• Honey, baby, etc.
  • Even young people have the accent. This surprised me because I thought that regional accents were slowly melting away thanks to mass media. In Korea, kids may have picked up a few regionalisms from family, but for the most part they spoke like the video game streamers they watched on YouTube. In Tennessee, you can hear an accent even in young toddlers.
  • Frequency of conversations with strangers is somewhat higher than on the coasts, but more noticeable is the length and depth of the conversations. I spoke for five minutes with a guy in the elevator and we kept having to stick our arms in the door to reopen it. We finally stopped talking when the elevator starting beeping at us and forced the door closed. Didn’t even find out his name.
  • Haven’t heard any cool aphorisms like “it’s all grist for the mill” yet, but my ears are open.