Africa
10 Ways Travel Can Make You a Better, Happier Teacher
By Lillie Marshall | Boston Public Schools Teacher My name is Lillie Marshall, and I am a 6-foot-tall Bostonian who taught high school English in the Boston Public Schools before taking a leave of absence to travel around the world for nine months. Now that I’m back in Boston happily teaching in BPS again, it’s become Read more…
Our 10 Best of 2009
Thank you to everyone for reading, sharing and supporting Following the Equator in 2009. We sure enjoyed posting great stories, facts, tips and profiles about educational travel and the group leaders who make it possible. We’re already planning some exciting new things for 2010. Most of all, though, we want to hear from you. What Read more…
Friday Fun Fact: March equinox
Today is the March equinox—the moment that the sun passes directly overhead the equator and the official beginning of spring. In fact, the precise moment came at 11:44 UTC (7:44 a.m. on the East Coast) today, when, according to EarthSky, the sun was over the Atlantic Ocean, just off the west coast of equatorial Africa—south Read more…
Peters Projection Map
We recently hung up a new world map at our house, and it’s kind of freaking me out. It’s the Peters Projection World Map, and it alters the traditional shape of land masses to more accurately render their relative size, or so they say. The traditional map that we’re used to (and generally hangs in Read more…
Watch African game drives live
One of my dream travel experiences is to go on an African safari. So I was excited the other night when I found WildEarth.TV and even more excited last night when I got to watch a leopard and her baby cubs live in the African bush. WildEarth broadcasts live online around-the-clock from the Djuma Game Read more…
Our 10 Best of 2008
This is the 320th post of 2008 at Following the Equator, and we decided to commemorate our blog’s first full calendar year with a top-10 list of favorite posts. We had a lot of stories, videos, photos, interviews, tips and perspectives about educational travel. We launched some regular weekly features, including our Tip of the Read more…
Mark Twain’s World
Mark Twain never grows old. That’s the premise of the new Time magazine that just hit newsstands. A gorgeous portrait of Twain graces the July 14 cover of Time‘s Annual Making of America Issue, which illustrates how Twain not only was the man of his times (“America’s Original Superstar,” he’s called) but also a man Read more…
Ich bin ein … Amerikaner
The United States Census Bureau includes a section on the census that asks Americans to state their ancestry. In the 2000 census, 80 percent of respondents complied, dutifully stating their origins. The results are interesting and possibly unexpected. The most commonly claimed ancestry in the United States is … German. Forty-two million Americans (or 15 Read more…
Learning African Geography
Whenever I play the highly addictive Traveler IQ Challenge on Facebook or try naming as many countries as I can in five minutes or even just play with the globe with my daughter, I’m usually thwarted by my lack of African geography knowledge. Well, I finally have found some help. The Lonely Planet Travel Blog Read more…
Travel Tidbits: Can you spare $10 million?
Think the U.S. economy is problematic? It’s nothing compared to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Inflation is so bad—believed to be 50,000 percent annually—that Zimbabwe’s central bank just began issuing notes worth 10,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. Yes, 10 million bucks. That’s the equivalent of 100 of the bills pictured. Ten million dollars is believed to be Read more…
