear the Blind Boys of Alabama in con­cert for free on the Green just 2 miles from my apart­ment. Fire­works are legal, and the big city fire­work dis­play is vis­i­ble from my apart­ment win­dow. Our ward is awe­somely weird with a mix of col­lege stu­dents and locals, and we go to church in some sort of con­verted four story build­ing that has neat archi­tec­ture and fancy mold­ing. Most of the class­rooms (even the nurs­ery) have ornate fire­places. The city has one of those fun R2D2 mail­boxes (actual photo). We found an Indian restau­rant that we absolutely love. The LDS Insti­tute of Reli­gion has a good amount of peo­ple, and has an air hockey table, pool table, foos­ball, and a decent library.

Any­ways, Con­necti­cut is weird, or at least, Con­necti­cut is very dif­fer­ent from the other places I’ve lived. But I love it!