How well do you know North America?

Let’s start this post out with a quiz (no peeking below):

1) Who is the president of the United States?

2) Who is the prime minister of Canada?

3) Who is the president of Mexico?

My guess is that you can probably answer the first question, but without a Google search number 2 and 3 may elude you.  I find it interesting that in reality, we generally don’t know too much about the governments of our closes neighbors.

As I’ve traveled abroad, one thing I’ve noticed is the people of other countries are often more international.  What I mean by this is that news focuses more on what’s happening in the world and people generally have an idea of the workings of other countries.  Here in the U.S., we generally seem to focus on what’s happening here domestically and any international stories are generally tied to our foreign interests.

It’s hard of course to make a snap judgment here, because the U.S. is the world’s superpower and what happens here often affects the rest of the planet.  I remember one time in Spain the news started out with a story of how it was snowing in Texas (I remember laughing at the fact that U.S. weather took precedent over other stories).

You can make of this post what you wish, but I thought it was an interesting characteristic of American society to point out.

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Now, if you knew the answers to all the questions above, congratulations!  You are very international!  If you didn’t, look below for the answers.

1) Who is the president of the United States? Barack Obama

2) Who is the prime minister of Canada? Stephen Harper

3) Who is the president of Mexico? Felipe Calderón