It is amazing how the most basic things, that you think you’ve know for as long as you can remember can prove to be not globally true.  My new friend from Australia informed in a comment in our “blogversation” (awesome new word I’m trying to trademark) that September 1st is the first day of spring.  Now if you are reading this and you are thinking “Spring?! In September?” Then that means you are not old enough to read this blog and must go to bed before your parents scold you.  However if you Are thinking “Spring!?  On the first?”  Then you are having the correct reaction and you may continue reading.

I remember my sister told me she got somewhat viciously attacked on-line by a French girl who mocked her for thinking that there were 7 continents instead of 6.  Apparently in Europe they consider the Americas continent.  Confused the hell out of us because we always thought South America and North America were separate continents. 🙂

Anyway I think my friend Robyn sort of had the same reaction.  We didn’t ridicule the other, but we did perhaps think that we both might be using some sort of narcotic to be so misguided.

According to Wikipedia entry on spring some places in the world mark their seasons according to climatic averages by month.   The three warmest months being summer, the three coldest months being winter and the ones in between the spring and fall seasons.  Climatically it is no different from here, but we simply mark the seasonal changes according to the equinoxes and solstices.  Does that make the most sense to me because of the astronomical markers are more global, or does it make the most sense to me simply because that is what I grew up learning?  It’s an interesting question, and one that I can never really test.

It does make one think however that if something so simple can look differently depending on where you grew up, something that you think is just a universally agreed upon fact, what about all the other things in this world that are less exact, that are more complicated, and for which the answer is not so easily discovered?  The only way to open your mind up to other perspectives is to engage with people different than yourselves and listen to them.   Who knows what you might learn and how your thinking might change. 🙂