Summer Plans

Ecuador!

This summer I will be spending 5 weeks in Ecuador. I am traveling there with a school group from Taylor University. I am looking forward to this experience and I am both excited and nervous. The program will be for a total of 9 Spanish credit hours, so I will be very busy. I will receive 8 credit hours from the classes that I take in Ecuador, and 1 credit hour for keeping a journal while I am there. In my journal I will record what I do during the day, and also cultural observations.

Our group will fly into Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We will spend a few days there, learning about the country and the culture. Then we will travel to Cuenca, another major city. In Cuenca, I will live with a host family and will take classes at the university. I have also heard that we will be taking dancing lessons, to learn some of Ecuador's traditional dances.

I do not know very much now about what I will learn, or the activities that I will participate in, but I am really looking forward to it. I am excited to try the food, and to spend time with my host family, and to develop my language skills. Here are a few facts that I have looked up to help get me started in learning about Ecuador:

- The official name is : Republic of Ecuador.
- Geographically speaking, Ecuador is about the size of Colorado.
- They have a mild, varied climate in the mountainous valleys of the Andes, and in the Amazon jungle lowlands it is hot and humid.
- The total population is about 14 million people.
- The predominant religion is Roman Catholic.

Surname Study

KOHN
This is my current last name, and I was always told that my last name was German. Which would make sense, because my family is predominantly German. I had heard that it was also similar to Cohen, which was Hebrew for priest. Public Profiler says that Kohn is Jewish in origin, and that it comes from the Hebrew language, so I guess that my family did have the story straight. It was interesting to find that it was most popular in the following countries:

- Luxembourg
- Germany
- United States
- Austria
- Australia

Interestingly enough, Germany was not the top country, but on the top cities list, most of them were German. Two New-Zealand regions showed up on the top five list of regions.



O'NEILL
This is my fiance, Peter's last name. His family is mostly Swedish, but Public Profiler states that this surname is Celtic, and comes from the Irish language. I found it interesting that although his last name is Irish(English), and mine is Hebrew, they share 2 out of the 5 most popular countries. The most popular countries for the last name, O'Neill are:

- Australia
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- New-Zealand
- Luxembourg

All of the top cities are in the United Kingdom, and the top regions are all in New-Zealand and the United Kingdom.




I think that the connections between my current last name and my future last name are interesting and fun! I think that someday I would like to create a detailed family tree to find out when my ancestors came over from Europe. I think that if I was able to graph some of that information, it would be interesting to see.

Youtube in South Asia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKILQPBcVTI

This is a video called "Free Hugs in Korea." My fiance's brother and sister-in-law live in Taejon, South Korea, where they teach at a Christian Academy. They had shown me a video clip of an extremely dangerous intersection they saw in Seoul once, and I wanted to find a video clip of that. While I was looking, I came across this video of a young man giving free hugs to anyone who wanted one on the streets in a busy city in Korea (probably in Seoul).

The video shows a little bit about the characteristics of urban Korea. I thought it was interesting to see how few people approached the man to give him a hug. I even saw several men, not allow their girlfriends or wives to go near him. It just seems like many of the people on the streets there did not appear to trust him, but it could be that in Korea, such close contact with strangers seems strange. I guess that in America, people are not really that likely to hug someone on the street that they've never met before.

While I was watching it I thought about the internet filters used by many countries in East Asia. I doubt that this video would be blocked in South Korea, but I think that it quite possibly is blocked in China and North Korea. It would not surprise me that communist countries would not want their people to see someone who loved and accepted everyone enough to give them free hugs on the street. It would not fit in with the communist mindset of everyone doing their designated job and listening to the government. In a communist society free hugs for the general public would have no place. I think that the internet filter in countries like China and North Korea, not only sheild their citizens from freedom of press and information, but it also sheilds them from love and hope, because it does not allow them to see that there might be something more than the life that they know. It does not allow them to see that there are people and a world outside of their borders that is not bent on following rules and turning a profit, but on showing kindness and building friendships with one another. It especially doesn't allow them to see that there are people who want to share the wonderfully freeying message of salvation with them as well.

So I picked this video because it's hopeful. It does show a little about the urban geography of Korea, but I think that the thoughts and questions that I just discussed also have a lot to say about the geography of the area, and the controling governments that govern South Korea's neightbors.

Bizzare Foods

Unlike Andrew Zimmern I have never had any live animals or fresh blood for lunch. I did try sushi once, but some of the most unique foods I have ever eaten were in Hawaii. The first one was kind of plain and tasted like pasty water. It was a purple-gray watery paste called Poi and it was made from a type of purple potato that grows in Hawaii. The second was Haupia which is a white coconut pudding. It was served more like finger-jello squares, but had a creamy taste. I really liked it!




