Time flies, even when you aren't having too much fun!! I haven't had too much time to blog.

It has been a busy week -- lots of chores around the house that piled up while I was away. It is, however, looking better. I've accomplished a lot!

As I worked, I've been thinking about the size of my world.

This morning I was talking to a man in his early 70's, who is not in good health. He told me that he grew up as an only child on a 100 acre farm. He would go days without speaking to his Father and only sometimes spoke with his mother. Evidently, they were not very verbal people. He spent most of his time roaming around the pastures alone. That told me a lot about the way he is -- rather stand-offish, reluctant to have a relationship with someone. He feels he gets along just fine with only a small number of people in his life. His world is very small.

I, on the other hand, love the contact with people. And, I feel that my world has grown and grown and grown. Several things caused this growth.

In school I had pen pals -- from Japan and from Sweden. The Swedish pen pal and I continued to write after both of us were married.

In the 80's my family hosted a student from Japan for two summers. That was really interesting, and again, our family worlds grew. We learned words like "prefecture" and "Awa Dancers." We ate different food. It was an adventure!

I've been able to visit a number of different states here in the US. East coast to West coast, northern border to southern border, and a tiny bit in the middle. More adventures and more world expansion.

We've been fortunate enough to do a little traveling. Mexico and Canada are the countries that I have visited in person. In Mexico, Sweetie and I walked around a bustling city and found a hardware store to visit. I love hardware stores and this was a good one. In some ways it was like going back to pioneer America. We found a lot of items for sale that we don't usually see in American hardware stores any more.

In Canada I bought lunch and was handed a handful of really strange looking money. (The clerk was kind enough to explain what she had given me.) I found magazines for sale that weren't available where I lived. So close, but so different.

Today I visit with people from many other countries quite often. When I first contacted Coolrue in his blog he remarked that who ever thought that someone in the US would be reading his blog written there in Ireland. Blogging had caused my world to grow! I read blogs from all around the world. This morning I heard the reports about the fires and Australia and heard places mentioned where I have blogging buddies. They are having a really terrible time over there. Fires in several places and floods in others.

When hurricane Ike blew through our area we rejoiced when it left our family relatively unscathed. However, it just kept going and places in the middle of America were hit by high winds, heavy rains, flooding, power outages, etc. "Our" hurricane hit them, too.

When I was younger our world was rather small. Oh, we did hear about other countries. Missionaries came to our church and told us about China and Africa. They brought us strange objects that we put in glass fronted cabinets where we could look at them as often as we wanted. They were interesting, but our contact with those places was strictly second or third hand.

Today I have friends and neighbors from those countries, and many others.

In earlier days we knew only about our local weather. Today we watch weather patterns develop across our country and around the world, courtesy of The Weather Channel. We get reports about fires and floods and tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that happen thousands of miles away.

In our previous home I taught photography at a community college and had a few international students. My world grew a little then.

Today, I teach ESL and I meet people from other countries -- I eat with them, shop with them, laugh and talk with them. They are helping my world grow larger again. So many adventures I've had, and, I pray, there are many more to come.

How big is your world?