Another Labor Day, another run among the saguaros...

I've been back in the classroom for over four weeks now here in Tucson; this past weekend was the first 'break.' 

Yesterday, though, instead of sleeping in on Labor Day--time to get up before dawn to meet friends and get ready for this:

Signed up for the fifth year in a row...

Ahh, the sound of a thousand pairs of feet among the cacti,

the sun rising over the mountains on Tucson's eastern edge...

As the map shows, Tucson is flanked on both sides by the two halves of Saguaro National Park.

So, although the city didn't make this year's list of 

Outside magazine's 'best outdoor towns,'

you can see why it has in the past...

Last year, the weekend of the run,

I got rear-ended on the way to pick up race-day materials,

so I had to skip it...

(By the way, you're NOT 'in good hands with Allstate.'

It took MONTHS to get a less-than-satisfactory settlement...)

It felt so good to run the hilly loop this year,

without any car accidents...

==================

Earlier this weekend, on Saturday morning, a run into Sabino Canyon:

...this bend in the canyon had been bone-dry since the end of last winter;
the  monsoon has done its job--reflections are back:

 (incidentally, the photo above was on the TV news Saturday night...)

...but, what caught my eye the most: the "hyles lineata" caterpillar:

...which eventually metamorphoses into this:

(above photo via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyles_lineata)

No wonder why it's called a 'hummingbird moth'...

===============

One more scene from Sabino Canyon, below...

...which, I'm honored to say, you'll be able to see if you happen to find yourself in Canada, about two hours north of Toronto, from tomorrow through the 28th of this month. The Blue Mountain Foundation of the Arts in Collingwood, Ontario, is exhibiting the juried selection of the Mobile Photography Awards "Pocket Vistas" competition.

(taken about 3 miles into the Canyon, last December)

Where they've been...

Every year, as school begins, I like to take stock of who my students are--where they're from, where they've been. People are often surprised by how diverse this desert town is...

...and also surprised by how EARLY the school-year starts here.
Last Thursday was Tucson's back-to-school date.
(It was July 31st. JULY!?!)

A few years ago, the number of countries-of-origin was remarkable: two dozen!

Last year, when I switched to the school where I'm currently teaching, I definitely noted the absence of international refugee students, but the diversity of languages spoken in the students' homes (15) was still noteworthy.

This year, I thought I'd consider where my students have lived and/or visited.
Here's the result; a pretty well-traveled group, having lived in or been to every continent except Antarctica:

Argentina

Aruba

Australia

Bangladesh

Belgium

Belize

Bolivia

Brazil

Canada

Chile

China

Denmark

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

England

Ethiopia

France

Germany

Greece

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Jamaica

Japan

Kenya

Korea

Mexico

Netherlands

Peru

Philippines

Portugal

Puerto Rico

Romania

Russia

Scotland

Singapore

Spain

Switzerland

Taiwan

Thailand

Togo

Turkey

United States

 

Forty-four countries!

(Yes, I do know that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.,

but for this list's geo-cultural purposes,

I let it stand alone...) 

I did ask, as I do every year, what languages are spoken at home, and this year, for the first time, I saw "Maltese"...

...and "Klingon."

 

Hmm...

After a month of running around Korea...

Today marks two weeks--already?--that I've been back in Tucson.

From late May through most of June, my wife and I were HERE:

(during the trip, I posted to traveling-allophile.tumblr.com)

It's taken me almost two weeks to get over the wicked East Asia-West Coast US jet-lag...

Finally, I'm sleeping 'normally' enough so that I can wake up and beat the summer desert heat by going for early morning runs...

...and running has become something I make sure to do whenever traveling. Last summer, I took advantage of my jet-lag by going for a long run along the Canal St.-Martin in Paris when I couldn't sleep on my first day back in France. This summer, upon our arrival in Korea, somehow we were able to 'switch' to the local time zone immediately; we flew in late at night, went straight from the airport to a nearby hotel, and the next morning, I found myself running along a saltwater canal in the 'instant city' of Songdo, built on land re-claimed from the sea across the harbor from Incheon airport:

Jet-lag is inevitable, and it might work in your 'favor' or not;

whatever the case--RUN!

