This entry is from our very own team member, Cherilyn Wang. See the "Meet the Team" page for more information. As an international student, I've never heard of it, even before I came here. So, I think the first time I've ever experienced a Daylight Saving was when I was in high school, when I first came here, it was 2016. I remember a night. I still remember that night. Me and my friends, we were like watching stranger things, I'm pretty sure and then we had school the other day so we couldn't like stay up too late, but the show was so good. So, we kept watching for like, like six hours straight and then we suddenly realized that it was like 4 o’clock in the morning. And I said, "why is it so late?" I didn't feel like that late. Cuz I felt like I was just so like, I paid so much attention to the show. I didn't, like, look at the clock at all, so I didn't know that it was Daylight Saving. So, I asked my friend like “why is it so late?” Cuz it felt like 2:00 something and it is four, and then she told me that it was a Daylight Saving. I asked why, and then asked “what’s the reason behind all this? What’s the history and everything?” That was pretty cool. I thought that, it was the first time I've ever heard of it. So, it was really interesting. And it took me a while to get back to my schedule. Cuz even though it was just an hour, it kind of affected my life quite a bit because, well, I lost like an hour of sleep. And the next day, I was like, I couldn't pay attention in class and everything, and yeah. And I think it’s more interesting when it switches from fall to winter, because we get an extra hour. So, every time I get really excited because I get an extra hour to like play games or watch a movie or something. It feels so precious. But yeah, you still need to pay off because like half a year later, you still need to give an extra hour. So yeah, I think it's really interesting, especially as a foreigner.

If you were a personification of a US city, what city do you think you would exemplify? Hm. Well, I'm not as cool as the big, like the big ones, like New York City, or San Francisco, or Chicago. I'm not that trendy. I'm not a partier, so I'm not Miami, or Reno, or Vegas. Maybe I'm Kissimmee in Florida. I'm sweet. I think. Most people continue to say I'm a very kind person and I like to have fun but it's usually wholesome fun, but I do have a side that can be a little snarky or a little bit like make jokes, and I feel like Disney movies, there's totally jokes we get now as adults that we did not get as kids. So maybe, maybe I could personify like Kissimmee.

Yeah, and I'm grateful for my pet's health, as well. My cat Zhang Zhao is now officially a senior cat. He went into the vet to get his routine shots and vaccinations. And yeah, he's crushing it. His teeth look great. His one eye he has left looks great. His coat is healthy. He's put on a little bit of weight, but, um, still within the good range. So yeah, he's doing a darn good job. So I'm happy. Let me see if I can get him to talk. Right, kitty? You tell me. Oh, no, he's too busy being a floppy cat. He doesn't care. He just rolled over.

Just for your information, I think you are all Northerners and you probably don't know very much about Southern accents, but there's not just one Southern accent. And I did not actually discover that until James Earl Carter Jr. was elected President of the United States in 1976. There was an article in a Newsweek Magazine edition shortly after his election talking about Southern accents. This article quoted an expert linguist who has spent a lot of time studying Southern United States accents, and the linguist concluded that the state of Georgia actually has four different types of Southern accent. I do not remember which one it said that President Jimmy Carter speaks, but I do remember that one of the four Southern Accents in Georgia is called Gulf Coastal Plains. And that means it stretches from somewhere in the central area of Georgia, where I live and was born, and goes all the way down through Southwest Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico. I believe that the accent that you're hearing in this recording is a Gulf Coastal Plains accent. I have often been told that I sound like our former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

My brother recommended that we go to New York City and I agreed. And then before I know it, after all these years, thirteen years at that point of deciding I was never going to go to New York City and it never really came to mind, uh, we found ourselves in a car going to New York City one day later. And I'm not sure if I've ever felt more empowered in my life. I'd been on certain trips in my life. I had flown to the Bahamas and I had been to Texas and gone on a road trip with a friend to South Carolina and, you know, these like things that just seem like there's these reasons for going. There's family there or there's friends or you have a main attraction that you want to go see. I had done that type of traveling, but never in my life had I tapped into this revelation that, if there's a place I wanted to go, technically I could go there whenever I wanted so long as I had a day off and a car that worked. And so I went from thinking I'd never had a reason to go New York City. I didn't know anyone in particular there that would pull me into that region. I went from just being like, "Okay, yeah. I'll never go because why would I and plus who knows what could happen?" to suddenly like "All right, well. We're ten hours away, and let's make it happen. Let's drive straight to Midtown Manhattan." And so that's what we did.