Sentiments on Geography-

As the semester comes to a close, so do my blog entries on the wonders of this world.  As I look around myself, after experiencing this class, I think more geographically, especially as I start my travels home from CUNE.

My trip will be across two time zones and a series of different physical barriers which can only be crossed by plane.  I will be flying from Omaha to Chicago to Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska.  Now I think about the different mountain ranges I will be flying over, the different kinds of population centers I will see from the air (usually around water, like Chicago and Seattle), and the different climate zones through which I will be traveling.  How exciting!

My summer plans include enjoying spending time in the beautiful outdoors by camping, hiking, and fishing. I am also looking forward to spending time in my favorite places around my home town, like the local coffee shop Vagabond Blues (if ever you go to Palmer, you must stop in!).  I will be interning at my Church, working under my DCE with youth ministry activities and also at a drive-thru coffee stand.  But, my summer will consist also of some major geographical musing, as well.

For instance, I love to keep up with what is going on in the world- current events.  I have never tied current events and geography together before this semester. However, now I see how closely they are related!  While I watch the "happenings" going on in the Middle East with Palestine and Israel, I now can view the situation as a land dispute as well as religious differences.  The outbreak of the "Swine Flu" in Mexico, which is now called a "pandemic," I realize will likely travel to other North American nations and then spread out to the nations from which tourists visited Mexico, if it continues to be a problem.  I can also understand the the animosity between African peoples mostly stems from tribal boundaries interfering with country borders. Almost everything can be connected through Geography!

As I return home with my new epiphanies of the world through geography, I can view Alaska differently as well.  Why is Alaska this way? Well, I can basically figure out these kind of questions by looking at its geographical physical location.  This points to details about its climate, its relationships with other states/countries, and even its residents- like my family and I! Geography is at work in our lives, all around us.  It is the material which holds the world together as well as the map by which we understand it. 

Through Geography, we as people of a loving God can understand the beautiful, wonderful, magnificent world which he has given us.  It tells us about the people, the land, the globalization, the climate, the culture, the problems, the solutions, etc... The list goes on and on!  Through Geography we can fully appreciate the wonders God has given us in this planet we like to call Earth!

The Geography of Names

As I typed my surname "Kelly" into The World Names Profiler, I wasn't sure exactly what the results would look like.  It was not a surprise that the country with the most concentration of my name is Ireland, with a FPM of 13330.96 (a lot!).

I recreated the table below:

Country	FPM
IRELAND	13330.96
AUSTRALIA	2683.19
UNITED KINGDOM	1762.44
NEW-ZEALAND	1290.89
CANADA	1286.39
UNITED STATES	1124.82
ARGENTINA	36.2
LUXEMBOURG	34.01
NETHERLANDS	33.24
SWITZERLAND	30.03

What surprised me was that the United States was not second, but fell after Australia and New Zealand and the UK, even!  It is interesting think that in all of these locations I probably have distant relatives, and I am one of the odd balls who came to the United States back in the 1800s from Germany, which isn't even on this short list! There are even Kellys in Argentina, according to this site, which is really cool! I wonder if they are some of the German, Lutheran immigrants who settled in Southern Brazil and Argentina.  I was surprised at the diverse locations also included India!

I also wanted to enter in my mother's maiden name, Zieroth, because I had NEVER met anyone not related to her with this name.  I knew it was German so I thought there would be some there and in the US and maybe Canada...what did I find? Well, there are .47 millioin Zieroths in the United States, which is way more than I anticipated! However, the US is not even first on the list.  Before it are Germany, Canada, and Switzerland.  I can't help wondering what my Grandma will say when I tell her about this!

It is very interesting see the concentration of surnames (and consequently families) mapped out! Who knew that there were Kellys in Argentina as well as New Zealand! How wonderful is the diversity throughout our world! 

The Chinese Culture?

You can learn a lot about an area's culture by observing its people.  One way this can easily be done, today, is on the internet. Youtube is an easy way to find videos of...pretty much anything! I utilized this site to look into the Chinese culture.  Of course, I knew a little bit about the Chinese people from TV, school, and the Disney classic Mulan, but I thought viewing videos directly from the chinese people would be a good start to understand how geography affects their culture. 

The first video I watched, after typing "China" into the search bar, was from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLImQtyjI10 .  I wasn't really sure what to expect from a video entitled "Free Hugs in China!" but the title intrigued me.  The video shows a young man walking around a public square of a city with a "Free Hugs" sign.  At first, it is in black and white and the music is softer, while no one approaches him to get hugs. He is ignored. Finally, people start slowly going over to him and recieving free hugs. As this happens the music picks up tempo and the shot turns to color.  The symbolism of the color is really cool! As the video progresses, the sign is passed on to different people and color spreads through these individuals.  It shows what a little big of love can do to a community.

The second video I looked at was "Chinese Backstreet Boys- That Way."  This video was of two college age Chinese boys who lip synced to a 90s boy band song.  This video is pretty much hilarious!  It was really interesting to watch this, because I could tell that the boys probably didn't even know what the lyrics they were mouthing meant.  There were some Chinese words  written at the end as credits, but no English appeared in the clip.  A lot of the time the boy's mouths didn't even match the lyrics perfectly.  This video is shown on the site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2rZxCrb7iU. Just like any video a couple of teenagers in the United States would create, this was meant to make you laugh.

I had an enjoyable time viewing how the chinese makers of these videos portrayed themselves.  It was interesting because these two videos showed how closely related we are all as human beings.  The first video showed the importance of the expression of love, regardless of where you live.  I think that this kind of "Free Hugs" signs are probably more popular in countries with more freedom of expression, like the United States of America, but people did approach the hugger by the end of the clip.  I wonder if the idea for the video came from contact with western culture.  The second video with the American band's, the Backstreet Boys, song "That Way" was definitely a result of the communication between region and globalization. These two videos show the West's influence on China, since they have become more open to foreign cultures.  

