Honduras

I was offered a great opportunity at my church a couple weeks ago. Last year, a few ladies from my church went to Honduras for a mission trip. They taught Bible School for a week while they were down there. I am in charge of the VBS at my church this year and I just asked them if they were going because we would make our offerings go to them to buy the materials if they were planning on going. She told me that they weren't planning on going this year so I started looking for another mission project. Then the next week she came to church and said since I had asked they decided to go again! Then she invited me to go along with them. I got really excited and decided that I wanted to go! But then I went home and I checked my calendar and it was a week in July. I was already going to be gone for 2 and a half weeks in July and couldn't handle missing work for another full week. I had to then tell her that I wasn't able to go because I need to be working and making money this summer. So since I couldn't go this summer, they are going to plan another trip for next summer and I am planning on going with them when they go! I'm so excited for it! I'm still bummed that I can't go this summer, but I'm just thankful that I can hopefully go with them next summer and experience something so cool!

Names Around The World

I searched the name Parrish first, to see where all my last name is around the world. The list that it came up with was: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Ireland, and Germany. I wasn't surprised to see some of those countries, but I was surprised to see Australia for some reason. Then I searched Vandeberg, my mom's maiden name, and I got fewer countries. I got Belgium, Netherlands, United States, Germany, and Norway. My heritage is Dutch and German, so I assumed that both of those would be in my list somewhere. This is a cool website that you were given. It is so interesting how people make websites of the most random things, like where all is your name in the world! I also, just for fun, checked out where my boyfriend's name is. His last name is Crotty. His name was in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. We have our names in a lot of the same countries.

South Korean Parliament Free Trade Brawl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqvdJSO6Ssc
This link will take you to a you tube video that deals with a brawl that broke out at a South Korean Parliament meeting. I chose this video because this is something that would never happen here in America. One person made an interesting comment though, he said, "This is basically the governments way of doing what the American government do best... filibuster. it's just the Korean government doesn't have the patience like the American government has. But both countries do use the same corrupt tactics to get their ways." Times are rough in South Korea, along with many other countries in that region. It's hard to even imagine what life is like over there. We think that right now we are having major issues with our government and economy and the like, but really, if you think about it, we are not that bad off. It could be so much worse, like it is in South Korea.

Food Around the World

It is so interesting to see what people eat all around the world. Off of the videos that I watched on the website, the weirdest thing to me was the ice cream flavors in Las Angeles. As normal as ice cream flavors are, I think it's just weird to me because I expect to see things different from what I eat in other countries, but I thought that in the U.S. we were all basically on the same diet. But obviously not because I would never eat banana peanut butter bacon ice cream! I can't imagine people who would enjoy that and they are not even that far away from me.
I am not a very adventurous person when it comes to trying food. I did one time eat at a restaurant in Lincoln called The Oven. This is Indian food. I was so nervous going there because I knew there would be nothing that I like. They eat a lot of lamb and pork rather than beef or chicken. All of their sauces and everything were just really weird to me. I ended up not liking it of course, but it was a good experience.
The reason I think that we eat so differently around the world is due to culture and where we are in the world. Being in Nebraska, it isn't convenient for us to be able to go out fishing every day and come home with fish for dinner. But in Japan where sushi is big, that's what is common. It also has to do with what we grow up eating. I'm not very apt to try things because I never ate anything that wasn't considered a pretty American food growing up! These things influence what we eat and don't eat in our lives and when we get the chance to try someone else's culture of food we should do it so we can experience many different things!

Members of the G-20

The members of the G-20 for 2009 are:

Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Indonesia
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
South Korea
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
European Union

The World in a New Perspective

It's so interesting to think about how our world can look so different if you just change the view a little bit. Google Earth is helpful because it helps you to recognize places around the world even at a different angle or different perspective. I've been using Google Earth lately to help me with my map quizzes and it just helps so much to see the different places in a different view. I thought this view of the islands between Asia and Australia was cool. If you just looked at it without knowing that it was at a different perspective I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't even know where it was. With the features that Google Earth has, it is a learning process to figure out where things are and understand that it isn't always on a flat surface with north at the top and south at the bottom. It's cool to look at the world in a new way.

