South Carolina and Ohio are not the same...

I believe this qualifies as a "duh" statement.  Anyone can tell you that the two states are almost opposites of each other.

Ohio: Has lots of good qualities like nice people, some natural beauty, etc, etc.  It also has four months of sky colored as what artists describe as "slate."  They have the occasional blizzard, generally a three week period in January when the high temperature never reaches freezing, and the largest body of water is fed by a river that once caught on fire and is occasionally labeled by the health department as too bacteria-laden to safely swim in.

South Carolina: Beaches, palm trees, lots of beautiful historic districts, palm trees, Spanish moss, palm trees, generally warm temperatures, palm trees, sun, and palm trees (or palmettos, rather).

There are many other differences too, but they are subtle.  So allow me a small amount of your time to enlighten you on these differences.

Road signs: I don't really believe they exist down here.  I mean, I really don't believe they exist.  If they are present at an intersection, they are either 1.) The smallest possible road sign the road crews could fit the name on and it is perched on a pole at the most secluded corner of that particular four-lane-in-each-direction-interchange or 2.) It has been hit by a car or moved by a hoodlum and the sign is thus turned in the wrong direction., essentially directing you to take the wrong road.   I once took a three hour tour with my best friend through Amish country in Ohio, and the DIRT roads were at least marked with an actual name plate designating that it was County Road, or Township Road 12345, but here in Summerville, nothing.   What is even better is when you have one road but it ceases to be name A at a certain point and becomes name B, and then after three miles returns to name A.  It makes it really easy to get lost.

Road names: They may not have signs, but they do have names!  In Ohio, we're pretty good with naming roads after the places they lead to: Avon Lake Rd, Medina Rd, Akron Rd, Wadsworth Rd, Wooster Pike, Cleveland-Massilon, etc, etc.  Here in South Carolina every road, every interchange, and every bridge seems to be named after a person.  And I'm not talking Rohrer Rd or Yoder Rd, I am talking full names like Glenn McConnell Road, Sam Rittenberg Blvd., Berlin G. Meyers Pkwy, Paul Cantrell Rd, Ben Sawyer Blvd, Chuck Dawley Business Road, Miles Jamison Rd, and the Don Holt bridge.

Boiled P-nuts.  Yes, I spelled that correctly.  I don't know what they are, but I know that they are everywhere down here and I have never heard of such a thing in Ohio.  At any rate, I think if we made them in Ohio they would be called Boiled Peanuts.

Lastly: Parking.  Specifically, parking at churches.  At both Northside facilities and I'm sure at many other facilities, there was talk about "What if we don't have enough parking?" I think we would be lost without parking spaces, people would drive around in circles until someone in a full-sized pick up didn't pull up far enough and then blocked traffic flow completely.  And judging by the population of full size pickups in Ohio, there would be many blocked areas of parking lot.   Here it seems like every church, whether large or small, Baptist or Catholic, rich or poor, or whatever has a half-grass, half-gravel area where people are just free to park wherever they choose.  Having experienced this a few times, I know the system works, even with the above average size of the SUV population down here.  (That I don't get.  Seriously, it snows once every twenty years.  You have the best weather and some of the lowest electric rates in the country.  Support your electric and solar powered vehicles!)  People pull in where they please but they make sure that they aren't blocking anything or anyone.  I know this wouldn't fly in Ohio, what with all the mud, snow, ice, etc, but it gives the area a more "rustic, intimate" setting.  It's quite nice, actually!

Well anyways, that is some of what has struck me as odd and amusing during these last three-ish weeks here in the South.  As you can see, a lot of it has to do with traffic, since I spend about half of my life sitting in traffic, but that's another story for another day.  Sleep tight, don't let the Palmetto bugs bite!! (They are real, and they are gross)