We had a absolutely amazing trip to Bali, Indonesia, as we wrap up our time in Korea. I'm going to graduate school in international relations at the University of Chicago starting in September, and we are leaving the country on June 30. I love Korea and I have loved living here. I hope to be back.

I will post some more (I think), but here are just a few pix from our trip ...

Bjork!

Declare your independence! Declare your independence! Raise up the flag. Higher, higher ...
That's what we heard as we got showered with confetti in the last song of the Bjork concert in Seoul last night. For an anniversary president, I got tickets for Patty. We got standing room only seats right in front of the stage, probably about 14 rows back. Fantastic. Bjork was in full crazy form, jumping around the stage in front of a 10-piece brass band from Iceland, wearing flags on their head and triangles on the forehead. It was a lot of fun, probably one of my top five concerts ever. There were only about 5,000 people there. My ears are still ringing.

The other top four:
Steve Ray Vaughn's last concert ever (w/ Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy in Alpine Valley, Wisconsin). He died in a helicopter crash an hour or two after the show.
Kermit Ruffins in a New Orleans dive jazz bar.
Buckwheat Zydeco in Milwaukee Summerfest.
Midnight Oil in New York. It was a special unpublicized show, and I was standing only about 5 rows from the front in just a small room, not much bigger than a bar.

Honorable mention:
Run DMC/Beastie Boys in Rockford in the early 1980s. One of my first concerts.
Bruce Springsteen in Giants Stadium
Rolling Stones at Alpine Valley near Milwaukee.

One for all ...
So, we had a big party with 90 friends and family on the 18th floor of the Foreign Correspondents Club, overlooking City Hall and the ice rink set up for the holidays. (See picture with the view) Excellent food, wine on all the tables and even candles, brought by hand from the United States.
What was the occasion?
Anne's first birthday.
Yes, it was crazy and extravagant and maybe even a bit silly. But it was a lot of fun -- and actually pretty normal for Korea. In fact, our neighbors were appalled at the simple "hanbuk," or traditional Korean costume, that we had for Anne to wear. So they pitched in and bought the beautiful outfit that she wore. My mom (in blue) came too, flying all the way from Chicago!
A "dol" or first birthday celebration, goes back thousands of years to when the children often didn't live to be that old. When they reached "1" they were "home-free." Anyway, today the tradition lives on. There are three huge events in a person's life here: the wedding, the dol and the 60th birthday. And even the 60th birthday isn't quite what it once was.
Here are some pix:

Clack on. Clack off.

The things you learn overseas ... we had a story in yesterday's paper that described a woman as a "clacker." The reference came from the movie "The Devil Wears Prada," and was about a woman who wore high-heels as she clack-clack-clacked down the hall. Anyway, one of the editors asked what a "clacker" was. We looked it up, and it turns out the word is quite common slang in Australia. It means "anus."

I love this picture of Anne with Patty's second-oldest uncle. We were in a Korean restaurant in the Ahyeon area.

Mmmm... I hope they have shrimp and cocktail sauce.
So, there's a buffet in Daegu, and it must be pretty exciting because both of the other English newspapers, the Korea Times and the Korea Herald, wrote front page stories about it.
I think they meant Buffett.
Because Warren Buffett visited there recently, and told people they should buy Korean stocks. I hope to have pix of these papers soon :)

Beijing, China

It's a strange feeling to go somewhere for nine days, then come back feeling like you knew less about the country that you did before ever visiting it. That's China. An amazing amalgamation of elderly women with bound feet, children with slits in their pants that make diapers unnecessary, wealthy entrepreneurs profiting from raging capitalism and communist scholars. There's a huge amount of optimism about the future and a lot of excitement about the upcoming Olympic games.

We ended up staying in Beijing the whole time, and saw a bit of everything: the Great Wall in Mutianyu, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the weekend antique market, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and even the Pearl Market, where Jack got excited and threw up all over a toy stand.

Anyway, here are some pix


This is the Temple of Heaven, basically the Buddhist worship place for emperors.

Some seafood at Wangfujing Market. Almost good enough to eat!

By order of the Communist Party of China, the uniformed children of this elementary school all lined up and raised the flag of China. It was about a 15-minute ceremony that I could see from our hotel room.

Jack playing around at the Beijing Aquarium, inside the Beijing Zoo.

Patty at the weekend antique market. We bought several handpainted originals, most costing less than $10. We later went to an art biennal, and found that many of the paintings were ripoffs of top Chinese artists, such as Liu Ye, who are commanding $500,000 a painting or more.

This guy was selling feathered hackey-sack type balls for about 15 cents each. I guess that's why there was no bargaining. He let me take pix of him on the condition that I send some photos back to him, which I will.

Here's the Forbidden City, on the only rainy day of our trip.

At the Great Wall on Mutianyu, though, we had perfect weather and an amazing three hours on the wall.

The next two pix are from the The Summer Palace. Not a bad summer retreat. The most amazing feature to me was the walkway for the emperor. It was entirely handpainted, with 8,000 paintings. The walkway went on for a long way, maybe half a mile.

The whole crew at the summer palace. Jack is flashing the peace sign, which is all the rage for kids in Korea when they take a picture.

Take a look at this menu. The English translations are quite funny. The first one is "Husband and wife lung movie."

And finally, scorps on a stick. Tasty.