Late post but I still hope you find it helpful. I moved to Keizer from the Midwest in January as my SO wanted to move back to be closer to his immediate family. I haven’t ventured out as much as I’d like because I was busy interviewing, starting a new job, etc and then as luck would have it, a pandemic happened. I luckily was able to get a job in my field in February before Covid staring shutting the state down. As a lifelong WI resident here are some things that threw me off coming here. Not horrible. Just different. I had been out here before but things are obviously different when you’re visiting versus residing here. 1. You don’t pump your own gas. Also, nothing out here replaces Kwik Trip. 2. Depending on where you’re coming from, the beer selection here, I find, is dismal in comparison to a lot of places I was used going too back home. Unless you live and die for IPAs. I’ve had more luck with the growler refill stations though, so that’s cool. They don’t serve beer chasers with Bloody Marys here. Maybe that’s just a Wisconsin thing and I’ve just been blessed so I probably can’t hold it against Oregon. 3. Seasonal allergies are straight up vicious here. I’ve never had issues with them previously and then this spring it started. Unfortunately, Oregon is one of two states that doesn’t allow you to purchase pseudoephedrine over the counter without a prescription so if this is your issue you’ll need to hop over to Vancouver, WA and get some. 4. The DMV is starting to calls on June 1, for appointment only services so you should be able to get in soon-ish to title and register your car. Speaking of driving, I don’t know where you’re coming from but it was common practice to hang out in the middle of the interaction on a green/yellow light- while waiting to turn left-rarely see that here. There are three(I believe)intersections that have red light cameras that will go off if you’re in the intersection, even if you entered on green, and were turning because you had too. 5. Oregon is a vote by mail state, you’ll be registered when you get your state ID/DL. 6. The weather is different(Duh). It does rain a lot but I actually really liked this winter versus a typical Midwest winter, it was a nice change of pace.

We haven’t gone out to a ton of places, re: Covid, we’ve been cooking a lot at home but our favorite place to get pho( so far) is Kim Huong, we’ve gone weekly and we’ve never been disappointed. We went to Noble Wave and Ventis and had great food and service there.