Alchemy of Seoul

  Marina, from Sweden, visited Seoul while on a business trip in Korea for Kognity. We wandered around Bukchon Hanok Village together on the evening of March 24, and caught up about life since her last visit with me at the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles. We were gifted with blooming magnolia trees, and a few early cherry trees. We had a lovely walk followed by a Korean barbecue dinner. This was the very beginning of my spring break and it was a nice way to spend some time off from school. You can tell that I look happy and relaxed.    We caught the golden hour along the hills of this village in the middle of Seoul. The Bukchon Hanok Village is a series of about 900 traditional houses dating from the Joseon dynasty (many of them inhabited by businesses and residents) in the area between Gyeongbokgung Palace and Changdeokgung Palace. I have passed this street several times but had never ventured into the neighborhood, so it was as new to me as it was to Marina.  The...

  The Citadel in Hanoi, March 6, 2024 On March 5, I flew to Hanoi with 16 students in the Model United Nations Club and another advisor (Mr. Kowalski). We were attending the United Nations International School MUN conference at UNIS (a rather large international school near West Lake). I had been planning this trip since November and since it was my first international field trip, I was more than a bit anxious about it. But, it essentially went off without a hitch. The flights were smooth, no one got lost or lost their bags, everyone's visa arrived in time, and the conference was a pretty good success story for our students. I actually enjoyed myself. I would definitely do this one again.  We arrived in Hanoi in the late afternoon on the 5th and went straight to our hotel, a big Korean one right across the street from the school where the conference was being held. The L7 Westlake is a Lotte Hotel, and it is attached to a big Lotte mall, so the kids were comfortable amid famil...

  Flight of the Baikal Teal along Geumgang river on Feb 10, 2024 Because we had a 4-day weekend for Lunar New Year (Blue Dragon!) I planned a trip to Taeanhaean National Park with a colleague who is a birder. Dale Feiss is a biology teacher at SIS who arrived with me this year from the San Francisco Bay area. He has a fantastic camera and a lot of bird knowledge, but I am the one with the Korean driver's license, so we combined our assets and set out in a rental car on the morning of Feb 9th for the west coast of Korea.  Dale was not sure where exactly we would encounter the Baikal Teal, but that is the duck he was interested in seeing. This duck lives in Siberia (on Lake Baikal) but it winters in Korea, and it is kind of late in the migration season already so we were not sure we were going to find this bird. But we figured that people in Taeanhaean National Park would know where to look. We drove from Seongnam (in Seoul, circled top left) to Seosan (near my middle finger in ...