It's one of the best ways to get over travel fatigue while at the same time getting the true feet-on-the-ground feel of a place.

A few other scenes from running around Korea...

====================================

Running along the top edge of Seoul's remaining old city wall,

just north of the Bukchon neighborhood,

on the slopes of Bugaksan mountain:

Down along Chong-gye-cheon stream, 

beneath the skyscrapers of downtown's Jongno district:

Along poppy-lined vegetable gardens in Gangneung:

...on the sandy boardwalk along the country's east coast in Gangneung:

By the remaining fortified gate in Jeonju, in the country's Southwest:

Crossing the Jeonju river on an idyllic morning:

===============================

So, back to Songdo, on that first morning.

Large parts of the city--Korea's gamble on establishing a brand-new international business hub for NE Asia--are still vacant lots, as I saw when I opened the curtains from our tenth-floor hotel room:

The morning was foggy, but by later in the day, this was the view:

--the elegant bridge that links the Incheon airport to the new city of Songdo..

The city is 'filling in' nicely, with families moving into these apartment buildings:

No shortage of modern angles and curves:

...along with the requisite public art:

The city is scheduled to host this September's Asian Games, so as I ran through the "Central Park" area, there was a lot of construction work and tidying-up still going on... 

Songdo is being developed as a planned modern Asian city that is consciously adapting what works in cities around the world: New York's Central Park, Venetian canals, Savannah's numerous neighborhood squares, along with incredible wifi connectivity. It's supposed to be a "smart city," with live-work-play pedestrian access.

A BBC article recently reported:

The waste disposal system is also impressive - or it would be if you could see it. Because there are no rubbish trucks trawling the streets or vast bins dotted around blocks of flats. Instead, all household waste is sucked directly from individual kitchens through a vast underground network of tunnels, to waste processing centres, where it's automatically sorted, deodorised and treated to be kinder to the environment. 

Not bad, eh?

Some investors are hoping that part of Songdo's growth will come from Western expats who are growing tired of the pollution in China and will come settle here. Hmm. (I read that in this recent article from France's LeFigaro.)

Among the multitude of newly planted trees, there is also a plethora of public exercise equipment, traditional Korean shade-pavilions, and even a phone-booth-sized public library:

Get tired of straining your eyes by reading on your smart phone or tablet while on your lunch break? Ahh, the tactile pleasure of paper in your hands...

And there's the subway--gleaming, all polished granite and marble--feels vaguely post-apocalyptic, hardly a soul in sight:

But you can be in central Seoul in an hour, avoiding the traffic jams above ground.

That's what my wife did, after our first day in Korea--we took the subway from Songdo into the capital, an easy ride...

=====================

Running around Korea, then...

...in the weeks to come, I'll post more specifics about the remaining running routes:

mountain, stream, and river runs in Seoul, 

along the coast and around a lake in Gangneung,

and through a 'hanok village' and along the river in Jeonju.

Yours truly, running...and it's not a selfie...

More on this later.

"You need to hear what I have to say about breakfast wraps!" --while traveling...

"Breakfast wraps?"

    Maybe you recall this cartoon from a few years ago:

When the New Yorker published this, Twitter hadn't yet taken over as the 'breakfast-wrap-megaphone.' As an increasing number of bloggers have monetized and professionalized, I wonder if the cartoon above is as accurate as it was back in 2007? (Incidentally, for me, now, Twitter is more of a media-sharing platform rather than a social-media-keep-up-with-'friends' tool.)

I do wonder, as I realize that I've been blogging for almost eight years now, what exactly this blog is. It grew out of weekly e-mails during the year we leaved in Nicaragua...

I don't think it's just my breakfast-wrap-megaphone...but it's not frequent or in-depth enough to truly be a 'travel-blog' or a 'teacher's-blog'...and yet I feel compelled to come back to it, at least monthly, to post something... I've always tried to be somewhat guarded on this blog--refraining from the overly personal, thinking that our close friends who read this would know how we're really doing, anyway... Since I joined twitter and instagram--only to keep up with a limited circle of friends--I've felt less of the need to post here...But the limitations of twitter and instagram keep me coming back to the blog...

...especially as big trips approach.

