My dear friend Ben lives in Kivshovata, Ukraine. He's a Peace Corps volunteer, and is currently teaching English to some sweet middle-schoolers. He loves it. He has a blog, if you're interested in knowing more about what Ben does on a daily basis: http://pcvbenhogue.blogspot.com/
The reason I bring this up is because I miss Ben terribly. Senior year at CLU was a blast, and I spent most of it with Ben. He's the kind of person that you can just be exactly who you are with, and he's even crazier. It's really nice.
The reason I'm posting this blog is because, today, I sat and thought about space and time and travel and the size of the Earth. Sober, I promise. But I sat down and was like, how far is it to Kivshovata? 6,184 miles. That's pretty far. But like, think about how big the Earth is. And think about how many miles around the Earth is. At Berkeley's latitude, it's 19, 681 miles around the Earth. So Ben is like a third of the way around the world right now. That's really far. A third of the way in the other direction? Russia. ACROSS THE ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN.
And like, I get upset because Ben's not here, but like, things are going on ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD that are awesome. Ben is across the globe having the time of his life in some potentially imaginary country. That's really often how I look at it. Because it's just so hard to comprehend that thousands of miles from here, street lights are operating and water is flowing in pipes and people are living and breathing independently of anything that goes on anywhere else, particularly here.
Doesn't that just blow your mind?
The reason I bring this up is because I miss Ben terribly. Senior year at CLU was a blast, and I spent most of it with Ben. He's the kind of person that you can just be exactly who you are with, and he's even crazier. It's really nice.
The reason I'm posting this blog is because, today, I sat and thought about space and time and travel and the size of the Earth. Sober, I promise. But I sat down and was like, how far is it to Kivshovata? 6,184 miles. That's pretty far. But like, think about how big the Earth is. And think about how many miles around the Earth is. At Berkeley's latitude, it's 19, 681 miles around the Earth. So Ben is like a third of the way around the world right now. That's really far. A third of the way in the other direction? Russia. ACROSS THE ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN.
And like, I get upset because Ben's not here, but like, things are going on ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD that are awesome. Ben is across the globe having the time of his life in some potentially imaginary country. That's really often how I look at it. Because it's just so hard to comprehend that thousands of miles from here, street lights are operating and water is flowing in pipes and people are living and breathing independently of anything that goes on anywhere else, particularly here.
Doesn't that just blow your mind?