During my winter break I got to spend time with my family … which meant traveling a lot. The majority of my time though was spent in Atlanta, and a few other (smaller) towns in Georgia, and although I've been visiting my Southern relatives every year since I can remember, through all my various trips it has become evident to me that there is a different culture that exists in the South.

One of the biggest things, especially during this time of year, is going from relatively liberal Illinois, where many people tend to have Democratic political preferences, to the more conservative South, where everybody seems to have Republican preferences. Voting for Hillary or Obama? Unthinkable!

No one really wanted to get into the reasoning behind their particular political standpoint but it was clear that most people were going to be voting Republican. My aunt was even telling us about how she and my uncle had visited Washington, D.C., and bought shirts with Hillary's face on them for my cousins to wear. My grandparents' response was, "And do they actually wear them?" — as though that would be a particularly tragic thing.

What about country music and cowboy boots? There was that, too. As far as I'm aware, in Champaign-Urbana there is only one country radio station, and I have yet to hear of someone the same age as me listening to it. We listen to an assortment of music ranging from alternative to hip-hop to pop, etc., but rarely do we listen to actual country music.

But where I visited in Georgia that was completely different. Yes, there were still radio stations playing Britney Spears and Flo Rida, but there were also multiple stations playing country music. My cousin, who is about 18, owns Shania Twain and Gretchen Wilson CDs and attends Kenny Chesney concerts with her friends; it's just normal.

The people there also had a different definition of cold weather. When my brother and I were in Georgia it was hitting mid-60s while back at home it was below freezing! We went outside in short sleeves and opened the windows in our bedrooms. Everyone else, on the other hand, didn't feel the same way.

When riding in the car we would always feel extremely overheated since, despite what we accepted as warm weather, no one else wanted to roll the windows down. At night our relatives would pull out their "winter coats" before stepping outside into weather that we extremely appreciated, asking us if we were sure we weren't going to get chilly.

One of the most distinctive things about the South, though, is the distinguishable Southern accent; they use words like "ya'll" and say things like "eatin'" and "drivin'" instead of "eating" and "driving." And to many non-Southern people, having that Southern accent implies — unfairly — being a hillbilly, and therefore being stupid.

It definitely sounds different from what we're used to, and I even remember taking last year's Japanese exchange student, Naho Maeda, to a pizza place in Alabama, and she could hardly understand what the waitress was saying. Honestly, though, some of them really are just the truck-driving high school dropouts, but some of them I've found to be quite as nerdy as Uni students.

In the South it's just as diverse of a group of people as it is in the North, but admittedly, for some reason or another, I myself still will hear "How ya'll doin'" and conjure an image of uneducated rednecks. It's just a different place and a different culture, really. Going down there I often feel singled out not knowing the lyrics to "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" and being the only person outside in open-toed shoes. It really shows how even within our own country there are certain things that are the norm in one place and out of the ordinary in another; it just depends where you are.