The school-year ended last Friday, so I'm free for two months...

Travel and change of place 

impart new vigor to the mind.

--Seneca

This summer's 'big trip' begins tomorrow: 

after three summers away, my wife and I are returning to Korea.

Wanting to travel light, I'm not bringing a laptop this time--just an iPad...and I've come to realize that blogging to this particular blog is somewhat cumbersome from an iPad--text alone would work just fine, but wanting to format text WITH photos--not so user-friendly. (Come on, blogspot folks--you can do better!)

    So, for any of you who want to 'hear about--and see--our breakfast wraps' while we'll be traveling, here's where you can go:

     

http://traveling-allophile.tumblr.com/

I'm not giving up on allophile.com--but for the next month or so, I'll mainly be using tumblr...

==========

Seoul.

It's a city I keep returning to--

--and not just because I was born there.

I'm a young teen in this photo; an uncle of mine took this of me standing in front of the city's old South Gate--built in the 1390's, it survived centuries of invasions and wars until an arsonist severely damaged it back in 2008. When my wife and I were last in Seoul, an enormous reconstruction-shelter was hiding Namdaemun (officially known as "Sungnyemun"--'mun' meaning 'gate') from view as the restoration continued. In May of last year, it was finally re-opened to the public...can't wait to see it again, twenty-five years after the photo above was taken. And I'll still be wearing a camera-bag...

Sightseeing, though, isn't the main point of this trip.

It's language.

Korean.

My mother's mother-tongue...and yet it was my wife's idea, really, that we should make this trip this year--she wants to get a kick-start in learning Korean, and for me this will be impetus to keep going down the road to fluency...Starting next Monday, then: intensive language classes in the heart of Seoul.

I joke with my wife that she grew up with more Koreans than I ever did; her neighborhood and high-school in suburban Seattle were more like an outpost of Seoul than I ever experienced while growing up in Germany, southern Arizona, and finally in Georgia. True, my mother is Korean, but my father didn't speak the language, so English was our home lingua franca...

A couple of years before we moved to Nicaragua, we took intensive one-on-one language lessons in Antigua, Guatemala--that was my wife's introduction to Spanish, and for her learning-style, it was a perfect beginning. Not long after that, she was easily conversant, and then after we returned from our Central American peregrinations, she took on French. (And, although she won't 'own' this fact, in my professional opinion, she's almost caught up to me, le prof de français!) So, now--time to 'tame' (note, not 'conquer') a non-Indo-European language. Deep breaths...

Syntax and verb-endings will not rule the entire time, though--there will plenty of architectural and culinary exploring over the next few weeks; after our language classes, we'll be traveling around the country...stay tuned. (On the other blog, that is.)

==========

As we leave, this is what Tucson looks like right now;

we'll be leaving the desert just as the last of spring's waters dry up,

waiting for the monsoon to arrive in July:

(one of my favorite spots while running--

where Sabino creek exits its canyon on Tucson's NE edge--

seen a month ago, then yesterday...)

Saguaros in bloom:

Summer...

Tomorrow's forecast high-temperature: 106.

A fine day to fly away...

With and Without...Spring morphing into summer in Sabino Canyon

Tucson's early spring is morphing into an early summer this year--and the drying up of Sabino Creek is striking proof. 

So, here are some before-and-after scenes, from recent runs,

"with" water and "without"...

================================

And, from a couple of weeks ago, 

a scene from where the creek exits the canyon:

Although the creek is no longer flowing,

a few reflective spots still remain, including this one.

Incidentally--it was featured on:

http://www.iphoneographycentral.com/apps-uncovered-25-april-2014/

(and, it made the TV news...small thrill...)

=========================

And...as I get ready for an upcoming trip to Korea--any of you have opinions on the best platform for travel-photo-blogging via iPad? I'm not taking my laptop, and unfortunately, the 'blogger' mobile-blogging app is cumbersome and distorts photos...Let me know!

For this week's #FriFotos: STAIRS

For a few months now, I've been enjoying the weekly #FriFotos travel photography round-up every Friday on Twitter...

Since this week's theme is 'stairs,' I thought I'd gather a few far-flung scenes for a blog post--from France to Korea, Canada to Guatemala, and a few Desert Southwest locales as well.

