On living in Lincoln, NE, USA

Having just started my blog, and being living in Nebraska (check map) for more than 2 years now, I have a lot of back tracking to do.

I'm originally from a city with 1.2 million people. First time I realized that Lincoln had only 0.2 million, my first thought was that I was going to the middle of nowhere. Ask anyone from the US outside Nebraska and they'll pretty much agree with me. But let's not jump into conclusions just yet. By the way, this is a big city for Nebraska standards.

After a while you come to appreciate the small town atmosphere the city has. No hectic traffic, that is, no honking, no crazy drivers... and no buses. But hey, you can buy a car for $400, so that's not too bad. The city has several parks, lots of outdoors activities, and a football team (American football, that is) that drives all Nebraskans crazy. The stadium becomes the 3rd biggest city on every single game, they've been selling out since the 70s or something, and all that for a college football team. I still cannot understand that. But I bet they also cannot understand why we love soccer so much, so I guess we're all good.

Anyway, sports is a whole different subject altogether. To almost everyone from my culture, a ball game means only one thing: soccer. Here, the diversity of sports played and cheered for is big: Football, basketball, baseball, softball, hockey (ok, maybe not hockey). We do have a hockey team here, the Lincoln Stars. I have no idea of what kind of league they play, but, having lived in Canada and having watched NHL games there, I'll pretty soon become a Lincoln Stars fan.

This is actually a very interesting fact. The incentives to sports here is huge. Even high school leagues here are appreciated, on every sport. Even four-year olds get to go to tournaments and kick a soccer ball around with parents cheering and expecting their children to score. Ok, maybe that's too much. But the point is that competition here is so important, that it's no wonder the US has good athletes in every single sport. Just check the Olympics.

I kind of got off-topic, but it's hard to talk about the city without talking about the culture it belongs. I'll add more about the culture later.