I have also tried some strange things made from plants. I have had rose hips tea and rose hips candy. Flowers are wonderful, but they smell much better than they taste. When I tried both the tea and the candy tasted as if I had accidentally sprayed some perfume into my mouth. It turns out that the use of rose hips as a health agent originated in Sweden and they are valued for their powerful antioxidants. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_hip)

My fiance and his family went to South Korea for Christmas a few years ago to visit his brother and his sister-in-law who teach at a Christian school there. During their visit Peter tried Kimchi (or Gimchi), a traditional fermented Korean dish that includes cabbage and spices, and comes in many varieties. He also tried popular Korean ginger candies, that were offered to him by their hosts. It was a hardcandy that had a strong bitter, ginger flavor. I tried them too, and it was so strong that it difficult to keep it in my mouth.

My dad has eaten some even stranger things than me. He was in the Navy and during his training they were in Taipei, Taiwan. He and his buddies got to eat some raw octopus. They said eating the tentacles was like chewing on rubber bands. That sounds pretty gross to me. I don't think that I would ever try raw octopus.

The second food that my dad has eaten isn't really bizarre, just unique. My great grandma made pickled watermelon rhines and my dad liked to eat them. The watermelon rhines were cubed and pickled with cinnamon. I've never tried them, but I would love to hunt down the recipe sometime.

G-20 Summit 2009 - London

The G-20 members include: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America, and the European Union.

The picture above shows all 20 heads of states posing for a photo. This is one of the more candid shots as you can see some of the leaders, including our president visiting with their neighbors.

The Middle America View

I chose to take the perspective from how I think that the people of Central America may view themselves in relation to North and South America. It seems like for most people in Central America the major industry is tourism, and that tourism is usually focused around the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore the people of Central America would be looking mainly to North America for their tourism industry, but also they seem to have a closer cultural tie to the countries of South America. I chose to make the map center on the Caribbean, because I feel that is where this Northern tourism industry, and Southern culture come together, and where the people of Central America place their focus.

I chose to turn the world "sideways" from how we normally view it, because I feel that Central America is not only a blending of two ways of life, but it also has it's own unique culture. I do not think that Central America exists because it was a transition area between North and South America, but because it has it's own culture, it's own unique geographical features, and its own history. That is why I wanted to lay the map on its "side." This way, no one part the Americas appears to be "over" another part. Every person in each North, Central, and South America is valuable, as is there culture.

Slumdog Millionaire

Watching this movie was very much a cross-cultural experience for me. Prior to seeing this I had little understanding of anything that occurred in India apart from the Taj Mahal, the beautiful fabrics, and that areas of poverty existed. The plot line of the movie was fascinating, thrilling, and yet painfully eye opening to the kind of life that exists just halfway around the globe.

One thing that stuck out about the geography of India was the fact that whenever the characters traveled between places, each area was so drastically different, yet each area had the common element of extreme poverty. There was the rural slums where the boys lived with their mother, the orphanage in the jungle, the Taj Mahal, and then the city with tall skyscrapers. In each of these places poverty was evident, because their were always orphaned children and slums of some sort. It was interesting to see how much more crowded India appears to be than even the busiest of cities like New York.

Looking at the cultural side of things there were also some distinct characteristics. The gap between the social classes in India was much more drastic than the gap in the United States. There did not seem to be much of a "middle class." There were the extremely wealthy gang leaders, and the poor people of the slums. Everyone else seemed to fall somewhere into a hierarchy between the two extremes. The economy in India also appeared very strained in the movie. So many of the buildings that they stayed in were either unfinished or abandoned. This is probably due to the lack of distribution of wealth that was conveyed in the movie.


Everyone seemed to be concerned with making money. Those who had it, wanted more, and those who didn't have it saw it as their way out of the slums. That probably also explained why "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" was such a popular show. At one point Jamal asks Latika, why people like to watch the show. She explains that it is an escape, and she is right! It is the one hope that the majority of the people of India have to turn their lives around. They do not have a voice if they are poor. This is especially true for the women of India, who seemed subject to the highest bidder, as it was in Latika's case.

I am glad to have seen this movie, but I am also troubled by the amount of hardships that the people of India live under every single day. It was interesting to see what Jamal and Salim did to earn money as they grew up, like managing a toilet or leading fake tours. They never seemed to stop and feel sorry for themselves. Whenever they met a dead end they simply looked around for a different avenue, and then set off whole heartedly down that new path. Slumdog Millionaire was a very powerful and great movie, but one in which the viewer needs to be ready to see the harsh realities of the world that we live in.