Hi

Since I arrived here in Anyang five days ago, I have been wanting to tell the world (or maybe just a few friends) of all the goings-on of my life in Korea, so yesterday I made the irreversible decision to raise the curtain and venture out onto the blogospherical stage.

So much has happened in the past week - like things I have been looking forward to for many years - that I'm a bit at a loss as to how to write about it all now, especially since this new world I've stepped into is so new and mesmerizing in so many ways. Maybe I'll take a stab at committing to e-paper some things I've been writing about in my head over the past few days, starting from my arrival at Incheon last Wednesday...

Oh, and a little history for anyone who stumbled across my blog somehow and doesn't know who I am or why I'm here...I'm working for the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements for the summer, located just south of Seoul in the city of Anyang, as part of the Master's of Urban Planning program at the University of Washington. Korea and I go way back - from 1981 to 1983 I lived in a neighborhood near Seoul with my family (my dad was in the navy at the time), on the second floor of a Korean household. I was five years old when I left, but I have vivid memories of growing up here and the experience left a strong impression on me as a young'un. Now, 23 years later, the city is one totally transformed beyond what is was when I was a child, and the neighborhood where I grew up (Seocho-dong) has changed completely - nothing at all bears any resemblance to its physical form when I left it. Korea, though a different place now, nonetheless remains totally fascinating to me, and hopefully I can convey some of that fascination with the massive power of the internet at my fingertips...