So, Japan was spectacular. In fact, it was the best trip of my life. I took so many pictures and had hundreds of adventures in those 7 days. I’ve been trying to put together some kind of narrative of my trip, but it’s proving difficult for a number of reasons:
- First, the trip itself was meaningful to me because of a lot of context, without which you cannot really appreciate why it mattered so much. As Dickens put it, the context “must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Sharing that context without being overly verbose (me? overly verbose? Never!) is a challenge.
- I don’t want it just to become a vacation slideshow. Those are super boring. No one wants to read a slideshow.
- The Super Bowl was extremely distracting. I spent probably a solid week mostly consuming Chiefs content instead of doing work.
- This week, school was meant to start, and I’ve been scrambling to prepare for the semester. Instead, Korea delayed school for two weeks due to the coronavirus.
So, that’s in the works, but it’s tough. Other things I want to work on:
- I’m working on a good English-language account of the Gwangju Uprising, since it seems to be almost unknown in the United States and finding good resources in a language I can read is tough. So I’ll make my own. That needs to be done by May 18, so I have time.
- A follow up to my Family posts to bring the story of the Chiefs’ playoff run to its exciting end.
- Life in Korea under the threat of COVID-19. I’m not dead, and I don’t anticipate dying from this bug (-knock on wood-), but people may be interested in what life is like here at this time.
- Maaaaaybe if I can persuade my friends a few portraits of them and my shared experiences with them on here. But some of them read this so I have to promise to be kind and only write flattering things (I’m pretty sure I do this anyway).
So yeah. Not dead. Good to write publicly what I want to tackle, since it forces me to deliver later.
Gwangju Dreaming 