Happy Birthday blog! Three years on!!!

It's now three years since I started this blog - 25 countries and 172 blog posts later, it has been visited by 10,568 unique visitors from all over the world!
 

Flag of Zanzibar

To celebrate another year of Learning about the World, I thought I would use this blogpost to remind myself (and you, my loyal readers) of the things that I have read, cooked, listened to and watched so I could increase my understanding of this amazing world we live in :-)

This time round, I can't list everything I've read, cooked, watched and listened to (as there is so much!) but here is a summary of the learning adventure I've been on since September of last year.

The Books

Flag of Amazonas (Brazil)

Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar by Emily Reute (Zanzibar)
Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar)
Feminism: A very Short Introduction by Margaret Walters (Amazonas)
The Fate of the Forest by Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn (Amazonas)
River of The Singing Fish by Arkady Fiedler (Amazonas)

At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen (Amazonas)

To Hell or Barbados by Sean O'Callaghan (Barbados)
In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming (Barbados)
Song of Night by Glenville Lovell (Barbados)

Books for Dorset Research

Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction by Andrew Robinson (Cambodia)
First They Killed my Father by Loung Ung (Cambodia)
River of Time by Jon Swain (Cambodia)
Remarkable Creatures by Tracey Chevalier (Dorset)
Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction by David Norman (Dorset)
(part of) A History of British Trade Unionism by Henry Pelling (Dorset)
The Black Tower by P. D. James (Dorset)
Eritrea: Even the Stones are Burning by Roy Pateman (Eritrea)
Ciao Asmara by Justin Hill (Eritrea)

The Food:

Flag of Barbados

Peixe Assado com Farofa (Amazonas)

Pwewa wa Nazi (Zanzibar)
Peixe Assado com Farofa (Amazonas)
Cou cou and Fried Fish (Barbados)
Somla Machou (Cambodia)
Tea Bread (Dorset)
Lyme Bay Fish Pie (Dorset)


The movies:

Flag of Cambodia

Road to Zanzibar (1941) dir. Victor Schertzinger (Zanzibar)
The Emerald Forest (1985) dir. John Boorman (Amazonas)
Amazon - TV series (2008) with Bruce Parry (Amazonas)
The Tamarind Seed (1974) dir. Blake Edwards (Barbados)
Fire in Babylon (2010) dir. Stevan Riley (Barbados)
Legends of Cricket: West Indies (2008) (Barbados)
The Killing Fields (1984) dir. Roland Joffe (Cambodia)
Voices of the Killing Fields featuring reporting of Thet Sambeth (Cambodia)

Still from Road to Zanzibar (1941)

Comrades (1986) dir. Bill Douglas (Dorset)
Tess (1979) dir. Roman Polanski (Dorset)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) dir. John Schlesinger (Dorset)
Jude (1996) dir. Michael Winterbottom (Dorset)
Trishna (2011) dir. Michael Winterbottom (Dorset)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) dir. Karel Reisz (Dorset)


The music:

Bi KiDude (Zanzibar)
Ghazzy Musical club (Zanzibar)
The Rough Guide to the Music of Brazil (Amazonas)

Flag of Dorset (United Kingdom)

Square One (Barbados)
Rihanna (Barbados)
Dengue Fever (Cambodia)
Songs for Cycles of Cambodian life (Cambodia)
The Cambodian Space Project (Cambodia)
Electric Wizard (Dorset)
Black Sabbath (Dorset)
Asmara All-stars (Eritrea)
Faytinga (Eritrea)

If you would like to find out more about my research from G(uatemala) to Y(emen) - just click on the link to my birthday post from last year.  

Some Stats

I use a couple of different tools to keep an eye on who's reading my blog, which countries they come from etc.  It's always exciting to get the first 'hit' on my blog from the place I'm blogging about.

The blog has had visitors from 100 countries worldwide.  The top twenty countries that read this blog are:

A snapshot of visitors from around the world

1. USA
2. UK
3. India
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Germany
7. The Netherlands
8. Belgium
9. France
10.Russia
11. Italy
12. Saudi Arabia
13. Ireland
14. Taiwan
15. Pakistan
16. The Philippines
17. Malaysia
18. Brazil
19. Sweden
20. Turkey

I started using Google Analytics in June 2012, so hopefully, this time next year, I'll have even more precise stats for the year 2012-13.  

Flag of Eritrea

One of the reasons I started this blog was so I would read, watch, listen to and taste things that I wouldn't otherwise have read, watched, listened to or tasted.  Three years down the line, I feel incredibly enriched by the cultural experiences I've had through my 'armchair' travelling - I look forward to another year and all the learning it will bring.

In the languages of some of the countries I've blogged about:

Happy Birthday!  
Pongezi kwa siku ya kuzaliwa! 
Feliz aniversário!  
  
ጽቡቅ  ልደት!