I'm convinced that every small-town Northeastern Pennsylvanian kid has the same dream at one point in their lives: to get out of Northeastern Pennsylvania at all costs.

Pittston, Pa. is a small town nestled between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. It's made smaller by the fact that everybody and their mother knows everything about everyone, pretty much down to what you had for breakfast and who missed mass last Sunday.

There is no talk of health standards or organic foods here, where milk bottles are still delivered directly to front porches next to the morning paper.

When you're a kid your full-time job is playing outside, and when you're a teenager, weekend nights are spent sitting around in empty parking lots or driving through the woods -- complaining about the lack of places to go and things to see -- plotting with your friends about the future you'll find out there in a great big somewhere.

If I hadn't experienced it for myself, I'd find it hard to believe that places like this really exist outside of movies. However, despite everyone's most insistent complaints, it's a happy, simple life.

After finding my own great big somewhere, I know that now.

A couple months ago, I moved to the D.C. area to work. I settled into my tiny one-bedroom apartment shared with my two roommates, just yards away from six lanes worth of highway. I wondered at the world of a difference a four hour drive can make.

Everybody here runs. Literally. Everybody. All the time.

Briefcase and newspapers tucked under their arms, iPod headphones in their ears, coffee cups spilling over in their hands, grown men and women in somber black and gray business suits and high heels run like the world is coming to an end. Sometimes they even read the paper as they are running and pushing past each other.

As I drive to work at 6 a.m., cursing that unholy hour that God intended for sleeping, traffic is already choking up the highway lanes. Important people are on their way to their important jobs and are already taking themselves entirely too seriously.

There is a good deal of flipping the bird and honking coming from all directions. I find my sunny place and think, "Good Morning, World."

Road rage is positively uncouth before breakfast.

Everything is expensive here. Everything. And the locals have been numbed to the pure injustice that is charging $12 for a turkey sandwich.

Even worse, some things are expensive and bad. I was recently taken to a trendy little restaurant downtown that offered "light fare that is a fusion of Asian and Latin American flavors." Nevermind that Latin and Asian foods are wonderful on their own. Unfortunately, this restaurant had an identity crisis.

Tiny little servings of poorly cooked, strangely combined, and poser-exotic foods left us each $50 poorer and still hungry.

Since coming to the city, I have been lost exactly 6 billion times. I have forgotten where I have parked my car in this maze of circular, perplexing, identical streets and was almost in tears when I finally stumbled upon it. I have parted ways with my friends for the night to have them witness a mugging on their way home.

I've locked my apartment door every time I've passed through it and double latched it.

I've failed to pull off a tight parallel park job in about 15 ideal parking spots.

I've have shopped at Neiman Marcus six times and have purchased approximately zero items.

It's been fun. It's been horrible. It's been ridiculous. And I've loved every moment of it.

Washington, D.C. is an amazing city. It's vibrant and exciting. It's home to some of the most intelligent, powerful and hardworking people in the world. It's a political junkie's dream.

However, I wouldn't count myself terribly unlucky if my childhood dream of a future in a great big somewhere never came true. As it turns out, there's much to be said about nosy neighbors, a good heaping plate of greasy, reasonably-priced food shared with the people who know me best and doing absolutely nothing in the great little somewhere I've had all along.

Caitlin O'Malley is a senior majoring in international politics and public relations and is The Daily Collegian's Tuesday columnist. Her e-mail is cmo160@psu.edu.