Additional Geographic Revelations...
...gleaned from looking at maps just now.
1. I finally nailed down exactly where Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are.
2. Lithuania is right above this little piece of Russia that's not even attached to the rest of Russia! Discontinuous!
3. Alaska and Hawaii are disconnected and hecka far away from the rest of the US. Now, actually, I knew this already, of course. But this was the first time it dawned on me how odd it is that Alaska is part of the US. Why? It's enormous, and far, and NOT EVEN CONNECTED. I asked TJ why we wanted it as a state, and he said he thought Russia sold it to us cheap, and I asked why we bought it even if it was cheap and he said he didn't know.
4. I now know where Yemen is. I also know which one's Qatar and which one's the UAE and which piece is Oman. I also noticed that Bahrain is tiny. It's like the Belize of the Middle East.
5. Eritrea and Ethiopia are really close to Israel, which explains why there are Jewish Ethiopians. This is something I couldn't get a handle on as a child, but that's because I never realized that Ethiopia was that close. Sorry for being an idiot, but I haven't looked at maps like this since junior high, and apparently in junior high I wasn't paying enough attention.
Next stop: I'm going to go look at southeast Asia and get a handle on all that Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam stuff.
P.S. This all reminds me of an interesting story about when Zach Berman and I were sharing Amanda's tiny apartment in Greenpoint that one summer. There was this little girl named Itsel upstairs, and she always came down asking if Amanda was back yet, and Zach kept saying, "No, she's in Cambodia," and I guess Itsel thought that must be a place in Queens or something because an hour later she'd ask again. So finally Zach got out the atlas to show her how far away it was, and immediately her eyes glazed over and she almost fainted from disinterest and then she went back to coloring with markers. This is why kids don't learn about geography - they don't know that it's interesting until they're 32 and realize that if they were asked to draw a map of the world, it wouldn't even be funny.
The End.
1. I finally nailed down exactly where Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are.
2. Lithuania is right above this little piece of Russia that's not even attached to the rest of Russia! Discontinuous!
3. Alaska and Hawaii are disconnected and hecka far away from the rest of the US. Now, actually, I knew this already, of course. But this was the first time it dawned on me how odd it is that Alaska is part of the US. Why? It's enormous, and far, and NOT EVEN CONNECTED. I asked TJ why we wanted it as a state, and he said he thought Russia sold it to us cheap, and I asked why we bought it even if it was cheap and he said he didn't know.
4. I now know where Yemen is. I also know which one's Qatar and which one's the UAE and which piece is Oman. I also noticed that Bahrain is tiny. It's like the Belize of the Middle East.
5. Eritrea and Ethiopia are really close to Israel, which explains why there are Jewish Ethiopians. This is something I couldn't get a handle on as a child, but that's because I never realized that Ethiopia was that close. Sorry for being an idiot, but I haven't looked at maps like this since junior high, and apparently in junior high I wasn't paying enough attention.
Next stop: I'm going to go look at southeast Asia and get a handle on all that Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam stuff.
P.S. This all reminds me of an interesting story about when Zach Berman and I were sharing Amanda's tiny apartment in Greenpoint that one summer. There was this little girl named Itsel upstairs, and she always came down asking if Amanda was back yet, and Zach kept saying, "No, she's in Cambodia," and I guess Itsel thought that must be a place in Queens or something because an hour later she'd ask again. So finally Zach got out the atlas to show her how far away it was, and immediately her eyes glazed over and she almost fainted from disinterest and then she went back to coloring with markers. This is why kids don't learn about geography - they don't know that it's interesting until they're 32 and realize that if they were asked to draw a map of the world, it wouldn't even be funny.
The End.
posted by Dubin at 9:29 PM
5 Comments:
Except that one time I went on a road trip with Zach Berman and also Sam, Adam and Nick (Garchik, Noily, Endres) to somewhere in Colorado for no particular reason and Sam and Zach had these showdowns about who could draw a more accurate map of Europe or the US free form. They tied. They also tied with respect to a map of Africa.
E-doob, I commend you on your journey around the globe. I have also been feeling the same way about my lack of world geography, and how it all ties into the rest of the world calling us anglo-centric. So, thanks to you and your blog, I will also be starting my own geography class. This way next time I am a part of a cnversation that involves knowing where a place outside the US is located I won't sound like "that American."
Dlove
my dad & i are obsessed with google earth. i'm gonna look up some of the stuff you mentioned.
Oh good, an excuse to plug my favorite online map game. Quick, simple, and fun. Enjoy!
along with the whole manifest destiny thing in general, i think another reason we wanted alaska was to get closer to/be able to claim the north pole.
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