The Cheat-Out: Save states are for champs.

[Elin]

Message from one of my old teachers in Japan: "Hey! I'm going to be in Dublin from next month! It's my first time in Britain and Scotland. Is Dublin in the same area of Scotland as Edinburgh? Would we be able to meet up?" :'D Oh dear. I'm happy that she remembers me, but my god it amazes me how poor some people's knowledge of basic world geography is. :'D She introduced me multiple times to other exchange students as being "from England" too, but I always cut her some slack because I figured she was just confused about the composition of the UK, which isn't always immediately obvious to people from outside Western Europe (it also doesn't help that the Japanese word for "Britain" can mean both "Britain" and more specifically "England"). But Dublin? That's not even in any of the union countries, nevermind Scotland. :'D To make matters worse, she was head of the English language club at my university there, so you would expect her to have at least a cursory knowledge of the geographical locations where English is spoken as a first language. Astounding. Wonder how she would respond if I were to write and say, "Hey! I'd love to meet you, but unfortunately I'll be in Seoul at that time. It'll be nice to be back in Japan, though! By the way, is Seoul in the same region of Japan as Okayama, or is it further north?" Too snarky, maybe?