[jQuery] Newbie question- declarative selectors inside procedural code

[colin_e]

Hi. I'm very new to jquery, and a lightweight coder, so apologies for
the newbie question.

I think I understand the "implied loop" declarative nature of jquery
selectors, that say (sort-of) "for everything matching the selector
do"{ <some stuff> }

What i'm struggling to get my head around is how this works inside a
function once you HAVE a "this" object?

Example:
I have a list of the form-

<ul id="map">
  <li><a class='EM' href='#' title='East Midlands'><span>East
Midlands</span></a></li>
  <li><a class='NE' href="#" title='North East'><span>North East</
span></a></li>
</ul>

This inside my document.ready I have a function like this-

        $('#map li').hover(
                function(){
                        region= $('this a:first').attr('class');  // Tries to 
find the
class of the first <a> in <li>
                                                                          //
but always returns undefined??
                        do_something_with_the_region();
                },
                function(){
                        undo_something_with_the_region();
                }
        );


The piece that says "region= $('this a:first').attr('class');" is my
(clearly incorrect) attempt at the incantation to say  "Give the
current object (an <il>), return the class attribute of the first
anchor that is a child of the current item".

I suspect I haven't got the right idea at all, can anyone point me in
the right direction?

Regards: colin_e