Lots of excitement today!

This afternoon I attended the African Summer Institute at Northeastern Illinois University. You all know I go there because of the NEIU water bottle that I carry around with me all the time. :) I was a part of this Institute last year and it was the experience of it that inspired me to take this upcoming trip to South Africa so it was really nice to see everyone again!

I missed the Netherlands vs. Uruguay game, which was too bad because it seems like it was an action-packed game! A final score of 3-2 tells me it was probably pretty interesting.

I am *really* excited about tomorrow's game! Germany vs. Spain. Oh, who to root for? Well, I think I am rooting for the Germans only because there are three (I know I said two earlier but there are actually three!) Polish players on the team.

I was looking for a station that would be showing the game tomorrow (I hate that American TV is barely showing any of the games!) and, of course, trusty Univision to the rescue! I wish I could speak Spanish because it would be really cool to be able to watch the game and understand the announcers. But, hey, at least with Univision I can watch the game!

Interestingly, as I checked the program summary, it said "Segunda Semifinal" (I know what that means!) and then "Alemania vs. Espana." Well, I know that Espana is Spain but it was really interesting to me that Germany=Alemania. Why is this interesting? Well, in Spanish Germany=Alemandia but in German Germany=Deutschland. In Polish Germany=Niemcy. So none of it sounds alike. So all of that piqued my curiosity and I decided to figure out why none of the names for Germany sound the same.

Just to show you what I mean, here are the names for Poland:
Polish=Polska
English=Poland
German=Polen
French=Pologne
Italian=Polonia
Portugese=Polonia
Swahili (African language)=Poland
Afrikaans (African lanuage)=poland (lowercase)
Dutch=Polen

So hopefully you noticed a pattern... but in case you didn't, they all sound kind of the same! It's always POL and then an ending.

Well, so with Germany, it's kind of interesting because when I did some google searches, here's what I found:

Because of Germany's geographic position in the center of Europe and its long history as a disunited region of distinct tribes and states, there are many widely varying names of Germany in different languages, perhaps more than for any other European nation: for example, in German the country is known as Deutschland, in French as Allemagne, and in Polish as Niemcy.

So, there are basically six main types of names for Germany and they are:
1) From Old high German diutisc (Example: Deutschland in German)
2) From the Latin Germania (this is where the English name for Germany comes from)
3) From the name of the Alamanni tribe (Examples: the Spanish Alemania and French Allemagne)
4) From the name of the Saxon tribe (Example: Saksa in Finnish)
5) From the Old Slavic word for "mute" and/or the name of the Nemetest tribe (this is where the Polish word for Germany, Niemcy, comes from)
6) Possibly from the Germanic word Volk "folk" (Example: Vācija in Latvian)

I realize I am probably the only person on earth who thinks this is really cool and interesting but it just seems so different. I mean, everyone everywhere knows that Mexico is called Meksyk (Polish), Mexiko (German), Mexique (French), Messico (Italian) or something that basically starts with the MEX sound. It's so weird (but cool!) to me that one country (Germany) can have so many different names in different languages.

Anyway, it's getting late. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer! Let me know who you think will win the World Cup! Also, let me know what you've been up to. I miss you guys!