the world: places

When I was around four, I believed that all countries were separated by water and that the US states were also separated by water. In my mind, the water boundaries were what made them separate countries or states.

Around the age of five, I thought that there was a huge apple somewhere in NYC because of it's nickname, the big apple. I kept asking evryone if they could see it when we watched the New Year's Eve program on TV

A friend of my mother's moved to Texas when she was little. Her best friend was terrified for her because she was afraid my mother's friend would be shot by Indians. This was the 1950s when Westerns were REALLY popular.

I used to believe that Texas was all black and white, people rode on horses, and everybody carried a gun like in the old western movies. When our airplane had a layover in Texas, I was extremely dissapointed, on the verge of tears, to realize it was really in color, and I only saw one person with a cowboy hat.

I used to think that Holland was an island near Australia. But when in an anime a girl traveled by train from France to Holland, I was enlightened. Not to mention sort of surprised. Holland was portrayed as so cute, it seemed too exotic to be located other than in Oceania.

After my first trip on a subway, I thought that there were two levels of the Earth and that half of the world's population had to live underground. I used to feel sorry for them because they weren't able to see the sky.

I used to believe that if you went to the bottom of the world (Antartica) you would be upside down,and eventually fall off.

I used to think London was in France. Whenever kids in school would say, 'I see london, I see France, I see so and so's underpants', I was confused because I figured if you could see London, of course you could see France!

when I was a kid, I though you could actually dig a hole through the earth, and get to the other side, but you would have to walk on your hands.

I used to have a map of the United States, and each state had its own color. I used to believe Minnesota was hot because it was shown as red on the map. This was supported by Florida being green. I lived there, and it seemed to have a lot of trees...

When I was a little girl, I used to have a funny believe about traveling to China. My brother and I used to think that if we started to dig in the earth, we could arrive to China and see people from there. That was so strange because we tried to do it once, but of course we failed, that was so far from us. We used to believe that people from this part of the world traveled on this way and we could do the same. Now we know that we need to take a flight to get there. Very expensive!

I overheard a little boy talking with his dad in a bookstore:

"Dad, are England and Europe the same thing?"

This is a common misconception in suburban New Jersey.

when i was younger when my parents were going out and if i wasnt coming they would say they were going to a place called uppanickinrussia(pronouced up-an-nick-in-rush-a) for years i believed there was such a place untill one day when i was in the car with mum and she said we were headed there.! was soo excited untill we pulled up at a bathroom tile shop.Disappiontment plus

I grew up in California, USA, where many city names are of Spanish origin and have kept something like the original pronunciation. I used to believe that the city of San Jose (pronounced 'san ho-say' like the Spanish) was just right next to the city San Jose (pronounced 'san jo-za' as if it were English).

I used to believe that there was only one lighthouse in the world and it was at the centre of the earth.

Many years ago I saw a disaster movie about a bridge collapsing. After that I was insanely frightened whenever my parents took me to Edinburgh, as we had to drive over the Forth Road Bridge to get there...