Somehow it slipped by me to write my post last week–SO get ready for a double-whammy!  I’m sure I’ll have lots to talk about, as we are getting ready for data input!  Hopefully by Wednesday we will have all information/media gathered, written up, and ready to upload.  Tierney will then help us actually upload it all.
Last week the Silk Worms met with Tierney and played around with Google My Maps.  It was SO cool!  Very straightforward and easy to use, and very perfect for this project.  In fact, I kind of want to just make a Google My Maps for every trip I’ve ever taken.  It’s that useful of a tool.
My desire to use this database operated by Google makes me think on how we can’t use Google in China  What an enormous barrier!  I don’t usually have to think about censoring or about what information is forbidden.  It all started to seem really real during the break-out session for the abroad trip when we were discussing what reading we had to do while in the U.S. and how we should clean off the documents that we have been reading in class just in case they’re a red flag.  I have so many documents on my computer that I love and cherish and look back on continuously.  It’s like my own little library on here.  I guess I’ll just have to back it up on a hard drive…
Last week was all about maps.  Maps, maps, maps.  I actually really enjoyed it.  When I was younger, I didn’t even no where my own state was on a map, let alone Kuqa, China.  I really had it in my head that geography was something that I could not do–that my brain was not fit for it.  What I’m starting to see with these tests is that I am perfectly fit (then again, I haven’t actually gotten the test back…).  The world actually makes sense!  Borderlines are not arbitrary, they are built to fit the land.  That is why, I am particularly pleased that this map actually involved us drawing the lines, not just marking a dot.  That said, it was shockingly hard to do it.  It was like learning how to draw cartoons–you learn how to draw 1000 perfect circles, and then you’ll know how to draw any cartoon in the world.  But this was more like scribbling.  And I still only know how to draw Central Asia.
Here’s a stupid youtube video of my surprisingly favorite cartoon character to draw–Tazmanian Devil.  You better laugh.