I’m starting to feel worldly.

Yes, it’s true. Learning about geography makes me feel super worldly and knowledgeable about life. I feel less caught up in my own business and more in tune with the world around me. It’s great.

Yesterday I started focusing on the Caribbean/Central American. I’m grouping them together. Sporcle actually considers both of those areas as a part of North America. But how can something be called North and Central at the same time? I find this odd and confusing. So in my mind, North America consists of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. But I can see how Central American countries are technically connected to Mexico and are on the same continent. So I guess it's ok.

But since I’m confident in my abilities to locate the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, I’m not including them in my time of study. I’m not so confident, however, in locating Grenada, for example. When I took the Sporcle quiz, I got a respectable 19 out of 23. This is my best score yet! Yay home continent!

Life oddity of the day:

While in college, I frequently rode the bus from my apartment to the main part of campus. I consider myself to be a fairly friendly person so I usually engaged in small talk with the bus driver, Billy. Billy was not the youngest of fellows; he was probably in his late 70s. He was also quite hard of hearing, so I often had to repeat myself or speak at a volume that felt like yelling.

Billy was quite a character. He had strong opinions about everything and did not seem to fully grasp social norms. He was also pretty forgetful, so he came up with cute little (semi-inappropriate) nicknames for the patrons of the bus. He started calling me Smiley. Most people would probably find this endearing… but I found it confusing. At first, I thought it was meant to be ironic. Like… maybe he was trying to imply that I never smile. But I don’t think that I smile more or less than the average person. It’s like calling someone of average height Shortie. Is it supposed to be accurate or ironic? But I digress.

One day, I boarded the bus and was chatting with Billy. He laughed at something I said (it was most likely extremely witty) and asked if I had a boyfriend. I hesitantly said no. He then took it upon himself to ask the next guy who boarded the bus if he would be willing to take me on a date. The guy smiled awkwardly and sat down without saying anything. I got off the bus as quickly as possible. I didn’t talk to Billy as much after that and even gave him hate glares from time to time. But he still called me Smiley. Don't you love it when old men try to set you up with random people? I know I do...

What’s the deal with all the Guinea?

Heaven help me, but I have begun the process of learning Africa’s geography. Here are the main reasons why this is a struggle:

1. There are tons of countries in Africa (54 to be precise), most of which have indistinct shapes.
2. The countries are often difficult to spell… like Mozambique and Mauritius.
3. There are quite of few countries that I have never heard of (let alone, know their geographical location)… like Seychelles, Eritrea and Burkina Faso.
4. There are some countries that have several versions of the same name. For example: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Can’t these governments come up with more original names? Oh, and then there’s Papua New Guinea, but that’s in Oceania [You have my permission to be impressed that I knew that without looking it up].

So basically, Africa is going to be a challenge. When I initially took the sporcle quiz for Africa, I believe my score was something close to 5 out of 54. I had heard of many of these countries, but was not able to name them on command and definitely could not locate them.

Story time:

It’s my sophomore year of college. I’m sitting in my apartment on a Friday night (because I’m cool) with two of my roommates. We were probably playing cards or acting a fool or watching Gilmore Girls. Those were the stand-by activities of choice. Suddenly, we heard a thud on our door. Not a knock. A
knock usually comes in threes… but this was just one loud noise. One of my lovely roommates went to investigate the situation by looking through the peep hole. She busted out laughing because all she was through the peep hole was a pair of legs lying on the ground. For some reason, after this discovery, she decided it would be an excellent idea to then open the door.

So she opens the door and a guy falls (literally) into our apartment. And… he is unconscious. It was evident from the smell that this unconsciousness was due to a large helping of alcohol. We had never seen this fellow before in our lives and we not sure whether to laugh or be concerned that there was an unconscious, average-height and weight, white male sprawled on the floor of our apartment. We all looked at each other to gauge what our reaction should be. Utter confusion was the verdict.

Thankfully, he only laid there for a little while before awakening. Not surprisingly, he was quite confused about how he arrived at his location. We were not able to help him much. He quickly stood up and the proceeded to introduce himself to each one of us individually, complete with a handshake.
His name was Ryan and I wish we had become best friends, but I never saw him again. I guess we just didn’t roll with the same crowd.

What can I say?