Slumdog Millionaire

This was such a great movie! I would recommend this to anything! I've never seen a movie before made how this one was. The flashbacks and everything made it seem more personal to me. The plot is more or less, Jamal, who is from the slums, is on the show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." He is doing very well, getting all of the questions correct. After the first night of him being on the show they take him and accuse him of cheating because how could a boy from the slums know all of this information? But as they are questioning him, it goes to flashbacks in his life where he has experienced different situations leading him to know the answer to the seemingly impossible questions. By seeing his life journey they see that he is not cheating at all, but just being lucky that he's getting the questions that he knows the answer to. It was so hard seeing in the movie how the little children were treated. They were take by men who were only searching for ways to make money. These men had them practice singing and doing certain skills. Then they would do cruel things, like squirt some sort of acid or something in the kids' eyes and make them blind. They did this so that they could have them stand out on the street corner and sing to make money for the men. Their thinking was that if they were blind children, they would in turn make more money. Ultimately people wonder what is a boy with no desire for riches doing on this game show? We find out that it is to send notice to Latika, his lover from his childhood. He never stopped loving her and tried to find her many times in their life. He knew though, that she watched the show and she wanted her to see him and then they could live happily ever after. Luckily, like all good movies, it does end this way. He uses his phone a friend call and calls his brother. But his brother had given his phone to Latika, so when she answers they profess their love to each other. And they live happily ever after. And to make things even better, he ends up answering the final question correctly and wins twenty million rupees. As far as who this makes me think about geography, it just makes me very thankful for me to be where I am. Mumbai seemed like a decent city, but there were just so many poor people. It was unbelievable. I've never had a chance to go somewhere and help people in need like that who are being treated poorly to make money. I would like to go someday to somewhere like that and help them out because my life has been so blessed I can't even really comprehend what it's like unless I was really there.

Spring Break

Spring break for me wasn't any too adventurous! I just went home. Home for me is Auburn, Nebraska. It is a little town in the southeastern corner of Nebraska. I lived in Auburn my whole life, so it holds a lot of good memories for me. I loved growing up with the small town atmosphere and the friendly people. It's so interesting how people enjoy such different things in the places they live. In my future, I want more than anything to raise my family in a town similar to Auburn, but other people who grew up in Auburn plan to never come back and just get out and go to a big city! I couldn't imagine going to a school where I don't even know half the people that I walk by in the halls, and I don't want my kids to go to a school like that either. So even though Auburn was a small town with not a whole lot of fun things to do, I loved it, and I love coming home to it! Over spring break I worked at a private preschool that I used to work at when I was in high school. It was so great to see all the kids again and to get back into the preschool setting! I also spent a lot of time planning my church's Vacation Bible School for this summer. My family also went to Lincoln a couple of days, one for a girl's day of shopping, and another for my little sister's basketball tournament. I was looking forward to spring break because I thought I would just be able to sit and relax and do nothing! But that wasn't the case at all, I was stuck being busy the whole time, which made break go really fast! But all in all it was a great break! The only thing I would have changed would be the weather! I could have handled some nice tropical weather!

Aid to Africa

This who issue on aid to Africa is a really hard issue for me. I hate seeing some places in Africa living how they do, so my first instinct is to say, go ahead and give them what they need. We, and other countries have the money and resources to help them out. But then there's the problem of them only becoming dependent on us and not doing what they need to do to survive. I'm not sure if it is a learning issue or if they just don't want to do it. I've thought of how we could do this and stop giving aid to them, but not just abandoning them. I think all the countries who have been giving to Africa for so many years now should get together and give them one more huge chunk of money. Then we should send people from our countries over the Africa to be as teachers to them on how to use this money and how to make this money accumulate and then leading to them prospering. I think if we tell them it is the last time any of us are going to give them money and then give them the lessons on how to make things work, they will have better chance of living on their own. If we had some of our intelligent financial people over in Africa for a few years, and then we went back and checked up on them every year after that it would make a big difference because they'd know we are watching them and we are not going to give in again and continue giving them aid. If we were to let them know that it is now up to them we could see some big improvements I think. But as I said, this is really hard for me to decide because I hate seeing people in poverty and suffering, but I don't think we can have Africa only be dependent on everyone else forever.

