(diaryland) June 19, 2001 - 9:37 a.m.

It�s weird how we know a lot about what the English were doing in the past. Even what the lowly serfs were doing. That�s all we learn about in high school. Why the English? There weren�t even any English people in this country in the Middle Ages. They didn�t even know about this country at the time. I know that other countries have interesting histories. Take Uganda, for example. Compelling stuff. But we didn�t learn about Uganda in history class at high school one bit. We didn�t learn nearly enough about our country�s Aboriginal history, but at least we learned a tiny bit about it. But, hey � what were the Indonesians doing? What were the Rhodesians doing? I suppose the English wrote things down, so it�s a bit easier to keep track of them. But I have Swedish ancestors. Surely they wrote things down. What were they doing? What were my Austrian ancestors doing? What were my Hungarian ancestors doing? What were your Chilean ancestors doing? What were your Maori ancestors doing? What were your Mongolian ancestors doing? Those Mongolians did more than party down in yurts and zoom around on horses, surely. That�s all we learned about Mongolians in history class. One sentence. Oh, and we saw a picture of Genghis Khan.