the world: places

when i was 5 i listened to the news on the radio and was tranfixed by the war with turkeys and greese. Boat loads of turkeys were arriving in greese intent on war.i was worried about the messs the turkeys would get into with all that oil on their wings.
when I was much older, I went on a Greek holiday and realised i had got it all wrong,

Growing up in the southern US, we would sometimes pass tobacco fields which had rows of leaf drying houses in them. There were no windows in those houses and my dad told us kids that blind people lived in those houses.

Every time we would pass them I would look to see if I could spot a blind person outside, and I thought that when I got older I would go and get them and tell them they were living in houses that had no windows and that wasn't fair.

When I was little and someone would talk about Greenland, they would always say things like "up to Greenland" (because it's up North, naturally), but I always understood it as if it was in the sky. So I was always looking for a gigantic, floating country in the sky...

I used to believe walt disney was buried in disneyland because of that statue were he is next to mickey mouse. so i thought it was his tombstone.
yeah i thought that 4 a long time.

After I saw it being played at the Sony Style store in New York, I became convinced that Grand Theft Auto III took place in Portland, Oregon. This no doubt stemmed from the fact that there is a section of Liberty City called Portland View. I was then somewhat scared of Portland.

I used to have no idea where we went when we flew to california. Since we flew upwards, I thought it was reasonable that california and other places were on other levels of the earth. Whenever i looked up I would wave because I thought that maybe if my cousins or grandparents were looking down then myabe they could see us. I also wondered how you could get to places that were on levels below you. I was therefore very surprised to find out that you could actually go in a car to california.

I live in Puerto Rico a small island in the Caribbean. My house had a fence dividing the backyard from the forest. My sister and I, since we were told that China was far away from us, thought that if we crossed the fence in our backyard we would arrive at China. And every day my sister would look out to the backyard and would cross the fence and come back and then start saying to my mom that she had gone to China.

i used to live in philippines and when i was 9yo. my mom told me that we were going live in canada and i thought that we have to go on a spaceship to travel. i used to believe that each planet is a country!

i didn't know canada was a separate country from the usa until i was about 12... i grew up right by the border of niagara falls ny and niagara falls ontario and thought it was the same city cuz we went there all the time to shop. i think i found out it was a separate country in school, and i just remember being shocked that i was actually an international traveler.

I was born in Brooklyn NY. Until I was 9 and moved upstate, I thought the entire state of NY consisted of the 5 boroughs (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island).

Apparently many people still believe this, as they are shocked when I tell them I live in the mountains of NY...

If you dug through the earth to the other side you would end up in China.

When I was about 6 yrs old...I'd often hear your facing North... hmmm
So; it did not matter which way I was facing; North it was...East was to the right of me...West to the left...and South was behind me... I got so messed up when I finally realized that it wasn't the case. hehehe!!!

(i live in northern europe)i believed that america was placed where asia is, and duckburg was an independent city within the usa (!)

When I was little, I thought east/west was exactly the same as right/left, and if I turned around they would change places...

I used to think Pennsylvania was the United States capitol.
(Well the white house is on Pennsylvania Ave or something, isn't it? I guess that was one of the moments I was dazing out during class...)

To understand this, one needs to know two facts:
1. My mother lived in Greece for a while in her 20's.
2. My grandmother lives in a house by the riverside.
Going to my grandmother's house was always an adventure, especially going out back to swim; and I was convinced that, if one swam far enough, one would get to Greece, just on the other side of the river.