I kind of made a very interesting cultural mistake before one of my student painters politely corrected me. If you look on most maps in the United States, the capital city is marked with a red star. It's just what you do. So, I did the same for Chisinau on a map of Moldova. It seemed the logical thing to do. Then, one young man asked me why I did that. After I explained my reasons, which I really never even thought about, Adrian gave me a point of view that I really never thought about. You see, the red star is a symbol of communism. In Moldova, it would be as glaring as placing a swastika on a map in the United States or Germany. I quickly smeared a layer of paint over that star.
I made a spelling mistake on another city on the map, so the first place I correctly labeled was Tiraspol. The director of the school nearly had a stroke when she saw that. (Adrian whispered, "Imagine what she would have said if she saw a red star?") I told her she just needed to have patience and more cities would be put on the map. Still, I wasn’t completely convinced I was forgiven. The situation about Transnistria was much more sensitive than I ever imagined.
As I thought about this, I remembered that I also put a red star on the world map to show where Moldova was located on my T-shirt design. Well, it had been noticed and it had been erased. Nobody thought to tell me. I could have changed the color or replaced it with a heart. Instead, the area was left blank. Seriously, if it had been mentioned to me the first time, I wouldn’t have done it again.
Oops!