HDI

To calculate HDI, they look in to how long and healthy the average life is in the country, how educated the country is, and whether or not the country has a decent standard of living. I notice that higher HDIs tend to be more developed countries. I know that the website states that you cannot tell if a country is developed by whether it has a high or low HDI, but I still think that it has an impact on it. To go along with that, the poorer populations tend to be on the low HDI side. This is because they can't afford to have good health care to help people live longer, they don't have as many people entered into the school systems, and most families are very poor with a low standard of living. Another pattern I've noticed is that Southwest Asia and North Africa tend to have a lot of countries on the medium HDI list. I think that the Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked so low on the HDI list because they are a poor area. As I mentioned above, they can't afford to have superior health care. They can't afford to have vaccines and medications to fight of things like malaria. Also, you have to pay to go to schools in a lot of places in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Many families have a lot of children and can't afford to send all of them to school. Sometimes a family of 10 can only send 2 of their children to school because that's all they can handle. Lastly, is the standard of living. Most people in Africa live in little huts, and in Rwanda, many people live on less than a dollar a day. For these reasons, and more, is why most of Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked on the low end of the HDI.

National Geographic Photo

This is Vanu Levus Island in Fiji. I chose this picture because to me, is the definition of peace. Every day we hear about so many horrible things going on in our world. We hear about murders and poverty and war and other awful things. When I think about how good I have it compared to some people in the world it breaks my heart. I wish that everyone in the world could experience peace. I wish no one had to go weeks without eating. Although, in reality, that can't happen. But I like to look at this picture and see that there is peace at some place in the world. Even if it is just for a brief second, somewhere as beautiful as Vanu Levus Island is a place where you can find comfort in knowing that the sun still rises and sets and there is still going to be a tomorrow. That is why I chose this photograph. It is a great reminder that God created this earth and he still takes care of us each and every day.

Travel Ban on Cuba

There have been 100 million deaths that can be linked to either decisions made my a Communist government or directly by the Communist government. Does this sound like something that we as Christians should support? While Castro is still alive we should not lift the travel ban and trade embargo on Cuba. The article said that money spent on tourism would just be like putting oxygen into the dying Castro regime. Travel to Cuba would send millions of dollars into the Castro regime, just giving him fuel to thrive on. The article also talks about how if Cuban exiles were able to return to the island whenever they wanted, it would abuse their refugee privilege. Lifting the travel ban would be unsafe because the president would only be able to step in and do something about it if there were an "armed conflict or armed danger" arises. I think that if the travel ban is lifted it will send out a message to everyone in the world that we support the Castro regime, therefore saying that we support communism.

Mexian Drug War

I chose to look at the war on drugs in Mexico for my current event. We talked briefly about it in class and I was curious to find out more about it. I found that http://xrl.us/befp7c was a good website to give me just a general idea of what it is all about. We talked in class how people are getting killed every day and how there are cops who are always checking people's cars and putting their own lives in danger for this war. There have been 7,211 drug related deaths realted to this drug war since January of 2007. The website had a really great map that said how many people have died in what cities and things like that. Chihuahua has the most deaths, ranking in with 1,678. Next on the list of Sinaloa which has a total of 962 deaths. This war if taking place all throughout Mexico. It trails all the way down to the very southernmost tip. This war is based largely on the U.S.A.'s large demand of drugs. Many of these drugs are sent to our country from Mexico so they are fighting over that and the groups sending the drugs up. This war is a bad deal and it looks like it is going to take a long time before it is all settled.

International Fast Food

This is a map from worldmapper.org. I looked at a lot of the different maps and they were all so interesting. This one that I chose to write about it on International Fast Food. The map is of one major fast food outlet. I had a feeling that the United States would be pretty big on this map. Fast food restaurants are a way of life in the United States. So many days I just go and run to Subway or run to Runza to get away from Janzow food. I don't think twice about it. But then I look at places like Africa and they really have no fast food. It's intersting to see how what we eat and how we eat influences or is influenced by our culture. The United States is such a fast paced culture. We don't have time anymore to sit down and have a nice dinner every night. A reason for this is because women are working so much more, they aren't able to just stay home and cook something fancy every day. So it is a lot easier to order something fast and bring it home. The website says that by 2004 there were 30,496 of these restaurants worldwide. And of that number, 45% of them were in the United States. That's an outrageous percentage! The next highest ranking were in Japan, Canada, Germany, Andorra, New Zealand, Austria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Kyrgystan. These places too are more developed countries. It says that the world average for these outlets are 5 per million people. In the U.S.A. there are 47 per million people. As we can see, Africa is very tiny on this map. The number of outlets in Africa is 150. Most of these are in South Africa where you can see it is a little bit bigger. At the bottom of the map, they have a quote from McDonalds. It reads, "One World. One Taste." That is saying that there is only one world, but McDonalds and other fast food restaurants have become so big internationally that you can find these fast food restaurants all over the place.

