Glass domes, island life and the pursuit of happiness

Categories: Geography General, s1 and s2

Have spent my evening being gladly distracted by children, books (both mine) and some TV when I could and probably should have been working hard on a number of things. How and ever, I've now had time to read some of my regular pages and found a couple of interesting stories. Apparently, Vanuatu is the happiest place in the world. I am sure those of you, who like me, feel broke all too often will be pleased to realise that this happiness is down to not having to worry about money... only because they don't need to use it. Everything that one would need to survive is right on your doorstep. For those of you who don't know where Vanuatu is, here's a placemark that you can open in Google Earth, thanks to Ogle Earth.In a similar vein, here's a Robinson Crusoe type story about an extreme survival trip, which I found through boingboing. Ironically, read this just after watching Ray Mears go walkabout in Australia with the ultimate survival expert, the bushtucker man. I think I'll maybe do something with my s1 about what makes a place happy on the back of the first story.

I kept the same channel on after this and have sat watching a programme about Wild China, followed by Dimbleby's Russia,on just now and one of the books which awaits me after my birthday recently. I seemed to get a load of books vaguely about Eastern Europe- Palin's New Europe and Football Dynamo are ones I've been dipping into today. It's kind of triggered a new interest in a geographical region that I studied intensely at University in the Politics part of my joint degree (the other part was geography...).

Finally, I've been trying to tidy up some of the s2 Environmental Issues unit during study leave, which borrows one or two of the great ideas from Daniel Raven-Ellison's scheme of work for sustainable development. I was reminded of this when watching the Simpsons Movie tonight (another gift) when a huge glass dome was placed over Springfield. This might be a good clip to use as an introduction when doing the City Footprint exercise next year. So, after a period of seemingly avoiding work, there's a couple of stories to get a class discussion going and a resource for future use. Result! :-)