Around the World in 327 Comments

Or at least that's what I'd recorded when I started to get this post ready. What a treat it was going through all the comments and tallying up where everyone was from. It's funny how the world seems to get both smaller and larger when I look through the results. When I was growing up, I'd often thought it would be neat to have pen pals -- people in far away places (for a kid without a car, that could be as little as 20 miles away) who would tell you about all the strange and wonderful things going on in their lives, let you know what the world was like outside your own protective bubble. At the time, I had no idea how one went about finding such people though. But I did collect a lot of stationery in the hopes that I might figure it out.

Now, a quarter century later, I think I may have figured it out. Granted "far away" has a different definition for me now, and the mechanism of communication is different. But the fact that it my horizons are broader and I'm using mostly electronic media instead of pen and paper doesn't make it any less wonderful.

I'm also pretty amazed by the number of you who identified yourselves as biologists or scientists or people connected with science in some way -- just over 13% of those leaving comments.

The place that has the mapping service has 4 maps to play with: an entire world map, and maps for the US, Canada and Europe. I decided to use them all so I could share all the stats with everyone.



create your own visited country map

During my short time sampling, I heard from people 323 people from over 16 different countries (17 if you count Hong Kong separately, as I am inclined to since it is a very unique component of China). 43 of you identified yourselves as having some connection to a scientific profession. Although last month I got hits to my blog from many of the places that aren't colored in, they are a relatively small number of hits, so I wasn't expecting to see too many of those in a couple of day window. However, I'm going to keep the comments open on the original post so that anyone new dropping by who feels so inclined, can share their location. You can get to it by clicking here or in the link I've added to my side bar.

4% of those of you who responded were in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan or New Zealand. Approximately 15% of you have some connection to science or biology. Given how far they are from Chicago, I consider myself fortunate that I've visited even one of these places -- I traveled to Australia for my honeymoon(we had a stop over in Auckland, but I'm not sure that counts as visiting New Zealand). We spent most of our time in Sydney and near the Barrier Reef. I'm hoping my next trip will take me farther inland.

create your own personalized map of Canada

8% of you hail from Canada. Only 4% of the Canadians who left me a comment were willing to admit to having a connection to biology or any kind of bench science. Perhaps, not surprisingly given population density, the largest number of waves came from Ontario. British Columbia was next.

Embarassingly, I've travelled very little in Canada. I've been in Ontario (Stratford Festival, anyone?) but haven't yet visited beyond that, in spite of having a cousin in Manitoba. Someday I want to take the Royal Canadian Pacific train across Canada. If only I could convince my husband to take a vacation that doesn't involve a beach!

create your personalized map of europe

11% of the responses came from Europe, with the most from England, followed by Germany and Finland. 16% (the highest percentage overall) of the responses were from scientists or biologists of various stripes.

I've been very fortunate that, since getting married and getting a real job, I've visited a few European countries. Most I haven't seen anywhere near enough of, and I've enjoyed every place I've visited: England, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland. I've spent the most time, so far, in France, but am hoping to get a few weeks in the UK this summer with my family. Watch out, Colinette factory!



create your own personalized map of the USA

Finally, the US. 77% of the responses were from my home country, and 14% of you identify yourselves as having biological connections. California, Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Virginia were the top 5.

I won't list all the states I've visited -- my parents did a pretty good job of making sure that I've at least driven through most of them. I've only lived in a few of them, however... New York (first 4 years), Michigan (14 years), Texas (4 years) and Illinois (14 years). Just seeing it that way gives me a bit of a surprise. I've been in Illinois for much longer than I thought, sometimes it seems like I just got here...

Blog of the Day
This mapping adventure has also brought a whole new collection of blogs to my attention. I've decided that every day I'm going to take the time to explore a new blog from this group and share the link here. I'll pick them more or less at random from the list. Today I took a little trip by Nadia's Crafting Adventures. Nadia hails from British Columbia, Canada and has an idea for a store that could completely clean out my bank account... a combination book store and yarn store! Good thing Vancouver is a long ways away from Chicago.

And for anyone who wanted to see the whole tally of responses, just open up the extended entry.