Following our move to Chicago from small-town Michigan almost a year ago, I admit there have been a few things that have dampened my urban enthusiasm just a tad. Things like sharing a teeny (teeny in my experience, anyway–for the city it’s quite spacious) backyard with several families. Trying to figure out an intimidating and huge school system. Street parking and the necessity of learning to parallel park. The fact that my window got smashed in in front of the Lincoln Park Zoo within two weeks of our moving here, and then the police caught a kid breaking into my minivan in front of my friend’s house in a very nice residential neighborhood just a few blocks from my home. (As I told the officer, there was nothing of value in the van, and the old-french-fries-and-musty-shoe smell the kid had to endure as he searched in vain for cash and valuables was punishment enough). And the much, much higher cost of living (mostly housing, oh, and sales taxes. And did I hear that Chicago’s sales tax just got raised AGAIN?) Sometimes it all gets to me a bit and I fantasize about running for the ‘burbs.

But I can’t deny that there are a lot of things I just love about living in the city, and since today was a really great, warm, summery day and put me in a fantastic mood, I’m feeling moved to share a few:

The diversity. In our local park, we see every imaginable skin color and hear the sounds of many different languages. We live in an area with many Orthodox Jewish families–so many that I’d say we are definitely in the religious minority. My boys’ best friends are Indian, Pakistani and Greek. I love that in less than a year the fact that many of the faces they see look different from themselves has all become totally normal and commonplace to my kids.

The architecture. At first the fact that I lived on a street where most of the buildings looked almost exactly the same was a bit unnerving to me. But now I love looking up and down the blocks and seeing row after row of brick two- and three-flats and bungalows. They are similar, which gives the neighborhood a really neat, uniform look, but they’ve all got their own special charm.

The people I meet. There are more people here, so maybe there’s just a bigger pool to draw from; but I have met more interesting new people in the past ten months than I probably had in the last five years. I made some great friends in Michigan, but I often went weeks without meeting anyone new. Now, I meet somebody new almost every day.

I’m the kind of person who tends to get restless after living anywhere for a little while, and I have a bad case of “grass is greener” syndrome–so it can be easy to overlook the stuff I love while pining away for what I wish I had. But everything is a tradeoff…and even though I’m definitely missing a few things about small-town life, for right now I’m feeling content and happy with my lot in life. Even if my “lot” is, by rural Michigan standards, barely the size of a respectable bedroom.

City girl or country girl? I may never decide once and for all, but at least I can learn to slow down and enjoy the stops I make along the way.