the world: places

I used to think that the huge clock tower of the local university was the London Tower with the Big Ben! I used to believe this until I was like 8 or 9. My mother enlightened me when I asked how could we see Big Ben from the other side of the Atlantic!

I was told that on the exact opposite side of the world was someone who looked and acted just like me. In fact, my family, my house, and the whole town were replicated and maybe doing the exact same things as we were. It made me wonder quite a bit.

When I was 6 or so, my mom told me she was going on a business trip to Seattle. I thought she meant she was going to see a friend named Attle (i.e., "see Attle"). She came back and was telling me about her hotel room. When she mentioned there was only one bed, I asked, "so where did Attle sleep?" She laughed at me.

I'm terrible with recognizing accents, and until I was 16, I was convinced Newcastle was in Scotland. I knew loads of people from Newcastle and whenever they told me where they were from I used to say 'Oh, your Scottish then?!' Not one person corrected me on that! I took 6 different people and three different atlases to prove to me where Newcastle is. And I still think they must have moved the border!

When I was little,when I looked at maps I thought places were really that close together.I always used to ask "Let's go to Washington,it's only a small walk away!"
Yes,I was that stupid.

I didn't realize Egypt wasn't a part of Europe until I saw a museum exhibit about Pharaoh Ramses II when I was 10. Funny thing is, my Mom had to learn the same thing when she took me there!

once my dad told me that if one were to dig a deep enough hole, the hole would eventually reach China. for years thereafter, i looked as far over the edge of every hole as i could, hoping to see sliver of blue sky filtering through.

There is an exit on the Highway near my house that says "Pleasure Island Road". When I was a little girl, I used to think that was the road you took to get to Disney World!

I used to believe that "South America" was referring to the southern US states. Once, in class, we were asked to name some countries in South America. I raised my hand and said "That's easy! There's Florida, Georgia, Texas..."
I was mortified when the teacher corrected me.

When I was 5 years old, my parents took me to Colonial Williamsburg. I thought that the whole town was some sort of natural phenomena, like the grand canyon and Old Faithful. I thought that in like, the 1600's, the pilgrims, upon discovering this place, must have thought it was some idealistic representation of a faraway future.

in elementary school we had to get a pen pal in a different state to find out about that state, I got utah, but no one bothered telling me what a state was so...
my letter to my pen pal in utah was:
"so what language do you guys speak? do you guys have a king & queen, or a president like us". I'm sure they still have my letter to read when they need a pick-me-up

Until I was seven I lived in Amsterdam, and any time we traveled out of the city, I used to believe we were going to the Netherlands, not knowing that Amsterdam was actually in the Netherlands. It's our national capital, actually.

I had heard of certain suburbs of big cities referred to as "bedroom communities" before I ever actually visited such a place. When I first did visit residents of such a suburb, I was very surprised to find that they lived in entire houses, and not just bedrooms.

well, its not EXACTLY a belief, but close enough...and funny. onetime, i was in the car with my mom and asked why andrew, a close family friend, was not going to be at dinner with the rest of us and his family. she responded "well, he went to seatle." so i ... not thinking before asking, asked "mom, who's attle?" still have yet to live that down.

My cruel older brother decided to tell me one day when I was four that Madagascar was uninhabited because it had a very active volcano and man-eating monkeys to boot.

I, of course, believed him and would tune out in elementary school when they tried to teach us world geography and mentioned Madagascar (because it obviously didn't matter). It wasn't until I was in 6th or 7th grade that I actually stopped to think about it and realized I was wrong!

Ok so I live in Ontario, Canada and i remember when there was all this talk that Quebec wanted to seperate from Canada I was so dumbfounded because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they would drill through the earth and physically seperate fom the rest of the country.