We picked up our rental car and started our drive to Atlanta. Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama to Georgia and it was all gorgeous greenery. The highways are flanked by tall puffy green trees and bushes and wild flowers and there are so many rivers. The trees are dense and seemingly endless. The sky is expansive and never ending and the clouds were a mix of dense cotton balls scattered against light linen. There was so much variation in the sky, so much dimension.
We made a pit stop in Long Beach, Mississippi because we just had to visit our sister city, plus we got to take in a southern beach. Mostly, we stopped and took pictures with this sign. And marveled at the brown waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
In Alabama we stopped for a bathroom break and gas and met a nice dude that was working there. He was talkative and friendly, albeit a tad ignorant. There were quite a few comments aimed at homosexuality and our asian ethnicity, but I have to say, none of them ever made me feel threatened or offended. It felt like he was genuinely coming from a place that had very little real experience asian people. We want to shout 'well in this day and age with the internet and tv, there's no excuse..', but honestly, seeing or watching something through a screen is so different from experiencing it first hand. It was clear this man had no ill will or hatred, just a little ignorant and probably a little clueless too. Even though I expected to experience prejudice and racism during my trip, I encountered nothing of the sort. The more I think about this encounter, the more I'm realizing that maybe I experience racism and real prejudice in Long Beach, CA than in the south. Just like I thought the south would be dry and dusty, I was wrong again.
Dacy