the world: places

Ever since I can remember, my parents had my sister and I convinced that there was a bump in the road at the border of every state. So when we would drive out of the state, my dad would pick a bump in the road and say "There was the [state name] border!" I didn't realize this wasn't actually true until just recently -- im now 17.

I am Australian. When I was young I used to get my countries mixed up. I though America was a big jungle with all these dangerous animals like lions, tigers and leopards lived and that American people spoke in Italian accents.

I was puzzled for a LONG time after first hearing of the Adriatic Sea. I envisioned that somewhere in the world there was a strange (and probably very large) house with a whole sea in its attic!

I thought you could get banned from checking out books in a library if you accidently rip a page. Whenever I'd rip a page accidently, I would be scared when we had to return them, thinking I will never be allowed to check a book out again. Luckily that didn't happen!

Peter Pan was one of my favourite children's stories. And because of that I was always interested in people talking about the Netherlands even if they insisted on using the abbreviated name for the Never Never lands.

My sister had asked me how the Statue of Liberty got all the way from France to the U.S. Being the big sister I explained how 100 men swam it accross the ocean and were too tired to bring it on land and that is why it is in the NY harbor. Later that week she came home and hit me in the shoulder, hard! Apparently she believed it and shared it with the class. He he he! (20 years later she still belives my stories!)

When i was just about able to read i came across a map of Scotland which included all the Lochs. "Loch" being the German word for "hole" I assumed that here must be a country there just full of holes. A bit like in Yellow Submarine I suppose.

I used to believe that Chicago was a state. No matter how many times people tried to tell me that it was a city in the state of Illinois, I refused to believe them.

Ok, this one is about my brother.

Years ago, my family went up to Maine. Over there, we were go suppossed to go on a cruise to Canada. Unfortunately, there was a storm and we couldn't go.

My brother came to a conclusion that Canada was an island! I had to prove it to him, when he was 11, that Canada is connected to the US!

When I was in third grade, living in Syracuse, NY, I used to think Florida was to the north, because we would drive "up" to Disney World. And I used to think Canada was to the south because we would drive "down" to Niagara.

When I was little I used to think that Hollywood was in Ohio. Growing up in Michigan, I always used to bug my mom to take me to Hollywood and I couldn't understand why she kept saying no.

When i was little i use to believe that whenever you would put ur finger on a map that people could actually see ur finger going by their window... So i would always slide my finger across Pennsylvania to see if i could see my finger go by...

When I was four years old I found out my family was moving from Iowa to Florida. I thought that our house was going to be knocked down and rebuilt in the middle of Disneyworld.

In my geography class, we went to the library to research our country projects. My friend and I did not have the same country, but we sat next to each other anyway. My country was Australia. We were talking about it and she mentioned how our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger,came from their. I had to explain to her that Austria is in Europe and Australia was on the opposite side of the Earth. The funny part is that we are 9th graders and it was the highest level geography class.

As a kid, I learned of the city of Birmingham (the one in Alabama), and thought it was named for someone overcooking ham (I thought it was Burningham).

For a long time I puzzled over why Michigan City, Indiana is so named, being in Indiana and not Michigan. Then one day, looking at a map, I felt kind of stupid, noticing the obvious answer, namely that it is on the shore of Lake Michigan. Soon afterwards I began to discover that there are other cities named for the great lake on whose shore they are located, like Erie, Pennsylvania and Superior, Wisconsin. Then one day, I was perplexed, discovering Huron, South Dakota on a map, quite far from Lake Huron. I asked my sister why it was named that, so far from the great lake by the same name. My sister told me that Lake Huron was once much bigger than it is now and that back then it extended all the way to Huron, South Dakota. As far fetched as that seemed, I believed it for a long time. The day I fanally began to doubt such an explanation was the day I discovered Ontario, California on a map.