Our arrival in Seoul and Yeosu

Los Angeles was literally on fire when we landed. An enormous wildfire had swallowed the horizon near the Hollywood hills. The man sitting next to me, who was at the beginning of the flight nervous about the plane and the flight was now instead anxious that his home was part of the crazy inferno. There is no movie screen big enough to show the scale of the fire as it crawled to the hopelessly brilliant ocean of concrete and lights that is Los Angeles at 11:30 PM.

We stumbled into Seoul's Incheon Airport at around 5 AM this morning (Seoul time) after 21 hours of airport and flying, exhausted but energized by the fact that we have arrived...or it may have been that special green tea they served on the flight-- the one that has been bred and used for 5 thousand of years as a cure for jet lag. After recklessly bumping about we found our way into the bus to Gimpo airport. This was the view out of the bus window just a few minutes after dawn on the way to Gimpo.

After a 4 hour layover at Gimbo airport, we arrived at Yeosu, where we were warmly greeted and photographed by the Rotary Jeollanmando host group. They had a big banner out for us and it was great to finally meet our hosts.

After a very short break and checking into the hotel, we made our first presentation at a Rotary luncheon. The presentation went smoothly but even better was the terrific food -- seafood soup as the main course with many sides.