Thursday, July 7, 2011

Why does Blogger always think I speak Finnish?

Footprints
My feet in Senegal

Alas, one day I'll learn. At least I can muster my way through when it randomly gives me a Norwegian page or two! Not much to blog about. I'm heading up to Madison again for a few days and then on Sunday I'll be seeing Beauty and the Beast with my mom and some dear friends! It's pretty exciting because I used to drag her to see it in theaters when I was three years old, and as a graduation gift she's taking me to see it on stage.

Since I've been dog-sitting a puppy girl who enjoys waking up at 5:30 AM, I was watching Arthur today in a sleepy stupor. (Don't judge.) Any nostalgic love I have for the show aside, I was really impressed with one of the episodes. (Yes, I watched the full 30 minutes.) The episode was entitled "In My Africa", and it centered around the Brain's cousin Cheikh who is from Dakar. Of course, as soon as the little cartoon version of Dakar came across the screen I was hooked. While Cheikh shares a bit of his Senegalese culture with his new friend D.W., the main point is that many people, like Arthur's sister, mistake Africa for a country. They assume that every part of this "country" is filled with lions and hippos and giraffes (Oh my!). When I was in Senegal, the most interesting animal I saw was a pelican that was about 4'5". The main characters of the episode wrote a song to teach children about some special aspects of all 54 countries in Africa. A noteable highlight was the random shouting of "DJIBOUTI!"

I applaud you, Arthur creators. You have finally addressed something which I feel like a majority of American children need to learn. They also do a great episode on Asperger's syndrome and give a nod to Judaism without a "chanukah special", I'm totally going to make my kids watch Arthur when they exist. And I'm going to continue watching it now. No regrets.

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