BobnRox in Ecuador

I have been giving half-assed geography lessons to everyone who hasn't looked at a world globe since third grade, for a long time now...and you know why?  It's because all of our courses in Geography tend to segment the world up into quadrants, continents, areas of interest, and so forth...but not too much time is spent on how these "areas of study" are situated in relation to each other. 

For example, when we contemplated moving to South America, it was a completely foreign concept to me that we could actually fly all the way east to Miami, before heading south, and would still be going fairly directly... 

So...I went out and bought a nifty Globe of the World today, and i am excited...

Mainly, I want to find out for myself just where the heck we are compared to other esoteric places like Tahiti, the Canary Islands, Kenya, etc...

But another important use is to visualize why South America is not "South" of North America (not due South, anyway)...South America is actually due south of the Atlantic Seaboard, totally...

Here is a picture from my new globe...Now we have homes in Oregon in the far upper left of the US of A, and our beach house is located inside the "U" in the word ECUADOR which names the little orange country that we live in now.  Take a look...

Now you can see why the Quito to Miami daily flight is so popular...it is the shortest distance between two points (right over Havana--have a cigar...)

Anyway, I plan to have fun finding out just who shares the Equator with us and all kinds of other stuff that was filtered out of my education the first time around...(my fault, of course)...