You can learn about the geography of South America by visiting Owl & Mouse. Owl & Mouse provides easy maps to practice with:
(1) Interactive maps
These teach you country names and capitals. When you leave the cursor in place ("hover") over a country, the country's name and capital appear near the cursor:
Seterra lets you practice geography, but it is a bit difficult (there are no hints), so be sure to practice with Owl & Mouse first:
Seterra prompts you with a country name: you need to find the country on
the map. If you make no mistake the first time, your country appears in
white. If you make one or two mistakes, the country turns light yellow, then dark yellow. After
the third mistake, the country turns red (you need more practice!)
In this example, The big white country (Mexico) was found the first time, so it appears in white. The small red country is Belize (three mistakes = red).
The Galapagos Islands belong to Ecuador. This is a marvelous place to view unspoiled nature. The islands are named Galápagos (Spanish words: galápago = tortoise; tortuga = turtle) because of all the tortoises that live on the island
Ceviche is a cold seafood dish that is popular in South America. The
Ecuadorian version is made with shrimp (or other fresh seafood), tomato sauce and lemon juice. In other countries, the seafood is marinated (but not cooked), so I would worry about getting parasites (寄生蟲), but in Ecuador they first cook the shrimp (Whew!), so parasites are not a problem here.
Ecuadorian
ceviche, made of shrimp, lemon and tomato sauce, Ceviche ecuatoriano,
hecho con camarón, limón y salsa de tomate, CC--BY Rinaldo Wurglitsch
When traveling, some people like to take a few
cooking lessons taught by local people. Look at how much fun these
students are having!
Enjoying, learning about and maybe even making tasty food in a new country: Isn't this better than traveling just to buy a Gucci
handbag or other expensive items that you can also buy in a big city store?
What about picture taking (not the same as photography)? Are silly, out of focus pictures of you and your
friends standing in front of the Eiffel Tower really worthwhile? Tens of
thousands of other people have taken exactly the same pictures of famous landmarks before
you.
If it was up to me, I would much prefer to bring a small taste of
Ecuador back home with me! This is what food tourism (also called
culinary tourism or gastronomic tourism) is about. More information
here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_tourism
In the National Geographic video, the students make empanadas and eat them. Empanadas are a very popular food in Peru. The word Empanadas is very easy to understand if you know word roots: em = "in" and pan = "bread." Check my earlier blog post for more details: http://cute-geography.blogspot.com/2015/05/taiwanese-phang-is-from-latin.html
Mexico
is the home of chocolate, but Ecuador is the source of very tasty organic chocolate. Be a good tourist. Try local products whenever you can!
Below are three videos that show how organic chocolate is made. Cacao is a rather curious fruit that grows directly on the tree trunk. The cacao beans are removed from inside and allowed to ferment. Wikipedia gives us more details
English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate
Chinese: http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%B7%A7%E5%85%8B%E5%8A%9B
but watching videos is much more exciting (I'd like to go see cacao trees and taste the seeds myself)!
Alpacas (height = 99 cm or less) are camelids (camel-like animals). In the Andes, farmers raise these animals for their wonderfully soft wool. This wool is different from sheep's wool, because it doesn't have so much oil (lanolin).
Alpaca, CC--BY-SA Galo Manuel _MG_1991--CROPPED.jpg
Alpacas are much smaller than dromedaries (dromedary camels can reach up to 199 cm). Below, a woman is milking a camel. Notice how the dromedary is much taller than the woman.
We usually think that camels and similar animals come from deserts in places like Saudi Arabia, but their ancestors actually came from North America.
Distribution of camelids before modern introductions to Australia and elsewhere. Solid black lines indicate possible migration routes, CC-BY-SA Lukasz Lukomski
Half of the ancient camelids went North (through today's Alaska) and then into Asia and North Africa. There, they became Bactrian camels [with TWO humps] and dromedaries [with ONE hump]. The other half went from North America to South America, where they slowly changed and became alpacas and other animals, such as llamas.
Gastronomic tourism means traveling to discover and eat interesting and delicious food. Whenever I travel, I eat local fruit and vegetables whenever possible. I also try to learn about my food from local people, not just eat it.
Potatoes can be eaten in many ways. Can you name the ones below? What other ways do you know? Is eating potatoes a healthy choice? Why?
