More Worldly Already

I'm driving down the road one morning and I hear on NPR Morning Edition that there has been a coup in Bangkok. I immediately call Marty to ask if he has heard the news. Unrest in Kenya after the election causes us to rethink our routing from Rome to Tanzania and to fly through Qatar (get your map out)instead of Nairobi. And a city I had never even heard of before this trip, Dharamsala, suddenly is in the news as 100's of people from this city in India cross into Tibet to help the monks protest. (The people actually came from McLeodganj, the exciled home of the Dalai Lama, but that is even smaller than Dharamsala). My point exactly? Without even having left home yet, our World View has already changed dramatically. All of our geography skills have increased substantially and suddenly news that would have gone in one ear and out the other, now has meaning and significance to us.

I think that the rest of the world operates this way most of the time. But we Americans have a much more ethnocentric view of the world and often tend to ignore that which does not directly affect us. I remember when I lived in Washington, DC that local news was national news. Well now as we listen to the news, world news has become local news for us. It will be interesting to see how we are affected by news when we are on the road.

Two months to go from today and counting! Check out our calendar at the bottom of the blog page. Now you can see where we are or are going in calendar format. Thanks Jen for your help in setting it up!