Won't you be my neighbor?

We have been in our house 6 days. Since our movers showed up on Tuesday, we have met 4 of our neighbors. I think that’s AMAZING. I have NEVER lived in a neighborhood where adults made an effort to meet people. Kids are a different story…they scope out the other kids and make friends instantly, and I think that’s usually how the adults get to know each other…so maybe that’s why we never meet anyone, we don’t have kids.

In all the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, I’ve always dreamed of welcoming newcomers to the hood, or being welcomed by others, but it’s never happened. In our last neighborhood, I debated about making cookies and taking it to the house across the street when they moved in. That was my intent. But, the couple times I tried to catch the eye of the newcomers to say hi, they looked the other way, so I never made the cookies. In fact, one night I came home and saw that their headlights were on in the car in the driveway. I went over to tell them, and the lady looked at me like I was crazy until she followed me out to the driveway.

That is why I’m so jazzed about where we are now. While we were outside with the movers on Tuesday, the people on either side of us came out and introduced themselves to us. And it wasn’t just a quick hello…they talked about themselves, asked us questions, and both of them said they wished they’d known we’d been there with no furniture because they would have made us dinner. They both also volunteered to loan us stuff until we got unpacked. Wow!

The next day a couple from down the street stopped by to introduce themselves, and they invited us to a luau this weekend. Then a while later, the lady across the street brought us some homemade goodies. And boy were they good!

Yesterday I had to go register my car. Every state is different, and Kansas requires you to have an inspection before you can apply for tags. Well, yesterday you could have the inspection and get the tags at the same location, so off I went. There was a lot of confusion about how to do this, so all of us in line started talking. The girl sitting next to me had just moved from Virginia. We started chatting, and before we were through the line we had exchanged phone numbers so we could meet up again. I love it!

I guess some of the stereotypes about the Midwest are true…people are much nicer here.