A few different ways to eat potatoes (Public Domain image)
The first conquistadores, the Spanish people who came to steal Peru's gold, didn't understand that hiding in the dirt was something even more valuable: the potatoes which now feed hundreds of millions of people around the world. In Peru, there are hundreds of different kinds of potatoes:
Purple potatoes and rosmarin, CC--BY-NC-SA Stijn Nieuwendijk.jpg
Papas [the Spanish word for potatoes], CC--BY krebsmaus07.jpg
Notice the orange line along the Pacific coast of South America. These are potatoes that grow in the Andes.
Although potatoes originally came from Peru and nearby areas, China now grows the greatest number of potatoes in the world. Here are some Chinese visitors traveling to Peru to find out more:
[Updated 24 May, 2015 with more details and pictures] (~ 1 AD) Pan (= bread' in Latin) became the word for bread in French, Spanish and Portuguese. In France, Spain and Portugal, Latin slowly changed its sounds, grammar and vocabulary. Latin thus became three new languages: French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Evolution of 'Pan' (Latin word for bread); Japanese & Taiwanese loanword
(~ 1600 AD) When Jesuit priests and Portuguese sailors went to Japan, they brought a new kind of food, bread. Thus, when Japanese people starting eating this new food, they quite naturally also borrowed the Portuguese word (pão). Of course, Japanese people pronounced and wrote this foreign word in their own way (パン).
(~1900 AD) 300 years later, this "Japanese" word traveled to Taiwan during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895 to 1945). When Taiwanese people started to learn about bread from the Japanese, this new word was pronounced 'pháng' [ㄆㄤˋ] in Southern Min dialect (In Taiwan, Southern Min is also called Taiwanese). Very few people in Taiwan realize that the word 'pháng' [ㄆㄤˋ] ultimately came from Latin.
Learning English vocabulary is much easier when you can recognize Latin word roots. Here are some English words with the Latin root pan: companion, company, accompany, pannier and empanada (details appear below):
The name "Paraguay" used to mean the land near the Paraguay River (also the home of many of the Guaraní). Today, "Paraguay" is a much smaller place, the only country where Spanish and the language of most local people are equals. Guaraní speakers now also live in parts of Uruguay,
Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarani_people]
Spanish and Portuguese slave traders killed and enslaved many of the Guaraní people living in Paraguay. 640px-Indian_Soldiers_from_the_Coritiba_Province_Escorting_Native_Prisoners (Public Domain)
640px-Jean Baptiste Debret, Indians Crossing a Creek: The Slave Hunter (Public Domain)
Jesuit priests established very successful missions in Paraguay. How did they do this? At first, the Jesuits and other Europeans were very surprised to find that the Guaraní showed great interest in and talent for music. The Jesuits used this love of music to help the Guaraní come to know God. They then helped these people establish independent villages in their own territories. There, they were usually safe from slave traders. After repeated attacks by large groups of slave traders, the Guaraní even received permission to establish their own small army (about 7,000 men) to defend themselves with guns.
The Guaraní earned lots of money by selling their products and their crops, and almost all of this money was spent on their own needs. The Spanish and Portuguese slave traders were very unhappy to see successful indians. Later, when the Jesuits were forced to leave South America, the slave traders came back to make slaves of the indians. This sad story is told in the beautiful 1986 movie: The Mission.
The video clip above is from the beginning of The Mission. The first Jesuits to meet the Guaraní were killed, but the missionaries didn't give up. Father Gabriel went all alone (and probably afraid for his life) into Guaraní territory, played his oboe and became a trusted friends of the Guaraní. This is a movie I will remember for the rest of my life. Please do try to see it!
This is a short selection of enchanting music from the film.
The Jesuit Mission of Chiquitos was restored and is now a World Heritage site (this brief video is in Spanish, with French and English subtitles)
Below is a short (11-minutes) documentary about Bolivian baroque music and the churches where it was originally performed. You can see how the art work and the 5500 pages of music (lost for almost 300 years!) were preserved and restored. This video comes with English subtitles and the people speak slowly, so it is easy to understand.
Lake Titicaca, located on the border between Bolivia and Peru, is the highest navigable lake (navigable = boats can travel here) in the world, almost 4000 meters above sea level. The Uros people depend on reeds for their lives: they make reed boats, their homes are made of reeds and they live on some forty floating reed islands. The Uros people even use the reeds for medicine.
