Korea in Bloom

I've just gotten back, well 2 weeks ago, from a whirlwind, nearly round the world spring break. I was both to Korea and to the USA. I had a brilliant time in Korea, met some friends, got some good work done on my dissertation, and had a wonderful time traveling with Ahreum. The picture above is from Kyungju, the ancient capital of Shilla Dynasty Korea, which ruled from the time of Julius Caesar and Cicero in the west until, if I remember correctly, the 700s. Quite impressive.

This is also from Kyungju, its one of the burial mounds dotted about the city. This one is very close to a much larger, world heritage status, burial mound.

Ahreum is looking well and feeling healthy, as ever. She joined the Hyundai gym, and goes nearly every night for some kind of work out, usually swimming. I'm not so good at keeping a set exercise schedule, but her dedication is inspiring.

For a quick update on my current activities, the truth is there isn't much that is terribly exciting. I'm marking, and marking some more. But this week I did have the pleasure of preparing a lecture on Martin Luther's political thought. The lecture went well, but I fear it was a little theologically unnerving for the students. I'm not sure they see the political in the spiritual, but I hope that one message they took from the lecture was that prior to very late modernity, it wasn't possible, or it least required considerable conceptual justification, to separate the political from the religious. Martin Luther, surprisingly did this, and I would argue as a result, this peculiar religious endorsement of political non-religiosity paved the way for modern secularism. The anticipation of major strands of liberal tolerationism (even if Luther wasn't really all that tolerant in the end) is remarkable.

On the photography side of things, I really feel like my time in Korea helped out my photographic ability. Still I felt constrained in that my current primes were both effectively short and medium telelphotos, rather than a 50mm normal and 100mm short telephoto. I enjoyed seeying what I could do with these focal lengths, but there were times I could concieve of interestings shots which I just couldn't take. Now, hopefully, much of that is rectified with my new birthday present. Thanks to Ahreum and my Mom and Dad for chipping in together, I am now the proud recipient of the Cannon 24 f2.8 prime. So far so good. I'll post some pictures with it sooner or later.

So that's about all for now. But check out my photo album, there are many more pictures on my Flickr.

Once more into the breach,

Ben