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Thursday, June 03, 2010

The Kiribati Revelation

I've been to Kiribati. I just found that out over the weekend.

I did know I'd been to Fanning Island. I was just unaware that Fanning Island belonged to the country of Kiribati. Next time I'll have to check my passport more closely and see who stamps it. :-)

It's actually kind of sad. Because I work for an airline, my geography skills are pretty strong. It's all self-taught, too. When I was in school, they quit teaching geography when I was in the second grade. That isn't enough time to learn more than some of the United States. World geography? Forget about it.

iTunes U had some free geography classes from Stanford's Continuing Education program that were outstanding. I learned even more there than I'd picked up on my own. If you're interested, I highly recommend these classes--they were awesome! Not all of them are available any longer, though, which is sad since they used to have three or four.

Then there's Sporcle.com. They have geography quizzes. Some of them include naming all the countries in Africa, Oceania, Europe, and so on. I did these in preparation for the big quiz--naming all the countries in the world.

There are 195 countries. I can name all of them, but I still didn't realize that I'd been to Kiribati.

So how did I make my grandiose discovery? My cousins were up over the weekend and they'd been on this same trip with me. Two of them were wearing their Fanning Island T-shirts and one of them said "Fanning Island - Republic of Kiribati." And I went oooohhhh!

Yes, I am easily excited, but you have to enjoy the small stuff. The other thing is that because of one of my Works In Progress (WIP), I have a fascination with all things Polynesian happening right now. I have to find my pictures from Kiribati so I can post some for you, but it'll have to wait till I finish the proposal I'm working on.