This week I’m studying Europe. I’ve already improved my score on Sporcle to a consistent 37/47. Progress. But I’m struggling with countries like San Marino, Kosovo and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Shortly after I started Experi-month #4, I realized that this is not going to make for very exciting reading. I apologize. Listening to someone talk about their ability to memorize things is probably akin to watching paint dry.

Lucky for you, I have decided to supplement this month’s entries with awkward stories from my life that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. For those of you that don’t know, my life attracts a high level of awkwardness. Some events from my life are funny, some are tragic, and others are just plain weird. I will try to stick to the funny ones, but I make no promises.

Many of you may have heard this first story already. I tell it frequently and it always gets a laugh at cocktail parties. I’m just kidding... no one invites me to cocktail parties. But if they did, I would totally tell this story and there would be a magical moment of joyous laughter. But anyway, if you’ve heard it, I’m sorry. I will try to write about a more obscure story next time.

So I was at the gym one day. Usually, I frequent the elliptical machine, but that day I decided to be bold and run on the treadmill. Let me preface the next part by saying that there was a torrential downpour happening outside. Silly me for thinking I would be safe indoors. I was running at full speed, which is probably a brisk walk for most normal people, but I have short legs. I was just trotting along, minding my own business when suddenly, the power goes out in the entire facility. Normally, this would not be a big deal. But I bet you didn’t know that when the power is cut from a treadmill, it does not slow down gradually like you might expect. Oh no, it just shuts off abruptly, sending the unsuspecting runner across the room.

The treadmill hurled me to my right and onto the floor. Wouldn’t it have been nice if I was on one of those treadmills that have side bars? Yeah. Too bad I wasn’t. So normally, this would not have been terribly embarrassing. But wait, there’s more.

Not only was I flung off a treadmill, going full speed... but so was the attractive gentleman next to me. Yes, that’s right. I collided with a hot guy. There is no happy ending to this story. I am not currently dating this fellow. I did not get his number. I did not even get any eye contact with him... it was pitch black in the room, after all. Needless to say, I never run on treadmills anymore when the weather is dicey and I try to avoid running next to hot guys. If this happened to anyone else, I would tell them that the odds are slim that that sequence of events would ever happen to them again. But people never say that to me, because they know that it probably would.

Experi-month #4: Geography

“Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.” --Paul Rodriguez

Two things bother me about my public school education. The first is that I had to have a security escort in order to go to the bathroom. The second is that I have an extremely limited knowledge of geography.

Yes, I am somewhat ashamed to admit that other than being able to name all of the 50 states and locate them on a map, I am a geography idiot. If you name a country, I can probably tell you what continent it’s on… and maybe even its general location. But if you give me a map and ask me to point to that country, the odds are I have no clue. Take, for example, Switzerland. I know that it’s in Europe… most likely northern Europe (since I associate it with cold weather and lots of mountains). But I have no idea what countries it borders or anything specific like that.

So obviously, if that is the extent of my geographical knowledge of Switzerland, imagine my knowledge of the more obscure countries. Zip. Hence, I decided this would be an ideal topic for an Experi-month.

You may be wondering what prompted my interest in learning more about geography. Excellent inquiry. Answer: sprocle.com. I am on this website much more frequently than I should be. If you’ve never taken a sporcle quiz, you need to right now. But be warned that it is incredibly addicting. You can easily be on sporcle for hours without realizing it. Or is that just me?

So I was sporcling one day and I stumbled upon the geography section. I decided to try the Europe quiz. I was fairly confident in this one because I have traveled Europe more than any other continent (including North America). But I quickly realized there is a big difference between naming off European countries (which is what you have to do on the quiz) and actually knowing where they are located on a map. After I named the basics (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria, etc.), I began to struggle. Who knew that there were 47 European countries?! Sadly, I only named 26, which is barely half. The average score for that quiz is 42 countries. Ignorant American: party of one? Sad, but true.

So then to try and boost my self-esteem, I decided to try the North American geography quiz. Surely, I will do better than average on that one. It’s my home continent, after all. But no. Fail. Apparently there are 23 countries in North America! This is news to me. Those island countries in the Caribbean are super tricky. I still only managed to name 14, which is still more than half, but far below the average score. I am trying to make myself feel better by noting that people who take these quizzes could very well be topographers.

So while I do have an excellent knowledge of the states, my international geography skills are immensely lacking. This is unacceptable and must change. Thank you, Sporcle, for pointing out my insufficiencies in life.