Yesterday I was talking about my fascination with flags and languages. And since Rick told me he couldn't wait to hear me talk about my love of maps (I'm not sure if he was being sarcastic or not...), I thought I'd write about that today. I can actually remember exactly where I discovered this interest I seem to have in all things global -- it was sixth grade, third period, in a class called (what else?) "world culture." Up until that point, I can't remember learning all that much about other cultures in my school classes. But perhaps once you get to sixth grade -- to the mature ranks of middle school -- you're old enough to start learning more about the world.
Every Friday in world culture class would be a sort of cultural show-and-tell -- anyone who wanted to could bring in clothing, food, books, or any other sort of object that was unique to their culture, or their parents' culture, or their grandparents' culture, etc. Kids whose families came from all over the world were in that class -- Japan, India, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Sweden (I may have written some sort of presentation about the Swedish side of my family for that class, I can't remember...). Kids would even show up to class dressed entirely in traditional clothing, knowing they'd have to explain their outfit to everyone they passed in the hallway. I was captivated by these tiny, 45-minute, Friday-morning immersions into other cultures.
And then there were the maps -- maps of South America, maps of Africa, maps of Asia. We'd have our boxes of colored pencils, and go to work labeling each country. I'd make sure the green border of Brazil didn't run over into the blue border of Boliva or the red border of Peru, and as I was doing so, I'd wonder what it might be like to be IN Brazil or Boliva or Peru. We had to memorize all the countries in Africa and plot them on a map, which, over the years, I've mostly forgotten. And we had to memorize the countries of the Middle East and plot them on a map, which, over the years, I've somehow remembered. We even learned a song to make it easier -- I can only remember one line -- "Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Em-ir-ates."
Qatar was my favorite country when I was working on my Middle East memorization. How many times had I been taught in my English classes that "Q" is always followed by "U"? Yet here was the rebel non-English Qatar, boldly displaying a U-less Q. I was very impressed. And while my teacher told us this country rhymed with "guitar," the consensus now seems to say the pronounciation is "cutter." Was I taught wrong? Have I been pronouncing Qatar incorrectly since sixth grade? I have yet to find a definitive answer, and I suppose I won't be hopping a plane to Doha any time soon. So I guess I'll trust my March 2003 issue of National Geographic, which had an interesting article on "KUT-ter."
Nowadays, I'm not only still fascinated by the maps I studied back in sixth grade, but I also love to study some of the places I never knew of when I was a kid. Like tiny islands in the middle of vast quantities of ocean. Places like Samoa, and Tahiti, and the Maldives, and Easter Island. I've been to Hawaii, but the Hawaiian islands are downright large compared with some of the other islands on this planet. Depending on how big a map is, the Maldives barely even register. Just tiny blue pinpricks stretching in a line south of India. Yet people are there right now -- living, working, swimming in the ocean, hanging out on what I imagine are perfect beaches.
And I suppose that's the general fascination maps hold for me -- just about anywhere you look, you see a place where right now, at this moment, lives are being lived. Things are happening. Planes full of travellers are landing. People are opening up shops for business. The daily news is being written. People are taking pictures. Different languages are being spoken, different flags are flying, different foods are being eaten. And it's all happening right now. For some reason, that realization was compelling and interesting to me years ago, when I colored the countries on my maps with pencils and memorized their places on the globe. And it's still interesting to me today.
I once read a quote from St. Augustine that said, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page." The idea of reading "only a page" of all those different countries seems like such a waste to me. So it's my intention to read as much of the book as possible, because I'm sure it has to be one of the greatest stories ever written. And the best part is, if I want to skip ahead and read the end, it won't spoil any of the suspense... :)
No comments:
Post a Comment