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| American Nerd Contributor Survey #3 |
| What's the farthest you've
ever been from Lebanon, Kansas (which, of course, is the geographic
center of the US), and what in the name of God were you doing
there? |
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Rebecca Collins: The farthest away I've been in Paris,
France. I was part of an exchange program for 5th and 6th
graders at my elementary school. My family hosted a French
student for something like 5 or 6 weeks and then it switched
and I went over there. I was not prepared for big city French
life. My most vivid memory is of going over to someone's apartment
to have dinner and locking myself in the bathroom to have
a good cry. No one spoke English and I hadn't really been
paying very much attention during the skimpy language lessons
they gave us to prepare for our trip. Plus, I was already
the tallest girl in my American class... going over there
and trying to relate to petite French children, so diminutive,
so stylish, so svelte... it was like the Jolly Green Giant
descending on a school of Little Sprouts.
I also remember being yelled at by a clerk in a French department
store who didn't like me fingering the goods... All in all
a very unpleasant experience. I have yet to make my triumphant
return to the City of Lights and am horrified when people
describe Paris as the most Romantic City in the World. Tell
that to a 12- year-old with braces, bad hair and terrible
posture as she's trying to eat something that looks like cooked
snake and she will laugh in your face.
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| Chad Cook: Alice Springs, Australia.
I was under the impression that the Mad Max movies were documentaries
and I was looking for Thunderdome. |
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| Geoff Herbach: I
once visited Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I was fourteen and I had
a cousin there who asked me if I wanted to visit a prostitute.
When I came back to the U.S., I was incredibly tan, and I told
everyone in 8th grade I visited a prostitute. This was a terrible
lie. I did walk past a brothel while in Rio, which made my knees
quake, and I eventually threw up. Travel is very important.
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Joel Jensen: The farthest I've been from Lebanon,
KS was my stint in Adelaide, South Australia, which was spent
doing many things. Among them: eating vegemite sandwiches,
climbing trees in the neighborhood gully, and asking my mother
for Popsicle money.
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| Mark Kalar: An Internet
search reveals that at 5351 miles, Rome, Italy, is actually
farther away from Kansas than Eastern Europe. Weird. Geography
is cool. I was in Rome in 1997 studying Renaissance and Baroque
architecture and trying to avoid being run over by guys on Vespas.
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| Keith Pille: Tofino,
British Columbia, way out on the Western coast of Vancouver
island. Aside from it being completely gorgeous out there, it
was cool as hell to stand on the beach, look out at the ocean,
and think about how there was nothing at all for thousands of
miles until you hit the Kurile islands.
All of the Japanese trash that washed up on the beach sort
of added to this edge-of-the-world feeling.
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| Kelly Riordan: If you don't
remember, does it still count? I was born in Seoul, South Korea,
so that's definitely the farthest I've ever been from Lebanon.
What was I doing there? Well, as much as an infant can, I suppose,
so not much! Waiting to be adopted, actually. I left there at
the tender ago of three and a half months, though, so I couldn't
tell you a damn thing about the place. |
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Simon Riordan: The island nation of Maucau, off the
coast of Hong Kong. The one and only time I have ever been
on a hovercraft. Maucau is known as a mafia-esque gambling
empire. I was there undercover posing as a tourist, infiltrating
casinos and tooling around in a rental car the size of a golf
cart. The windshield was not tall enough so the wind was always
in my face; in a country where everything ran on diesel, this
was not good.
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