Today's my birthday and I'm spending some time with the Blog. I've been to Southeast Asia and back and the digital plethora is too overwhelming for my slow, old computer (how can 7 years be too old?). So be patient, there will be pictures of Angkor, Vietnam and South Korea eventually. Spent two months there, traveling and teaching and visiting old friends. South Korea (Seoul in particular), sadly, seems to be turning into Los Angeles. It's modern, crowded, materialistic, and exciting. Once i got out of the city and headed south Korea's culture seemed to come through a little. The temples are still Buddhist and the mountains are still Korea's own. The people, so busy and cosmopolitan in Seoul, still have the funny, helpful, foreignness about them that I loved in 1988. How can America justify
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