I've been living back in Halifax County long enough now to start taking things for granted again, and sometimes it's refreshing to remind myself how nice life is here in Southern Virginia.  I was born and raised in South Boston but lived in Jacksonville, Florida for about 15 years - from the time I got married, until 2001.

When we first moved to J'ville we lived in a suburban area that had very recently been farmland; we had one movie theater, a couple of shopping centers, and a few restaurants - even though we lived within the city limits of a million-person city.  By the time we moved up here, our area had exploded; what used to be a 10 minute drive had turned into a 30-minute drive. Traffic was unpredictable, roads were constantly being worked on for expansion, and it just didn't have that friendly neighborhood feel anymore.  On the positive side, though, we had a 20-screen megaplex and a large mall about 10 minutes from our house, season tickets to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and lived close to the beach and the intracoastal waterway.

Contrast that to life here.  We live in the town of Halifax and my office is just a mile from my house; it takes me a couple of minutes to get to work (or to Molasses for a cocktail!), about 5 minutes to drive to my mother's house in Centerville, and 10 minutes to get to downtown South Boston.  I can come home from work for lunch and have 55 minutes of my lunch hour to relax.  Sometimes I find myself actually thinking the traffic is horrible if I have to sit through a red light twice!   We don't live near the beach, but we do live on Banister Lake where we can kayak, boat, and fish any time we feel like it.

As far as shopping, the thing that we miss the most about living in a larger city is access to a variety of ethnic foods, but thanks to Taste of Asia, we can now have sushi without leaving town.  We also do some shopping at  the Asian Market in Raleigh to pick up foods we like to cook that can't be bought locally (yet!), and when we're in Richmond we hit Kuba Kuba for paella and Cuban sandwiches (my husband is a Central Florida native and has withdrawal symptoms if he goes too long without Cuban food).

I think one of the things I appreciate the most about living here is our ease of access to so many places - the mountains, the beach, DC, Richmond, Raleigh, even New York City (we're driving up next week to spend the weekend) and Atlanta.  AND we have our choice of 5 airports within a couple of hours drive if we want to fly.  You may not realize it, but we live within 750 miles of 75% of the US population!  We've had visitors from Japan, Florida, Georgia, Texas, California, and Pennsylvania and they all felt right at home here.

There are good and bad things about every place you can live in, but I'll take the friendliness of the people here and the slower pace of life for my everyday, and take advantage of access to bigger cities when it suits.