7 Day Culture Challenge - Day 1

(Image source - pixabay.com)
One of the great things about steemit is the wide variety of cultures represented by the people blogging on this platform. I enjoy reading about other cultures, so I was happy to find I had been nominated by @conradt to participate in the 7 Day Culture Challenge.

(Image source - pixabay.com)
Every state in the US is like a seperate small country itself, in the sense that each state has its own individual culture, political leanings, and general way of life. Most people for better or for worse, have a general idea of what American culture is like. Instead of focusing on American culture as a whole, I am going to focus on my home state where I have lived all of my life.

(Image source - Wikipedia open source)
Welcome to New York! Many who have never been here (including most of US) think it's all one huge city, but I am here to tell you there is a whole big state out there that does not have much to do at all with New York City. If you look at the map above, you will see that the city we all know and love (sorta), is region 9. Yup, thats all folks! For this first day I figured I would give you a bit of an overview of where I grew up, and where I am now. I will go into more specified details such as food, music, arts, etc etc in future posts.
I was born and spent a good chunk of my formative years on the south shore of Long Island (section 10). The culture of Long Island is a suburban reflection of the varied urban culture of the city it shares space with. Many different cultures are represented and blend togeather. (But with some really sweet ocean and bay beaches!) The futher west you travel on the island the more urban, and the futher east the more suburban to almost rural where you will see some farms and wineries still in existence.

(Image source Wikipedia open source)
I grew up less than a 15 minute drive from that particular beach, it's a big part of growing up on the Island. (That and strip malls lol.) Being close to the ocean is one the things I miss most about the Island..

(Image source Wikipedia open source)
This montage of places is upstate New York, more specifically the "Capital Region". (The mid size city of Albany which is the state capital and the surrounding areas, region 7 on the map.) I lived in Albany which is the city pictured on the bottom in the photo above, (My friends and I called it smallbany lol), for several years in my late teens and early 20s. I moved there my senior year of highschool so there was some interesting culture shock for me that I will explain in the next post.
Above the picture of Albany is the Twin Bridges that go over the Hudson River (next picture over). As you take that bridge north, toward where I live now, things get much more rural. You see a lot of farms and forests interspersed with (very) small cities, towns, and villages. If you keep going north, you enter the Adirondacks and eventually make your way to Canada. It's only around a 3 or 4 hour drive to the border for me.

(Photo by @paradigm42)
That's Malcolm on our last nature trail adventure. I can pretty much drive 15-20 minutes or less in any direction except south and find a trail to hike. As you can probably imagine, the culture where I live now is fairly different from where I grew up. So much of culture is shaped by the environment people settle in. I hope you have enjoyed my first post in this 7 day culture challenge. I look forward to going into more detail in future posts.
If you would like to participate in this challenge, the rules are listed below.
I nominate; @honeysim, @elfranz, and @davemccoy to accept this challenge.

The rules:

Write a post about an aspect of your culture - e.g. food, arts, dance, economy, money, governement etc
Do this for 7 days in a row if you get nominated
Mention three people who should do this on each day.
Tag it with #7dayculturechallenge and include these rules at the bottom of your post
Include a picture of something from your culutre related to yoru story if possible
Post these rules at the bottom of your post