Sophie CP #5- Rayan

My fifth meeting with Rayan was at a Starbucks again, this time after he spent the weekend in Panama City. This ended up in an interesting conversation about regional stereotypes in America, because I had just begun preparing for a vacation in Minnesota, which is a very very different place than Panama City. I told Rayan about how I was born in Minnesota and raised mostly in Maryland and Florida, that the culture was notably different in each of those places, and while I don't think any one is empirically better than the other, I definitely have my favorite (it's Minnesota). I think for the most part Rayan said he had really only travelled around the south of the US, so I did my best to imitate Maryland and Minnesota accents- an extremely entertaining thing to witness. I also talked about the stereotypes of each place- which ones I've experienced to be true and which ones I don't understand. I've never been to Panama City so Rayan described it to me, it kind of sounds like a southern version of Ocean City, MD. We talked about some things that are very common here in Tallahassee, and Panama City as well, that are sort of token southern things, but also how Tallahassee feels less stereotypically southern than other parts of Florida because of the diverse population that FSU and the capital bring to the area. I think we both have similar views on stereotypes, that they obviously come from some little bit of truth, but also that they're never really hard rules either.