I have lived in Wisconsin my entire life. I moved towns a couple of times, but they never had a population above 3,000 people. I went to high school in the only Wisconsin county that does not have a single stop light. There is no denying that I was bound to experience some version of culture shock while we were in San Francisco. While I ended up handling my culture shock better than anticipated, there were a couple of things that I could not wrap my head around. Here is my list of questions for San Francisco that I could not figure out even after being there for two weeks.

Hello, it’s been a while. I miss you. Four weeks ago, I was saying my goodbyes to you. We walked through your Castro District one last time and basked in all its rainbow glory. I got my large sweet and creamy ambrosia coffee from Philz one last time and completed my scrapbook recap of our trip. We waved goodbye to our luxurious condominium at 74 Douglass as our party bus departed. At the time, it was bittersweet, but I was looking forward to returning to my original home. Toward the end of my stay with you, I was missing my poster-covered walls and dark green bedspread, my work families, and the people I left behind on unfinished notes. I was ecstatic to fly again, out of your borders, across the country, and back into the bubble of the Midwest. Even though, before coming to see you I was ready to pop that bubble. I missed the things I had taken for granted like Kwik Trips, flat surfaces, and the slower pace of living.

My time in San Francisco has been such an exhilarating experience! The city has the kind of atmosphere that makes me feel that I have lived here my whole life. It is such an accepting, open, and kind community! Almost everyone I have encountered from San Francisco has been so kind and considerate of my self-expression and identity!

“Camp horror or horror horror?” was the question I posed to the friend sitting next to me as we sat down to watch the grouped short films, “Fangs After Dark.” Those were the two subgenres I had divided the genre into. Everything fit into these, whether it was planned to or not. Silence of the Lambs? Camp. Barbarian? Horror. But there are so many intersections of campiness and horror within films (e.g. US’ use of N.W.A.’s “Fuck the Police” during one of the gorier scenes of the 2019 film toes the line during Pearl’s minutes-long crying-eyed stare into the audience as the credits roll falls right into it). Even if I loved them the same and considered them valid depictions of the storytelling medium, I still had slightly harsh genre divisions of horror that were “serious and meant to scare you sleepless” and “horror that dared you to try and take it seriously with the use of bloodshed as the butt of the joke.”

Hello lovely blog of mine, I want to treat this as my personal diary of the series of events and what I experienced during this exciting trip to San Francisco, California. Hence the title, I am having a bit of jitters going into this process, it’s scary experiencing new things but I also am excited to be brought out of my comfort zone and experience everything as a group. I am mostly excited to be able to experience the diverse mindsets that are in San Francisco. There is a lot more diversity there than there is in our mere town of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. But also, being excited about these things makes me nervous, what if I don’t fit in? What if they think I am weird and reserved? Since I am Queer and a person of color, especially in a white dominated area, I fear that sometimes I have a disconnect from people of color who are Queer. That makes me have a main goal of connecting more to Queer, Trans, People of color and learning about their stories in an area with more politically active environments as well as more diverse thinking all around.

“Self-love is a daily practice; be kind and patient with yourself.” ~ Elliot Page

It is currently Day 5 of the trip as I am writing this blog post. I am already beginning to feel a tad bit exhausted, both physically and mentally. I know that I will have some more time to rest soon, which is helping. I also try my best to not push myself too hard and to take moments here and there to take a break when possible. My physical exhaustion comes from the surplus of walking that we all must endure here. The city is gorgeous and exciting, don’t get me wrong, but it’s certainly a sudden and drastic adjustment that I have had to make.