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Math is a Universal Language

The Romans, whose civilization is a great grandfather of most Western cultures, didn't have a concept for zero. Their numerical system looks to me like it probably arose from making tick marks for counting. For tick marks, you make a straight line to record "1." For every instance counted, you make another straight line up to four. For the fifth instance, you make a diagonal line through the first four to group them together and for 6, you start a new group of straight lines.  The Wikipedia article for tally marks has an illustration of what "5" looks like in tally marks. And here are what Roman numerals look like: Roman Numerals  1 = I 2 = II 3 = III 4 = IV 5 = V 6 = VI 7 = VII 8 = VIII 9 = IX 10 = X 11 = XI 20 = XX 50 = L 100 = C 500 = D 1000 = M It was primarily a system for COUNTING and writing DATES (and their calendar had issues: October, our 10th month, translates as "month 8" and November, our 11th month, translates as "month 9"). T...
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California College Classes and Programs

To my surprise, California proved to be my ticket to wrapping up my Associate of Arts, pursuing an online Bachelor's of Science (unfinished) and completing a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from the world's foremost GIS program.  All I had heard was that California is expensive to live in and their universities have extremely expensive tuition.  But I was a military wife and most California colleges had agreements (called "SOFA" at the time) to charge in-state tuition to military members and their dependents and community colleges had extremely affordable tuition. My books typically cost as much or more than my tuition. My husband was active duty and getting 75 percent of his tuition reimbursed by the Army and tuition was something like $12 per credit hour, or $3 per credit hour for him after reimbursement.  Most California colleges are on a semester system and a full-time class under that system is typically three credit hours. So I was paying like $36 ...
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Language Learning

As a teen, I wanted to be a simultaneous translator and had aspirations of becoming fluent in seven languages (counting English). That never happened but I know a smattering of multiple languages  and I know a bit about learning another language. I never learned Farsi AKA the Persian language, though I wanted to and went through a chapter or two of EasyPersian.com and still have the link years later. In my teens, I wanted to become fluent in multiple languages and had a list: German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek "and one more, probably something Asian or Middle Eastern." I've actually studied every single one of those languages though I've never achieved fluency.  When I lived in southern California, I sometimes watched the Spanish language channel with the English subtitles on because my German immigrant mother told me watching TV is how she learned English.  Link rot happens and I no longer have the list of German and Spanish resources I used to help fulfill the...
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