Following the Equator | EF's Educational Travel Blog

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 do you want to read and see on this blog—more interviews with teachers, more amazing travel photos, more fundraising and recruiting ideas, more tidbits about the things to see and do on tour? Let us know at equator@ef.com.

As we look ahead to an exciting year of travel in 2010, we thought we'd take a quick look back at a successful 2009 and our 10 favorite blog posts of the year. Feel free to post your own comments below.

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:

Friday Fun Fact: Europe's longest river

Europe has more than a dozen famous rivers—including the Danube, Thames, Seine, Tiber, Elbe and Rhine, to name a few—but its longest river exists entirely in Russia.

The Volga River flows nearly 2,300 miles, beginning northwest of Moscow, through 11 of Russia's 20 largest cities and draining in the Caspian Sea. Although it's Europe longest river, it's only the 15th longest river in the world.

Photo: specialplan via Flickr (CC license)

Group Leader Spotlight: Mike O'Neal

Mike O’Neal, a seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher from Kirkland, Washington, never wanted to be the type of person who one day would reflect upon his life and say, “Coulda, shoulda.”

When it comes to traveling, he certainly has accomplished that goal. Mike has taken more than a dozen EF tours and traveled on five Teacher Convention Tours. From Kenya to Russia to the Galápagos Islands, Mike has explored six continents with EF!

Mike (pictured above at a Turkish market) took a few minutes to talk about how travel impacts his students, planning and recruiting his tours and watching the pelicans and sharks in the Galápagos:

Literary London

Where are the best literary destinations in the world? You'll find them in Great Britain, at least according to one list.

World Hum tipped us off to a list of the world's best literary destinations, according to editors at the travel website TripAdvisor.

London—home to Dickens, Chaucer and Keats—edged out Shakespeare's Stratford for the top spot. Edinburgh, Scotland—home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and J.K. Rowling—placed third.

Three U.S. cities made the list: New York, Concord (Massachusetts) and San Francisco.

Friday Fun Fact: Future Olympics

When the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics concludes Sunday, the world's attention will turn from Beijing to London four years hence.

London will host the 2012 Summer Olympics, becoming the first city to host the Games three times (also 1948 and 1908). The 2012 London Olympics will run from July 27 through August 12, 2012.

The site of the 2016 Summer Olympics will be chosen October 2, 2009. The four finalists are Chicago, United States; Madrid, Spain; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Tokyo, Japan.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver, Canada, and the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia.

Education around the world

The February issue of Edutopia magazine is out. It's especially worthwhile because the theme is global education.

The cover story, "As the World Learns: Education as a Vital Global Marketplace Represents the Future," is particularly interesting with reports on how students are taught in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, India, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, Sweden and Uganda. There's also a report on Room to Read, a global nonprofit that builds schools and libraries in developing countries. Plus, there are additional global education resources.

The other cool thing in this issue is the Sage Advice page, which asks, "How do you prepare your students to be citizens of the world?" Some good responses that are worth reading.

Edutopia is the website of The George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit that celebrates and encourages innovation in schools. The monthly magazine is free to qualified subscribers. You can even get the ultracool digital version, which looks and reads just like the printed version.

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 …

Travel Tidbits: A conquering hero

One of the 20th century's greatest explorers, Sir Edmund Hillary, died January 10. He and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first known people to reach the top of Mount Everest.

Hillary and Norgay literally stood on top of the world on May 29, 1953, when they reached the summit of Mount Everest, 29,035 feet above sea level, the highest point on Earth. Of reaching the pinnacle moment, Hillary wrote:

"Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest. … Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation—these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed."

Since then, more than 3,000 people have ascended Mount Everest, but Hillary—like Roald Amundsen reaching the South Pole in 1911, Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic in 1927 and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon in 1969—was the first. He devoted much of the rest of his life to assisting the mountain people of Nepal.

World Hum and Gadling both paid tribute to the man whom New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark called "a colossus." You also can read obituaries from the Associated Press and The New York Times. The New Zealand native was 88.

It's been awhile, so we have several other Travel Tidbits to catch up on:

Travel Tidbits

Check out a few of our favorite travel-related items from the past week ...