Uros and 'totora' boat, Lake Titicaca, CC--BY-NC-ND rickz via Compfightcc
Walking on reeds is not like walking on land: your foot sinks down each time you take a step. The islands slowly rot (especially in the rainy season) and sink into the water, so the reeds often need to be replaced.
Pay special attention to the following video, which includes very clear English captions. Young Uros people used to leave for the city because there were no jobs on their island. Now that there is more and more tourism, they have started coming back.
The Uros people have some modern conveniences, such as television, which are powered by solar panels. Tourism has changed their way of life, but are these changes for the better?
[Updated June 6, 2015]
Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is a very unusual place: the world's largest salt flat (Salar means "salt flat" in Spanish [remember to stress the ending: salár]). Here you can see over 10,000 square kilometers of almost perfectly flat land (periodic rain keeps it from becoming less flat).
Alex Chacon travels through the world's largest salt flat.
[Below: In Spanish] Don Alfredo lives on the island of Inkawasi, located in the middle of Salar de Uyuni, an island covered with cactus. Don Alfredo tells us that the fruit of the cactus tastes much better thank other fruits. He misses the old days when everything wasn't so modern:
For years and years, the Spanish searched through Latin America looking for El Dorado, a city of gold. Many people believed that it was in Colombia, but they never found it. More information can be found in Wikipedia (English; Chinese黃金國)
Many stories have been told about this magical place, including a DreamWorks cartoon called The Road to El Dorado, which places El Dorado in Mexico instead. Here is part One:
[Updated with maps on April 29, 2015]
[Updated with two travel videos on May 4, 2015]
Notice the unusual shape of the sea boundaries [a boundary (or border) is the line around a country]. Remember that before independence one hundred years ago, Panama used to be part of Colombia
Most people visit Latin America the traditional way: buy round trip plane tickets, make hotel reservations, pack a suitcase, and go. Some people prefer to do some homework first: they buy a few guidebooks, check out a couple of websites, and maybe learn some tourist phrases: "Hello! Good morning! My name is so-and-so. ..."
Alex Chacon decided to do things differently. Before starting his PhD, Alex sold everything he had and started the trip of a lifetime (19 countries, 250 days, 60,000 kilometers) riding his motorcycle alone through South America. More details are available on his old (http://www.expeditionsouth.com) and new website, (http://www.modernmotodiaries.com)
Not much happens in this particular segment: Alex emphasizes that the best part of visiting Colombia is the friendly people. Yes, he says, drug gangs have often been in the news, but drugs don't affect ordinary tourists.
At the two minute mark, Alex sees a very unusual building (a little like a UFO: it doesn't seem to belong in South America). Why is this building here?
Alex only shows a little bit of scenery. He spent time on camera talking to a friendly woman, but we can't hear what any of their conversation. I wish he had shown us a little bit more how he interacted with these "wonderful" people. All in all, Alex's first video is a bit boring, but I did find something to get excited about: Colombian food. (more below)
[Updated April 29th, 2015]
One entertaining way to learn about another country is to watch soap operas. From 1999 to 2001, Yo soy Betty la fea ("I am Betty the Ugly") was broadcast on Colombian television. Yo soy Betty la fea is the story of an very efficient and well-educated young woman who has had trouble finding a job because she looks ugly. She finally gets a job working as a secretary for a fashion company.
The original Ugly Betty (short form of the Spanish name Beatriz) [educational Fair Use assumed]
A team of translators added English subtitles for every episode of this Colombian soap opera. You can view the entire show in Spanish with English subtitles on Viki.Com, starting with episode one（西班牙語原文加英文字幕）: http://en.viki.com/videos/5783v-bettys-work-interwiew-in-ecomoda-episode-1. The English translation on Viki.com is much better than what you can see on YouTube. Please go and watch it for a little taste of life in Colombia.
Yo soy Betty la fea is probably Colombia's most famous export and the most popular soap opera in the world. Betty has been rebroadcast and remade in many different languages all over the world, including English and Chinese（醜女無敵）(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_soy_Betty,_la_fea). The American version was called Ugly Betty. In episode 1, Daniel Meade, a well-known playboy, takes over as editor of a fashion magazine, and Ugly Betty is chosen as his secretary.
Daniel knows that his father doesn't want him to have a beautiful secretary, so at first, Daniel doesn't like Betty at all. He doesn't notice that she has some excellent ideas.
Many of the delicious fruits we enjoy in Taiwan come from South America, but there are probably many fruits that have never been seen in Taiwan. How many fruits can you recognize in these videos?
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