Chris decided that we hadn’t traveled enough this summer (anyone who knows us knows this is definitely not true, as we are reveling in wanderlust…or suffering from it, take your pick), so this weekend, he has decided to whisk me off on a trip that I did not know about — to Alabama! We are staying in Montgomery, the capital (and the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement) and plan on crossing the border west to Mississippi to see what “the South’s warmest welcome” state has to offer.

One of our first stops today was at the First White House of the Confederacy. which was the first home of the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and his family for just five months before the Confederate capital moved to Richmond, Virginia. The tour was free, half guided and half self-guided. Our guide during the first half was very friendly and asked where we were from. We told him we were visiting from New York City, and he exclaimed, “Oh, Yankees!” I started laughing because I’ve never, ever been called a Yankee before. And then it suddenly hit me: people in the South probably still, to this day, call people in the North Yankees. It’s as though we are from another country, with our different perceptions, ways of thinking, education, culture, and of course, accents. Unfortunately, he did not pick up on any Aussie twang of Chris’s.