OK, so: I’m not the
world’s biggest geography buff. I
actually don’t have a problem admitting that. Being
homeschooled until tenth
grade, I missed those crucial middle years of public schooling during
which
they teach you most of that general geography stuff. There’s
a lot of places
I’ve never heard of and even more of whose location
I’m completely unsure. I
didn’t even know Italy was that famous boot-shaped country
until I took Italian
1 as a college freshman. I mean, compared to the rest of my generation,
I’m
doing pretty standard. It’s fine. Someday I ought to work on
it, but that day
is not today.
I have a leg up on everybody, anyway.
Last summer I traveled
to Mongolia. Nobody knows anything about Mongolia. Question number one
when
somebody new finds out I spent a summer there: “Yeah? What
language do they
speak there?” (Answer: Mongolian. Go figure.) Well, FYI,
it’s that landlocked
country of about 2.8 million people between Russia and China
– you know, the
homeland of Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khan in Mongolian).
Some of the people I went with are
really politically
minded. My friend Zach gets all heated about Darfur every time he has a
few
drinks. He’s the person whom I first heard pronounce the word
“Dubai” – an
apparently shameful and heretofore unidentified hole in my mental world
map.
Which, as I’ve said, is no surprise, because it’s
pretty holey.
It’s funny to talk about a
place like Dubai City when you’re
living in a place like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital. In
the former they’re
offering Dubai
apartments and Dubai hotel
apartments (and Dubai hotels
and
Dubai
villas – if you want to know what the difference
is, you got me) for $350
a day. In the latter they’re lucky if they can afford to pay
that much to send
their kid to the National University of Mongolia for a semester. $500
for one
year at NUM. $5,500, eleven times as much, for one month in Water View, one of
those Dubai hotel apartments.
I mean, it’s not like
I’m ripping on countries or people
that live nice and make or spend lots of money. It’s just one
of those things.
A strange contrast to consider. If I manage to make it to New Zealand
for the
fall semester, the comparison will be weird too. Weirder, since
I’ll be living
it.
