Jenna and I have played “Crazy Countries” a game much like Crazy 8 Of course the Africa continent deck has a lot more cards than say Oceania or South America deck and so we of course don’t play with all of the cards. We’re not learning countries so much as continents – for I have told Jenna that whenever we use a wild card to change suit, we have to say by continent rather than color.

I took Spanish in 9^th and 10^th grade. In my first year, part of our lessons included studying the countries in South America. We were also assigned pen pals to correspond with in hopes that it would help us learn our Spanish and assist our pen pal with his or her English.

The map of South America looks the same way I remember it looking in 1975. It looks the same way today. And I am impressed by the stableness of the boundaries. It makes geography so much easier to learn (and share).

After playing “Crazy Countries” (the only game we have played thus far) I thought I would impress Jenna with my knowledge of what countries fit where. I got half right, and although I remembered all the names (except for Suriname) , I wasn’t able to match them to their appropriate shape until she showed me the flags. Not that I remember learning the flags. It was through a different source that I thought I might have enough material for another post although I would like to just tack it onto what I started yesterday.

My ability to recognize flags did not come from geography. It actually came from the Mahjong tiles found on the Internet. I wanted to know what flags belonged to what countries, which led me to the cards, which led me to an imaging index (as I could not find four of the flags among the cards; and I also learned that some of the flags were out of date)