These two videos were produced by youth and because of this I wonder if the younger generation of China is becoming even more open to this kind of influence from the West.  It will be exciting if the leaders of tomorrow's China can be positively impacted by the youth of Western countries.  These videos are just two examples of how the Chinese culture has fallen subject to the melting of foreign ideas via globalization.  

How wonderful that God has given us these resources to positively impact others who are tens of thousands of miles away from us!  It is exciting that the possibilities are endless in reaching China.  The Chinese people can be influenced to broaden their horizons politically and also spiritually! How exciting! The people of the United States must remember that they are in a position that may influence the people around the world.  As a result, we should remember to present ourselves in such a way that will make this influence positive.  

Banquets in the Alaskan Bush

I really haven't ventured out of the typical realm of American cuisine.  I've never gotten to visit far away, foreign place where they eat bugs and drink cow's blood.  However I have had a lot of secondhand experience with traditional Alaskan foods of the Inuit, Aleut, and Yupik native tribes. I myself have not sampled any of these dishes, besides wild salmon, but through friends I have heard a lot about the typical dishes of these native people.

Now these Bush people don't eat "bush meat," but they have their own anomalous dishes as well.  Geography has definitely influenced their diets as well.  Animals that thrive in the cold seas and rivers surrounding the villages are the main staple meats because of they are abundant supplies.

My cousin, Erin, taught high school in a bush village called Manokotak for a year. While she was there I got to hear all about the crazy foods she was given by her very hospitable neighbors and co-workers.  

Some of the strangest food she had was walrus.  The villagers did about one walrus hunt a year and from that hunt got most of the meat they needed to for that year's meals.  The day of the hunt was a big deal.  They ended up getting three. They hunted and cleaned them together as a village. She said that they ate the walrus fried and sometimes in stews.  She also said that it had a very fishy taste.  Needless to say, it wasn't her favorite, but the Natives loved it!

Another unwonted dish that she actually sampled at a wedding was seal.  It was cooked in a stew and is another typical part of their diets.  Seafood is the most prominent part of the Alaskan diet.  Salmon and halibut are two of my favorite types of Alaskan cuisine. 

It is interesting to look at how geography affects what people eat around the world.  Although these are the traditional Alaskan foods, the culture's orthodoxy is being transformed with the breaking of geographical barriers.  Manokotak people eat frozen pizzas as well as muktuk (frozen whale blubber, usually eaten with salt).  Globalization is bringing McDonalds and other western foods to places that had not even heard of a hamburger twenty years ago.  Although MickyD's hasn't made it's way out to the Alaskan Bush, fast food is becoming a global source of food.  

As a result of this, people will become fatter and fatter. But I say: Eat, drink, and be merry that God has provided us with this variety of foods! It is also important for us as rich Americans to realize that our abundance of food is a blessing and that we should help those who go hungry.  World Vision and Compassion International are organizations that specifically deal with the hungry around the world.  Hopefully as communication and travel are expanding world-wide, aid to those in need can as well! What wonderful foods God has given us!

A Summit of Sorts

Representatives from 19 of the world's most powerful countries gathered together this week, ten years after the G-20 was founded, to discuss matters of the world-wide economy.  The Group Twenty includes the following countries:

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and also including the European Union, represented by the rotating council presidency. 

This kind of gathering should not only aid in the palliation of the "recession" but also foster peace and unification between countries.  Ironically a protest of anarchists and anti-capitalists broke out in the streets of London.  Demonstrators through things into the windows of different governmental and royal banks and clashing with police. 

So far the only plan these big-wig countries have been able to conjure up is to implement new processes to basically "spend" our way our of debt.  Daniel Hannan, a member of Britain's parliament, wrote, with a sarcastic air, in his telegraph.co.uk blog that it's "just what we need to stimulate growth...more dirigisme, more red tape, more state control, and more centralization."  Along with this British politician, I too am a bit skeptical of the plans of President Obama and the other Leader of the G20 summit. 

Let's hope this "summit" doesn't trigger any kind of further decline. 

New Prospectives of an Old World

Google Earth has given me so much more understanding of the geography of our earth throughout this semester!  One thing I can tell you for sure is that through the manipulation of the browser's angle, you can experience God's wonderful earth in a way you have never before! 

I chose a couple different images to exhibit a new prospective on our wonderful world.

The first image I selected is primarily of my home state, Alaska.  

I used Google Earth to adjust the view to display the close proximity in which Russia is in relation to Alaska.  It is interesting because after growing up looking at maps which are usually cut off between Russia and Alaska, we forget how small the Bearing Strait really is.  This map's topography also displays the high elevation of both Alaska and Russia, especially in the area around the Aleutian Chain (an island chain off the South West coast of Alaska). I had never known that this area of Alaska was so mountainous.  I now realize that there must be tectonic plates here to influence the topography of the region.  

This map also displays North East Russia's size in comparison with Alaska.  I did not realize that this portion of Russia is quite a bit smaller than The Great Frontier, until I witnessed this nice juxtaposition.  It is so interesting to view this familiar part of the world from this unique, new view point!

It is so interesting to see the prospective of Alaska from Russia as well.  It is strange to think that I have never looked at Alaska from this point of view, and neither have I looked at North East Russia in comparison to Alaska.   I never knew that the Aleutians stretched that close to Russia either.  There are so many new and wonderful things I learn about our world everyday, especially since I am in this Geography class!