TEN LARGEST ISLANDS

This one was interesting to research, because first you have to figure out what the difference is between an island and a continent. By definition, an island is a land mass completely surrounded by water, and not larger than a continent. From there you need to figure out how big a continent is. By definition, a continent is one of the main landmasses of the globe. So, that was easier than I expected. Basically an island is a land mass completely surrounded by water that is not one of the seven continents (Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Australia, North America, South America, Europe). I have found arguments that Australia is the largest island, but I disagree. I think, because it is a continent, it cannot be the largest island also. Its area is more than 3 times that of the largest island.
Now I know when I think of your typical island I think of white sand beaches, turquoise water and lots of palm trees. Well, these are not your typical islands. In fact some of the things advertised for tourists on the largest island on this list are skiing, dog sledding and staying in an igloo. Who would have thought? Some of the other islands on this list are a little more typical, but dog sledding? Anyways, I guess you will want to look at this list, so here you have it! The ten largest islands!

I hope you have enjoyed this blog, because I have certainly had a fun time researching it. But now the school year is over, so it is not really required anymore, but maybe if I feel a certain urge this summer to find out what the ten countries with the most Starbucks are maybe I will put up a few posts. Well, that is all for now. So for all of us here at the Creech Academy, have a great summer!!!

Jenna

TEN (ELEVEN) COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST NEIGHBORS

I did not think that this was going to be a very controversial subject. A country only has so many neighboring countries, right? Wrong. There were some places that said Russia had 16 country borders, but others said it had 14. Some places said Brazil has 9 and others said 10. That is because French Guinea, which borders Brazil, is technically a part of France, not its own country. Who knew this could be such a debatable issue? I decided that this was the most accurate list around, even though they are not the top ten countries. So, here you have the top eleven countries with the most neighbors.

Oh, and by the way, Congo has 9 neighbors, not 2. I have no idea where I got that from, but you will have to forgive me for that typo.
That is all for now. Kind of a short blog this time, compared to the other ones recently. I will try and have a longer one next time.
Jenna

TEN MOST WIDELY SPOKEN LANGUAGES

This blog was slightly more difficult to decide about than I had anticipated. There are a couple different ways to measure how many people speak a language. You can measure it by the native speakers or the native and secondary speakers. Either way you measure it you come up with these same basic countries, but they may be a little varried in order. There were also some I did not expect. I expected Chinese, English, Arabic and French, but there were some others that I did not expect like Bengali and Malay-Indonesian. I would not have guessed that they were going to be in the top ten languages.
I think it is interesting that none of the ten are African. I guess because there are so many different dialects in all the countries in Africa none of them are very widely spoken. I read on the internet that Swahili is the most widely spoken African language, spoken by about 1,616,230 people. I also thought this was an interesting observation. The figure I got for the total population of the world is 6,461,306,513, so then roughly a sixth of the world's population speaks Chinese, roughly a twelfth of the world speaks English and just over half of the world's total population speaks one of the top ten languages.
Well, I guess you are wanting to know what these ten languages are, so here this weeks list of the ten most widely spoken languages (and how to say hello in each language)!


There you go, and that's all I have got for this week. I will be blogging again next week!

Jenna

TEN POOREST COUNTRIES

I have to say this has been one of, if not the, most confusing blog. Did you know there are like 20 million ways to measure the wealth of a country? Okay, maybe I am exaggerating, but there are a lot. Even if you understand those, you have still got to figure out what all the acronyms mean. You have got your gross domestic product (GDP), GDP per capita, GDP by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), GDP by PPP per capita, GDP nominal, GDP nominal per capita, GDP real growth rate, GDP official exchange rate, GDP official exchange rate per capita, and so on and so forth. Feel free to look around on the website where I got all of my statistics at and decide for yourself which one measures the porrest countries the most accurately. I decided on GDP by PPP per capita. That basically means the total amount of money the country produces gets changed into US Dollars so we can understand it and is expressed per 1 population. Now you will have to understand that I do not understand what the difference is between these two lists. They both say they are Gross Domestic Product by Purchasing Power Parity per capita, but the countries on the two lists are different. So I decided to just put both of them on here and you can decide between the two. Personally, I think the GDP>PPP per capita seems like it is more of the poorest countries, but I do not know which is actually more accurate. So here they are, the two lists and you can now decide which one makes more sense to you.


http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_pur_pow_par_percap-purchasing-power-parity-per-capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_ppp_percap-economy-gdp-ppp-per-capita
There you go. Make what you will of these lists. I will post again next week.

Jenna

TEN COUNTRIES I HAVE VISITED

Well, maybe not really visited, but I have at least seen the airports! The first seven countries on the list I have actually stayed in for a little while. I've been to Mbarara, Uganda 3 times. Once when I was 10, once when I was 13, and once when I was 14. We visited and worked with some missionaries from our church there. Also, we have got to go to a game park twice called Queen Elizabeth National Park. All three times I went were amazing. I love Uganda. If you total them up I have been there for 37 days. Two summers ago I went to Durban, South Africa to visit some missionaries there for 17 days. That was insane, because I had no idea what South Africa was like. I will tell you this, they have the most amazing accents I have heard. May before last me and my family went to Oaxaca (Wah-ha-ka), Mexico. While we were there we visited a missionary there and attended a Spanish immersion class called Amigos del Sol. I was there for 14 days. That was an amazing experience and I really hope I get to go back to Oaxaca sometime. I also went to Saltillo, Mexico last summer with the high school group from my church. I was there for 6 days that were super fun. I think we are going back again this summer and I am stoked about it. I went to Costa Rica for 10 days as my brother's senior trip. Ah, so many memories there! Last year I went to Israel for 10 days. It was really interesting to see where Jesus actually was. It was also really fun being overseas with my friends and people from my church. On the way back home from that trip we went to Greece for 2 days. I really wish I had been more awake for those two days, but when you get a wake up call to go to the airport at 12:30 AM you can only be so awake the rest of the day. The part of that trip that I do remember was amazing. We were in Athens and...wow. Just being around things that are several thousand years old is awesome. London, I have only been there on layovers, but I have seen both Heathrow and Gatwick (unfortunately we had to switch airports on our layover.) We did get to walk around the first time we went through London. Jet lag is no fun though. This last time we went through we didn't really get to sight see much, but we did spend the night in a Hilton there. We went through the Paris airport and, to say it simply, it was not something I would want to do again. I have only been through the Brussels airport for a little while and I do not really remember that much about it. Except that they had really good chocolate on the plane. I never actually got off the plane in Kenya, but we did stop there to drop off or pick up some passengers on the way to and from Uganda one time. Well, now that I have told you all about it, here is the list of the ten countries I have (sort-of) visited.


Well, if you want the full stories from most of these countries, you can visit my other blog by clicking on the link on the side bar or by clicking on the title. There are some pictures there too. Enjoy! I will post again next week!

Jenna