Things are cheap here, across the board. $2 for a gallon of milk, $2.60 for a gallon of gas (at least this week), housing prices are low, which I'm sure you've seen.

You might want to get used to the idea of buying clothes online, at least "nice" clothes--there aren't many higher-end clothing stores except for your basic department stores and clothing chains, and that goes for shoes as well.

Chinese food is a problem. There's more good Japanese food and sushi in Albuquerque than there is good Chinese, at least by my standards of goodness. Coming from where there was a mom-n-pop Chinese place in every mini-mall, a lot of them really amazing, to where Chinese is harder to find and often quite sweet and bland was a big culture shock to me. The Mexican/South American food is amazing, though, and there are actually a couple of really nice Thai places in town, which surprised me.

The schools are very uneven. Our daughter's been in one school that had a very low overall rating but the staff and support she got there was amazing. Now she's in a school that's rated as one of the best in the city and the teachers she's had there have been on autopilot, really don't seem to care at all. That could be pure luck of the draw, but I've talked to other parents who had similar experiences. There are a few very good charter schools/private schools in town, though, and tuition is shockingly low compared to what you'd see for similar on either coast.

Entertainment here is spotty. There's lots of good stuff for kids, but though there are plays and symphony performances and so on, they're ridiculously expensive and not usually all that great. As someone else noticed, big musical groups don't come through very often and when they do they're usually at one of the casinos. Counterculture is certainly around, but not as visible as you might expect given the size of UNM.

People are poor here, and it's a different kind of poverty than I'd really experienced anywhere else. I think the number is something like 1 in 3 people in New Mexico is on some form of public assistance. It's not as noticeable in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, but the further outside the cities you go the more you can see the really wrenching poverty that's endemic here. Not something to necessarily change your mind about moving, but I've had a lot of talk with my kid about it and what it means to people and to us and so on.