the world: places

I believed that the coliseum where basketball games were played was full of water and it was where people would go to fish from up in the rafters. I was kinda disappointed to find out what it really was.

There was a kid in 4th grade that believed the size of some foriegn country's map was its actual size! "Ms. Teacher" he said "how can people walk on such a tiny country?"

When I was seven tears old, my family flew from Alabama to Denver. When we we over the plains, I saw the lines dividing farmers fields. I Assumed they were borders separating states and could not understand why there were so many since there are only 50.

I used to think that people from different states(I live in the USA) spoke different languages. When my parents told me we were leaving going to Colorado for a vacation one year, I became terrified that I would have to learn Spanish! Thankfully, however, I understood everyone there. In fact, my younger self might be surprised to learn from my older self that, living in Arizona, most people seem to a speak a different language from me IN state!

As a toddler my parents took me on my first airplane trip to visit relatives in Indianapolis. I believed that because we had to take a plane to get there that the city was actually located up in the sky. Even after our visit, I continued to believe that all of my cousins were living up there somewhere in the sky.

So, my little cousin, who is 4 years old, knows all the words to the song "Take me home country roads" by John Denver, and she sings it like all the time. Once, when grandma was visiting some relatives in West Virginia, my cousin told everyone she knew that Grandma was in heaven...they all thought she died....really my cousin was just referring to the opening line of the song- "Almost heaven, West Virginia..."

She thought West Virginia was really heaven!!

When I first moved to Peacehaven I was 6. When we went to London Road in Brighton I used to believe there was a circus at Preston Circus and was so dissapoited when I couldn't see one

When I was about 7 years old around Christmas time I was I saw the Bay Bridge and I thought they had strung up christmas lights. Later I realized that it was just the head lights and tail lights on the cars. :)

There is a town in British Columbia called 100 Mile House. When I was a kid my father told me that it wasn't a town, it was actually a house that was one hundred miles long. I envisioned this gigantic log house building until I was about eleven years old.

OK, it needs some explain for the beginning. In polish, telephone exchange is called "centrala". I'm from Poland and in my early childhood several times I watched cartoons with polish dubbing, where the character called phone and asked "centrala?" Each time I thought that was asking for the name of the town the receiver was in, because "centrala" sounded for me just as the name of the town, like i.e "Warszawa" (Warsaw). Few years later I've learnt what does "centrala" really means, but before that, I seriously believed there's somewhere town called Centrala and I had several funny situations with this, i.e. I was sitting on the toy motorcycle, playing that I'm riding it, and when some aunt asked me jokely where I'm going, i replied "to the Centrala". Boy, you should to see their looks when they heard that =)

I used to believe that California was it's own country, aka "America". When we took a family vacation at Thanksgiving to visit my grandparents in Alaska, I kept asking my parents how many days until we returned to America. They kept telling me that we were, in fact, still in America but just in another state. I still didn't quite get it, but, I kept my mouth shut because I was afraid they were going to get even more upset by my questions.

I remember thinking that Indiana was India, and it was part of the United States. I remember thinking how cool it was to live in the same country as Aladdin (don't ask).

When I was in kindergarten we were taking a family trip to Florida and my parents explained that we had to take an airplane. Naturally I assumed Florida was in the clouds and was trying to imagine what it would be like to walk in the clouds.

I used to think there were two Canadas and two Russias because on the map it shows Canada and Russia twice because they couldn't fit it all in one place on the map.

When I was little my parents would always tell me to finish my food because there are starving people out in Euthanasia. So growing up, I thought Euthanasia was a place where hungry people live.

I am from a small town in a small county full of small towns in the Midwest of the United States. When I was quite young, our trips away from that small town were adventures of magic and grandeur as far as I knew. Another small town, about half the size of my hometown, was about fifteen minutes away, and we passed through it on our way to my grandparents' house and to the nearest malls. This town was called Wayland. However, for many years, I believed this town was called Whale-land, and I believed that whales lived there. For this reason, I always wanted to visit Whale-land, but we never stopped (because there was nothing there but people's homes, a restaurant, and a gas station; I wanted to see the whales.)

After my parents' divorce, my mother moved to Wayland and I live there when I am with her. Now I know there are no whales, but I do love this town.

I used to think that all commonly names street connected everywhere in the country. For example, if you walked or drove long enough on Elm Drive in Chicago, you would eventually hit Elm Drive in Miami. Never mind the fact that it is physically impossible ...