Southern Hospitality (Turducken Edition)

I spent Christmas this year in Charlotte, visiting Kim and Steve.  I went to their wedding two years ago, and they came up here for Christmas last year.  Kim is a friend of mine from college - really, she is one of the first people I met at orientation, and my only remaining friend from back then.  I know her parents; in undergrad, they were gracious enough to take me out to dinner with Kim whenever they came to visit.  It was almost like having a surrogate family when they visited Kim in ann Arbor. 



Odd note: both Kim and Steve have acquired southern accents since last year.  The first time Kim talked, it was startling.  There were still traces of her Long Island Accent, but frankly it was mostly buried.  At first it totally weirded me out.  But the longer I was there, the more I realized that this was an obvious inevitability.  The Southern accent is infectious when you are around it all the time, and it's good to blend in.



Steve and Kim live in a huge, amazing house right outside the city.  They live on a lake with a couple of boats; Steve is very into fishing.  Steve wasn't there for Christmas (he was visiting family), so Kim and I hopped from one friend's house to another.  Her friend Peggy cooked a turducken: a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey.  It was seasoned all the way through, de-boned in the center, and easy to slice and eat.  Oh, and it was tasty.  Weird, but tasty. 



We also took a drive through Charlotte, where I had some very good (but not world-stopping) barbecue at Mac's(?).  I think that's what it was called...anyway, I think Charlotte is a nice little city with a bigger population than it appears.  Apparently, it's the second-largest banking city in the country behind New York; Bank of America and Wachovia are both headquartered there.  There's a huge mix of people, many of whom are non-Southerners. 



That said, I don't think I could live there.



Charlotte also seems to be pretty segregated - especially as soon as you leave the city limits.  Rednecks abound, and the suburbs are relatively undeveloped.  There aren't too many choices outside the city in terms of restaurants, bars and shops.  Basically, Kim is forced to shop at Wal-Mart for most things.  Egad.  Nice enough place, but I'm not sure that I'd fit in.



In any case, it was a good two days getting away from it all. 

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