Next Blog

One of the things I like about "Blogger" is the international flavor. A few clicks into "next blog" and I had Turkey, Taiwan, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Mexico. How cool is that?

Yesterday we had Significant Other's cousins here for a graduation party. South Americans (Columbia), Germans, Americans --a deliciously international crowd, and the language flowed from English to German to Spanish and back again. We got the inside view of South American politics from an uncle who is unbelievably knowledgable. One realizes how little there is in the papers (never mind TV which is hopeless) about what is happening with our neighbors to the South. He gave a crash course about what life is like in Columbia (crazy) and its neighbors (politically crazy).

As the world becomes smaller, we Americans become more ignorant. When I was a little kid (eight or so), I had a map puzzle of the U.S., and when that became too easy, I graduated to a map puzzle of South America. How many of you could fill in the South American countries? Could I, anymore? Some, I think, would be a challenge, but not Chile or Brazil.

When we become obsessed with Britney, Jessica and Nicole, our brains die a little. It's interesting how many of the foreign blogs are in English. What are the odds of any American blogs in Turkish or Portugese?

End of rant. You can do something on the web. Type Uruguay or Senegal or Sri Lanka into Google and read up on a single country. Now you know something. Hey, it's not Dancing With the Stars but it's knowledge. A mustard seed of knowledge. How cool is that?

Grapeshot