First impressions of Lewisburg, West Virginia

Lewisburg, WV was never on my list of must-visit destinations. Actually, I never gave much thought to West Virginia at all, so when my brother got into medical school here I thought, "Huh...West Virginia. That's the state that Conan O'Brien makes fun of all the time during his commemorative stamp segments as the state where people marry their own cousins." Because, honestly, I don't know anything about West Virginia aside from hearing the jokes about it being the "backcountry" and other insensitive/false tidbits about the state. So really, I came here without much expectations about this place aside from knowing for sure that it would be completely different from my way of life back in the Bay Area. And I was right. It is really different from the Bay Area. Really different.

Lewisburg, where the WV School of Osteopathic Medicine is located, is in this very small town with only 3,000 inhabitants. The demographics is almost entirely White. Terry and Tammy did a bit of research and according to the last Census, there were only like 12 Asian people that inhabited this entire town. That alone has been a sort of culture shock to me, coming from the Bay Area where people of all colors are everywhere. And I don't know if its just me or because this context makes me more conscious, but I notice people staring at us a lot while we walk around. If you look even a bit different here, you really stand out. It makes sense, but I still feel kinda...awkward walking around.

Despite this awkwardness I may feel from stares, the people that we've encountered here have all been super nice and polite. Like, really polite. I don't know if it is a Southern thing or a Lewisburg thing, but everyone has been so sweet and helpful. People actually smile and say hello to each other while walking down the street, in the elevator...everywhere! It's so odd...

The scenery around here is also really beautiful. There is lots of open space, with trees, and cute wooden fences that stretch across sweeping grass lawns.
I can only imagine how amazing the scenery would look once fall hits, when all the leaves change color...
The homes here aren't built side by side like our packed suburbs in the Bay Area, but they are spread pretty far apart from each other, separated by a few acres of land. Most of the homes here are also dated from the 19th-early 20th century (some even older) and they are all so charming with their huge porch fronts and impeccably well-kept lawns.
Downtown Lewisburg is very small, encompassing only a few blocks. We walked all of downtown in a matter of 20 minutes. To my surprise, their downtown is kind of artsy, with a few art galleries, theaters, cutesy boutiques, and organic eateries (and even a yoga center!). It also has this lazy, slow pace to it that is very nice and calming. When we were walking around, there was even this man sitting out in the street playing some jazz on his clarinet, which actually reminded me a bit of the street performers in Berkeley. I don't know if this artsy feel is due to the proximity of the med school or that's just what the towns people are into, but Lewisburg really broke itself from my stereotypes of small towns as bland and generic (sorry, I have NO experience with small towns). That was a surprise.

One thing that really stood out to me is that for such a small town, there are quite a few cemeteries. We passed quite a few of them and walked through one where a lot of the gravestones dated all the way back to pre-Civil War times. Not far from here, there is also a Civil War cemetery (occupied by Confederate soldiers, I'm assuming).

I've been here a little over a day and I'm not quite sure how I feel about this place. I mean, the landscape is gorgeous, it's clean, and charming in its own small-town way, but I don't think I would be able to live here. It's a bit too quiet (that can feel unsettling at times) and there aren't that much things around to see and do. The one movie theaters I saw only played one movie, "Eat, Pray, Love" and that was at 7pm. There's a Walmart and a few strip malls with big chain restaurants. And...that's kind of it. It's a perfect place for people into this quiet, rural type of lifestyle, like my brother, who fell in love with this place right away. But, for me? Not really. It's somewhere nice to get away for a bit of calmness, but to actually live in these type of towns, no thank you. I like diversity, a bit of noise, and the faster pace of living in a city. I guess I'm just a city dweller for life.