One World

One of the coolest parts of being in the Projects Abroad apartments here in Cambodia is meeting the other volunteers. I am meeting people from all over the world: the Netherlands, Europe, England, and Australia. It is really exciting to speak with everyone, to laugh about the funny words we use to describe the same thing, and to realize that though we are all from very different places, we all like lots of the same things. Around the dinner table is really crazy too: we can all be speaking English one moment, and then the next moment there are conversations in English, Dutch, German and French, and then in the kitchen, the cooks are gossiping in Khmer. The dinner table is helping me see the world in a more global perspective.

That is the most mind boggling of all: the way my view of the world as a globe has changed. I have always known that the world is a sphere, but just recently, as in within the past three days, I have started to picture the world in my head as a globe, rather than a flat map with the US in the middle. I started thinking about the difference when my friend Libby from Australia told me that her flight was only six hours or so from Sydney to Asia. I was floored for a moment, because, for one, that’s as long as it takes me to get to Lake George, NY from my house, and two, isn’t Australia, like, closer to Europe? I thought about it and discovered that even though I can point out Australia on a map, I always associate it with England, and therefore, I group Australia with Britain, even though it should be grouped with Asia. When I started thinking about the world with Australia in the right place, and the fact that I am literally halfway across the world from Maine, my 2-D version of the world immediately became a 3-D correct version of the world.

And you know what? It is pretty nice to think of the world as a whole, rather than a as a bunch of puzzle pieces. The change in perspective makes my flight path make so much more sense.