Moving to Norway

Moving to Norway

Slide 1 – Moving to Norway

Hello, I’m Student Name Here and thank you for joining me for today’s presentation.  I’m excited to announce that in a few short weeks I will be moving to Norway, specifically the Western Norwegian Fjords area.  While I know this will be a change from North American Core that I have grown to know and love, the move to Northern Europe will provide me opportunity to immerse myself in the culture, traditions and environment of Norway that I’m sure I will quickly adapt to.  I wanted to take this opportunity to speak with all of you about the similarities and differences of the regions, and why this move is so important to me, both personally and professionally.

Slide 2 – North American Core Region

I thought it might be nice for us to start with what is familiar, and I’m sure you all recognize the areas of this map.  Here we have what is known as the North American Core Region.  You can see noted the cities of Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.  Did you also know that this region includes the areas as far west as St. Louis and as far north as Ottawa, Canada?  In preparing for our talk today, I, personally, was surprised to learn that the only New England states included in this designated economic core region are Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  The remaining states of New England are considered too economically undeveloped comparatively (Nijman, 2015).

If you were to break this region down into geographic coordinates, you can see that it comprises the area from the eastern border of Massachusetts at 41.6929’, -69.9324’ west to St Louis, MO at 38.6174’, -90.1838, and north to south from Ottawa, Ontario at 45.3823’, -75.6688’ to Washington, D.C. at 38.8988, -77.0392 (Google, n.d.).  As those coordinates can be a little abstract unless you have a GPS or GIS map application on hand, more descriptively this region includes upper portions of Michigan and Wisconsin, marking the northern border of the Core region, with Iowa and Missouri as the western border, and Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia bordering the south.  Areas once key to manufacturing, known as the Rust Belt, are also included: Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with areas of farmland such as in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and many major metropolises: New York City, Toronto, and Philadelphia, leading the Core to be considered the economic center of North America.

Slide 3 – The Lands of the North American Core

So, our next couple of slides are going to be taking us through a few of the North American Core’s more notable features.  I thought it would be helpful to remind us all why we love this area so much, both the lands and the people.  Who knows, maybe by the end of this presentation I’ll have changed my mind and decide to stay!  Wouldn’t you all love that?  Okay, so, let’s take a closer look on some of the Core regions awesome physical features and topography.  To begin with, our wonderful temperate climate.  Hot, humid summers, and cold, snowy winters.  Well, we all know how much I enjoy a good cold winter, so it shouldn’t surprise you I’m moving even further north to Norway.  And just as I am here in Massachusetts, the move to the Norwegian Fjords will have me right on the coastline.  I’d say one of the biggest climate differences is here, in Pennsylvania the Blue Ridge Mountains have a temperate rainforest (Gannon, 1998), won’t be finding one of those in Norway.  But as I’m not a huge fan of rainy, wet forests I don’t think the loss will be greatly felt.

Here in the North American Core, as you all are well aware, we do have quite the range in terrain.  Coasts and waterways, mountains and valleys all make up the region’s topography.  The waterways of this region, such as the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers and Lake Erie, are of particular importance, as prior to reliable car travel, these features provided the means for economic development in the area (United States Geological Survey Water Resources, n.d.). This terrain and climate though does relate to our most significant natural hazards: weather extremes, climate change and fault lines.  Thankfully the Eastern Fault line is currently quite inactive and little cause for concern (United States Geological Survey, Fault Lines, n.d.).  I will be able to sleep easy once I’m off in Europe knowing that the chance I’ll hear you all succumbed to an earthquake is quite low.  I already know you folks can all successfully weather even the harshest nor’easter.

Slide 4 – Its People

And now, to the wonderful people of the North American Core.  I shall indeed miss you all.  We really do have quite the interesting mix of folks in the region.  As with all of the USA, we of course officially communicate in American English, but you can hear a wide range of languages and dialects spoken depending on where you live or are visiting.  Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German and even Dutch.  I have to say, I’ve always enjoy sitting on public transit and just listening to the diversity of languages spoken in our region.

Despite the range of languages though, sadly this region is well known for its continued racial segregation, especially in certain cities.  Boston, MA and Detroit, MI to name a two.  In Boston, a recent report said over 60% of Black and Hispanic residents would need to move in order to diversify the city (Tucker, 2019).  In terms of religion, those of practicing faiths in the region subscribe, primarily, to a number of Christian denominations: Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Protestant being the top three (Pew Research Center, n.d.).  Though you will find people practicing Judaism, Islam and Buddhism throughout.