Hi! My name is Kate, I live in Canada, and I love to travel. Unfortunately, I’m writing this during 2020, so there’s not a lot of travelling going on these days. That will end, eventually, but this has encouraged me to start exploring the world from home. I want to learn more about other countries, and there are plenty of ways to learn (apart from going there!)
Each month I am going to pick a country at random, try to experience things from that country, and share it here. That could include:
- Trying recipes
- Ordering food or snacks
- Reading books
- Listening to music, radio or podcasts
- Reading news or watching documentaries
- Learning phrases or language
- Watching tv, movies, or sports
- Trying activities or hobbies
- Going to cultural events (when those come back!)
- And more!
I’m going to start each month by writing out what I know about the country just off the top of my head, and at the end of the month, I’ll go over what I learned. You can check out these posts in the What do I know? tag.
I’m hoping to keep this flexible – some counties are so big as to be overwhelming, some are small and there may not be much online. I realize this will only give me a superficial experience, but I hope I learn something new or experience something neat each month!
How I’m picking countries:
What counts as a country can be controversial, and there is no absolute list of countries that everyone will agree on. I am going to use a random number generator based off of this list, which includes all the countries with UN seats plus the two UN observer states of the Vatican and Palestine. That’s 195 countries, and I’m going to round it out to 200 with a few places that aren’t recognized by the UN or otherwise aren’t independent countries, but I feel are distinct enough to warrant their own month:
196: Taiwan
197: Kosovo
198: Hong Kong
199: Macao
200: Greenland
So that’s my work cut out for me – this will take a while!
Locally Foreign 