Our shrinking world

I've been thinking recently about how much our world has shrunk. When I was a kid (in the 1950's and 1960's), we often remarked on how small the world had become, but we could hardly have imagined how small it is now! My grandparents (my mother's parents) lived in Arizona and we lived in Southern California. It took about a day to drive to their place (as it still would, basically), so we didn't go too often. We also didn't call them on the phone very often either, because long distance telephoning was VERY expensive. We saved it only for special occasions or big news, and even then we very carefully limited the length of our conversations.

Today, I sit here in my comfortable, beautiful home in the Galil ("Galilee" or northern Israel) and talk every day for hours with people in many countries, mostly in Europe. I have students in Norway (one north of the arctic circle!), Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and even China regularly. Just yesterday, I was the moderator for a discussion group that included 3 students in China and one in Spain, all discussing appropriate meeting behaviors and the recycling of company waste products, in English! I don't think we could even have imagined such a thing when I was growing up!