Population Pyraminds

I chose to compare the population pyramid between Zambia, which is an LDC, and Italy, which is an MDC. There are a lot of factors that contribute to why these two graphs are so different. Since Italy is already developed, they are just not having as many kids. Their Total Fertility Rate is just 1.3 children per woman. That is not even enough children to replace the mother and father after they die. That is why they are worried about their population is diminishing. They have a large population of middle aged people. But those middle age people are not having as many children. In the past, when they were still developing, their pyramid would have looked a lot like Zambia's. They big section in the middle would have been at the bottom, and it would have gotten smaller from there on up. That is where Zambia is right now. They have very few in the age range above the age of 55. From then on down, the pyramid increases greatly. Since the country is still developing, they are having many children. This is for many reasons. Some of those include that the Total Fertility Rate in Zambia is 5.23 children born per woman. That is a very high number. To go along with that, the life expectancy is about 38 years old. So there are a lot of babies being born, and people are not living to be that old at all. Another reason is because of all of the disease that is in Zambia. They have food or water borne illnesses, malaria, plague, water contacts diseases, and rabies from wild animals. All these things cause teenagers and young adults to die because they do not have proper medical equipment. AIDS is another big factor in Zambia. 16.5% of adults have AIDS in Zambia. Each year about 89,000 people die from HIV and AIDS. The population growth rate of Zambia is 1.654% in 2008. Until Zambia become an MDC, these trends will continue to be like this.

Lake of the Ozarks

My favorite place to travel in North America is the Lake of the Ozarks. My grandpa owns a condo down there so we go as much as we can each summer. I love the lake. It is so much fun to just go out and spend the day on the boat. We usually have a day when we take a really long boat ride and pack a lunch. We find a nice quiet cove and anchor our boat down and have lunch and then swim in the lake a little bit to cool down. Lake of the Ozarks is about the only place where I actually find time to do some reading for fun. It is so relaxing down there that I can finish two or three books in a week. I also LOVE tubing behind the boat! My little sister and I are the queens of tubing. We would do it all day if we could! The Lake of the Ozarks area also has a lot of really fun restaurants. There is a huge variety and it is always fun to try new places! I have so many memories of being at the lake. My grandparents used to have a lake house at Capitol Beach in Lincoln, and now they've sold that one and got the one at Lake of the Ozarks. They love it because it is where they can go to watch all of their kids and grandkids have a great time. My grandma was sick with ovarian cancer when they bought the place at the Ozarks so they made sure to get a condo that looked out over the pool and the lake so grandma wouldn't miss anything if she was too sick to come down. There is a screened in porch at our condo. I love to wake up early in the morning and just sit out there and listen to the water and watch people start coming out on boats and jet skis. It's so amazing how smooth the water is so early in the morning compared to 2:00 in the afternoon. I love Lake of the Ozarks simply because it is a great place to relax and have fun with my family. I hope that we will always have a place at Lake of the Ozarks in our family to go to so when I'm older I can take my kids to have the same experiences I've had.

Blogging for Geography 102

I went to class today and found out that for Geography 102 we would have to do a series of blogs throughout the semester. I'm not very technologically inclined, so I thought this could be difficult to set up. It wasn't too bad really, so let's hope i did it right! But the first thing that I've decided to blog about it the location that I have lived in my whole life. I grew up in Auburn, Nebraska. I was born there and lived there until I graduated high school and came to Concordia for college. So this freezing cold weather that we're having right now is nothing new to me. I have dealt with this cold weather my whole life, but in the summer time I have dealt with temperatures well above 100 degrees. I often wonder why I chose to stay in this climate and go to college in Nebraska when I had the opportunity to go anywhere I would have liked to. This is still a puzzle in my mind. Right now I would give anything to be in California on the beach. I guess I sort of enjoy all the different aspects of the weather here in Nebraska. There are hot days where it's unbearable to even go outside, then there's just the opposite, cold days where the wind just bites at you, and here in Nebraska we get rain, snow, sleet, hail, and all sorts of crazy weather. So maybe I've chosen to stay in Nebraska because I enjoy the variety that we get here. Who knows, but since I've decided to stay here, I'll just have to deal with the cold for a few more months!