Up with Geography: Maintenance Post

About a year ago, my husband and I started participating in a weekly pub quiz competition. The experience has largely been both fun and satisfying, but it can also occasionally be frustrating and it’s almost always humbling. In a way, it’s nice to get a weekly reminder of much I don’t know.

In particular, I’ve discovered a huge lack of knowledge in three areas: 1. While I may know the lyrics to practically every famous classic rock song, I rarely know the titles of those songs or who sang them; 2. Baseball; and 3. World Geography.

A few weeks ago, something on a friend’s blog (I can no longer recall what) sparked an idea about my lack of geography knowledge and here we are. I have a new project, a world geography project. It’s mostly for myself and I don’t really expect anyone else to be interested in it, but I figure that while I’m going through the effort of doing the research, I may as well blog about it.

The purpose of this post is to spell out how my geography posts will be formatted and what each of the categories mean. You can expect my first country post – Afghanistan – to appear within the next few days. 

So without further ado, here is the proposed layout of these future posts:

Country Name:

This is the name of the country, in English.

Capital:

This is the name of the country’s capital city, in English.

Continent:

This is the continent on which the country is located. If the country is an island, the continent will be “none” and it will be noted that it is an island or an island chain.

Maps:

There will be two for each country. One will depict the region where the country is located. The other will depict the country more close up, including the names of the surrounding countries and/or water. These maps will be hand-drawn by me.

Neighbors:

This will denote all of the countries that share a border with the country in question.

Water Borders:

This will denote any large bodies of water that make up an entire border or a significant partial border of the country in question. Included are: oceans, seas, and occasionally gulfs, bays and lakes. Not included are rivers or internal bodies of water.

Total Area: (added March 2015)
The total area of the country, in square miles.

Five Largest Cities:

The five largest cities in the country in descending order. Population numbers will not be given because such stats are very changeable.

Famous Geographical Point:

An interesting and/or well-known geographical point of the country. Where possible, I’ve picked things that should be known worldwide, i.e. the Grand Canyon or the Sahara Desert. They will all be naturally occurring, i.e. nothing manmade.

Note that some countries have several famous geographical points. Please don’t be offended if I didn’t pick the one you think I should have, but feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

After getting to know a little bit about the geography of each country, I thought it would be fun to know some of the culture/pop culture. Therefore, I’m including the following categories:

Famous Person:

A famous person who was born in that country. The person has to have been born in that country; I am not including people of that descent who were born in other countries. Where possible, I’ve picked a name that I recognize. Barring that, I’ve picked someone who sounded interesting to me upon further research. I’m trying to keep this fun, so I’ve picked people who have had a positive influence on the world. Therefore, don’t expect to find despots or criminals in here (i.e. no Hitler, Stalin, etc.).

Note that pretty much every country has produced multiple famous people. Please don’t be offended if I didn’t pick the one you think I should have, but feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

Book Set In/About:

A book set in and/or about the country, either fiction or non-fiction. I took suggestions from Goodreads and tried to pick books with ratings of 4 stars or higher. I also tried to pick books that sounded interesting, in case you or I might want to read them someday.

Note that pretty much every country has produced lots of literature. Please don’t be offended if I didn’t pick the book you think I should have, but feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

Movie Set In/About:

A movie set in and/or about the country, either fiction or non-fiction. In some cases, I had to settle for a movie made by a director from that country. I took suggestions from several sources online and checked them against IMDB. I tried to pick movies with a rating of 7.0 or higher, in case you or I might want to watch them someday.

Note that pretty much every country has produced lots of movies. Please don’t be offended if I didn’t pick the film you think I should have, but feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

Headline of the Day:

Right as I am about to post the country, I will google the country’s name. The first news headline that pops up will be what I post here.

There you have it - my grand geography project. So far, it's been very engrossing and also very interesting, and I haven't even made it to the "C"s yet! I hope you'll find it as fun as I do.