Life in the Cheese Drawer

i realized a couple weeks ago how unfamiliar people look to me here. when i was up in st cloud, on any given day, if i went to the mall, walmart, cashwise, coborn’s, wherever, the people i saw were familiar to me. given the large proportion of german descendants in the area and relative lack of diversity, this doesn’t surprise me. if there were other ethnicities, it was mostly one population; in this case, it was somalis.
now when i go out i am faced with people from a huuuge variety of backgrounds. because of mayo, this area is really diverse. and it’s kind of unnerving to go out and be amid this slough of people in an area you’re supposed to call home but not really feel any familiarity with them.
maybe it will pass with time, and i will get used to the diversity. but until then, it’s hard to call this place home. i wonder if this makes me racist/ethnicist.