Stumped

These past few weeks since I have gotten a job I have been working really hard trying to make sure I have everything in order when school starts- writing disclosure statements, deciding exactly how I want to run my classroom,creating all kinds of forms and policies and procedures... and of course lesson planning. I have discovered that even though planning is one of my strengths, at the same time it is one of my weaknesses. I am (at times) too much of a perfectionist and even a little OCD (yes, I am admitting to it!). Most first year teachers have 1-2 maybe 3 different 'preps' as we call them- different courses to plan for. I however, have 4.... ya, that is right 4! Luckily they are really similar in content so they aren't completely different and I can piggy back some of my lessons. I am excited because between Geography, foreign language exploration, and my exploratory course I get to teach a lot about culture! I love culture. I think it is what makes us who we are.

So here is where I am stumped... for my exploratory course I was told I could "teach anything I want" that might introduce students to geography (it is an 8th grade course). It took a lot of narrowing down because my mind was just racing at the thought of teaching whatever I want- yes, I avoided the temptation to just teach about Italy (which would be a blast! But I'm sure 8th graders aren't going to be as interested as I) so I thought it would be fun to teach about different cultures around the world because when teaching geography there is so little time to focus on cultures. I am having a hard time narrowing it down to what cultures I want to focus on... I was thinking about dividing the course by regions- No America, So America, W Europe, E Europe, SE Asia, E Asia, Oceania, and Pacific Islands....

If any of you know about or have lived in any country (particularly ones that teachers often skip over- because those are the ones I would like to teach about) and can give me a little tid bit into their culture- I would love it!