Following the Equator

10 things Americans should know about the world

We Americans come from a big, powerful and influential country, to say the least. As if being a big (No. 3 in population) and wealthy (No. 1 economy) weren't enough, we've also managed to have a disproportionately large world influence culturally. It’s like Goliath becoming the planet’s most popular TV-show host.

It's long been too easy for us Americans to be content to gaze a bit too admiringly at our own navels when it comes to our world view; this dulls our appreciation of how much of our everyday lives is provided to us by other countries that are often half a world away.

As part of the 2009 Geography Awareness Week Blog-a-thon, hosted by National Geographic's My Wonderful World Campaign, this blog post required us to boil down, to a list of just 10, the things that Americans should know about their world. It seems to us that the best use of these 10 is to help close the gaps we may have in fully appreciating our daily interdependence with the wider world.

Here we go:

So that's what Clint Eastwood sounds like

The first movie my wife ever saw in the original English version was The Bridges of Madison County. She was quite taken with the experience of hearing Clint Eastwood's real voice for the first time; until that point, she'd only heard Clint dubbed into Spanish, by a Spanish actor who probably also dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks.  

More movies would bring her more revelations: Jack Nicholson's real voice, Robert De Niro's real voice, and the real voices of a host of other Americans, right on down to Steve Urkel (American TV shows were dubbed into Spanish, too). For her, there was no comparing the English voice to the Spanish dubbing: The real English was far superior and far more satisfying. 

Focus On: European license plates

If you find yourself in a tour bus on a highway somewhere in central Europe, looking out at the license plates of the cars passing by, you might think Europeans have devised a public way to grade drivers.  

There are cars whose license plates bear an "A"; presumably they are the best drivers. Then there are those license plates marked with a "B"; good drivers still, one supposes, but could be better with more road practice. Before you know it, license plates marked "D" and even "F" pass by—with drivers either oblivious to their poor grade or defiantly refusing to let it bother them. 

Suddenly, as you wonder why you haven't seen a "C" driver all morning, an "E" drives by. An extra rung on the ladder of shame before hitting "F," perhaps? Then a "P." A driver graded on a pass/fail basis, maybe? Then an "NL." Not Listed? No License? 

If the grading-system hypothesis is beginning to feel like a stretch, it's because it is. The letters represent the country the car (and driver) is from. "A" is Austria. "B" is Belgium. "D" is Germany (Deutschland). "E" is Spain (España). "F" is France. "P" is Portugal. And "NL" is the Netherlands.

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 Week and Photo of the Week. We debuted Life on Tour, introduced EF on YouTube and EF on Facebook and promoted the EF Tours group on Flickr (above). And, along the way, we encountered a lot of inspiring travelers.

Following the Equator also was nominated for a Blogger's Choice Award and finished fifth out of 1,177 blogs for Best Travel Blog. Thank you to everyone who supported our blog in 2008 by voting, reading, sharing, commenting and subscribing. We're looking forward to an even more successful 2009.

Geography Awareness Week

It's Geography Awareness Week, and the good folks at the My Wonderful World campaign are celebrating with a wonderful new website.

The weeklong celebration promotes the importance of geography education in the United States, and the new website features access to "geo-tours" for Google Earth, tools for exploring the world's cultures and environments, and insight into geotechnologies and careers. It's an invaluable resource for promoting geography.

In addition, our friends at the My Wonderful World blog are commemorating the event with a week of special blog posts. Be sure to check out "Five Reasons to Celebrate Geography Awareness Week" and "A Brief History of Geography Awareness Week."

Geography Awareness Week was established in 1987 by presidential proclamation, but it has been the success of ventures such as
My Wonderful World—a National Geographic-led campaign that extends awareness far and wide—that has turned the week into
a true celebration of geography.

Geography games galore

It's been awhile since we've written about a good global awareness game, but today we hit the jackpot.

Our favorite map blog, Cartophilia: Maps and Map Memorabilia, pointed us to a great gaming site called Sporcle. The site is filled with identification games, including dozens of geography games.

You can try naming all 53 capitals of Africa, all 48 flags of Asia, all 32 counties of Ireland, all 13 bridges of London or even the 25 most populous cities of the world. I tried one of the more popular games— the countries of Europe (above). I named 37 out of the 47.

How about you? Give it a try, and tell us which games you liked
and how you scored in the comments below.

Top 20 Imaginary Lines

Our post last week about the Real Equator got me thinking about Earth's imaginary lines—those lines we can't see but still observe.

Look at a globe or map, and you'll see all kinds of imaginary lines running all over the place. I started to ponder the most prominent imaginary lines in the world. What are the most important? The most famous? And why?

To address those questions, Following the Equator compiled a list of the Top 20 Imaginary Lines. What do you think? Is one line better than another? Did we overlook any lines? Scrutinize our list and post your comments below.

World Heritage map update

The World Heritage Centre concluded its annual map outreach campaign after fulfilling 9,000 requests in nine weeks.

The World Heritage map, which locates all 851 World Heritage properties, is still available to be downloaded, along with the past four World Heritage Maps.

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 pointed us toward an online quiz to test (and teach) African geography.

I'm getting better at deciphering between Niger and Nigeria, for instance, but I still need to work on remembering Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea.

The other side of the world

It's nearly every American kid's belief that China is on the exact opposite side of the world. That's what we were told, right? Dig a hole straight through, and you'd arrive in China.

But like a lot of things we grew up believing, that's just not so. This map proves it. From anywhere in the continental United States, the exact opposite is somewhere in the Indian Ocean—between Australia and Africa.

The map superimposes the inverse globe on top of itself to illustrate antipodes—the diametrically opposite point from any place on Earth. Most of Earth's land mass is opposite water—no big surprise considering water covers 70 percent of the surface.

Gadling's Aaron Hotfelder directed our attention to the antipodal map and an even more precise, interactive map that can plot exact opposite points around the globe.

For the record, the exact opposite of Xi'an, China, is Rinconada de Parral—a city about 60 miles outside Santiago, Chile.

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 the largest denomination of any currency in the world, but don't get too excited. At the current rate, it could be worthless in a few weeks. According to the BBC, one $10 million note (or bearer cheque, as its called) is worth less than $4 U.S. on the black market. That means the $100,000 cheque pictured is worth less than 4 U.S. pennies.

Gadling pointed us to a blog that describes Zimbabwe's rampant hyperinflation. The writer reports that the new $10,000,000 bill is the same color, layout and design as an old $20 bill (which expired in July). Fifteen months ago, that $20 bill was worth $0.025 USD; that same bill is now worth $0.00000005 USD. Hence, the $10 million note.

To illustrate what that means in daily life, here's how much it cost to buy a beer back in December.

Now, on to more Travel Tidbits …

How many countries can you name in five minutes?

Office productivity dropped slightly this afternoon as we competed to identify countries in this online game.

Out of 270 total countries, how many can you name in five minutes?

It's trickier than you may think. You definitely need a good grasp of geography—and especially spelling. You could waste valuable minutes trying to spell the country whose capital is Baku, for example.

For the record, 82 countries seems to be the high score here, so far.

UPDATE: The new high score is a whopping 130! If you like this game, check out our recent post, "Geography games galore," for information on a whole bunch of cool games.