Embrace it man, and drop the "ld" in "Cold". Your out of state friends and family will find your knowledge of the local "culture" interesting and quaint. Learn to ask for slaw on your BBQ (in SC a pulled pork BBQ sandwich is sometimes just called a BBQ) - it's actually DELICIOUS. Depending on where you are in the south, you might find some of their terms fun.

In all seriousness though, there are some parts of the deep south that are everything you've ever feared or learned from stereotypes in the media, but there are some places where the people are incredibly warm and friendly and not anywhere near as backward as they might seem at first glance.

My mother's family is from Hickory, NC. Although "Mayberry, NC" from the old Andy Griffith Show is fictitious, many of the towns mentioned in the program are real (Hickory being one), and the people really do talk exactly like that and are genuinely just that nice. I spent a lot of summers in Hickory and have family from the hills/mountains of Western NC and TN... I can tell you first hand most people in that area are not "hillbillies". Yes, they're very down to earth and incredibly friendly, but they're actually mostly as modernly advantaged as you or me, and don't attend Klan meetings.

Even though my mother is from Hickory (or a small town nearby actually) and my father was from Long Island, oddly enough neither one of them grew up with an accent. It's nuts! In fact, aside from various other jobs in his life, my father was a radio DJ at one time and had an amazing accent neutral "broadcaster's voice". Somehow, I suppose from being around them (and the fact that they were both college professors) my siblings and I grew up with no southern accent at all. My older brother chose to continue to live in SC 20+ years after I moved away, and he actually does have a southern accent when, but it tends to go away (somewhat) when he's around the rest of us.

Wow - sorry - I just realized I went on and on.

tl;dr - "Y'all" is a good word and you should try grits. :)