From last summer,

in the Rennaissance tower of the 

Château de Montaigne in the SW of France:

Literally, in the worn steps 

of the 16th-century

essayist and humanist,

Michel de Montaigne.

From my current desert hometown,

a detail of Tucson's

St. Philip's Plaza

Back to France,

to the Loire valley--

one of the spiral stone staircases

at the Château de Chambord:

Further south,

on the legendary Pont Valentré bridge in Cahors,

the time-eroded stairs from the 14th-century: 

Traveling far to the east,

to the stairs leading up to 

Seoul's Joseon-dynasty 

Altar to Heaven:

From one of the world's largest cities

to a 'lost' city in the Guatemalan jungle--

the steep access stairs built to protect

the original stone stairs 

on this Maya temple in Tikal:

Up to Montréal--

some of the city's iconic 

curving exterior stairs:

...and elsewhere in the city,

 to the stairs reserved for 

pilgrims climbing on their knees

up to the Oratoire St.-Joseph:

Speaking of St. Joseph,

and heading south now,

some believe in a legend that says 

that St. Joseph is responsible for these stairs:

The 'miraculous stairs' of the Loreto Chapel in Santa Fe, NM

Closer to home again:

--one of my favorite architectural spots

in Bisbee, AZ,

just off 'Brewery Gulch'

And back to the Tucson area for the most recent scene,from just down the road--the utilitarian military stairs that descend to the underground control bunker of the only Titan Missile silo now open to the public:

A sobering relic of the Cold War--

nothing like thoughts of 

an nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile

to end with...

From Little Tokyo back to Tucson: iphoneography with apps

From last weekend's quick road-trip to Los Angeles, a few scenes showing how to 'correct' or 'dramatize' an iPhone snapshot, whether a streetscape or a landscape.
(These photos taken with an iPhone5s)

On First Street, just east of downtown L.A.,

the iconic "Chop Suey Far East building,"

built in the 1890's,

and which served for much of the 20th century

as a hub for Little Tokyo's community 

of Chinese and Japanese immigrants:

The distinctive arch and vintage neon sign, along with the street-front fire-escape-stairs make for a classic 20th-century American streetscape, and the Los Angeles City Hall (1920's) on the left adds to the sense-of-place...But the distortion caused by the angle from which I took this quick photo is distracting, and the sky looks washed out, since I wanted the exposure to show the building façades instead of the clouds.

So, first,

use the Perspective Correct App 

to 're-set' the buildings as being perpendicular to the street:

Then, using "Tune Image" and a bit of the "HDR scape" tools 

on snapseed,

the drama of lifting clouds

and the texture of the bricks

reappear:

My wife liked the cinematic feel of this color version, but I thought this would work as a black-and-white scene, with just the "chop suey" sign highlighted in color...

...and so for this, the ColorSplash app comes in handy:

But the sky was a bit grainy for my taste,

so using the BigLens app,

the sky can be selectively blurred:

And, finally, using Mextures, some faux-vintage texture and color add to the mood:

==============================

On the drive back to Tucson from L.A. we passed through a normally boring stretch of desert that's come to life with wildflowers. I've lived in Arizona for nearly seven years, and I've never seen such an expanse of globemallow in bloom--for several miles along I-10 to the west of Phoenix, this was the scene:

Bright afternoon sun 'bleaches' the scene, 

so using snapseed again, 

to crop and bring out the vibrancy of the blooms

by correcting the exposure, 

I end up with this:

==============================

Back home, the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains

are dotted with brittlebush in bloom right now,

splashes of yellow on the saguaro-studded hills:

Taking this shot from close to ground level, however,

resulted in a slight distortion--

the saguaros are pointing 'outward' 

away from the center of the photo.

So, using the above-mentioned

Perspective Correct, I end up with this:

This scene also lends itself to 'color-splashing,'

so first I used snapseed 

to oversaturate the color (above),

then I used the 'color-splash' tool within the Laminar app  

to keep the wildflowers yellow 

while de-saturating everything else in the scene (below).

Finally, for the textures in the final image,

I used Mextures again,

before some final exposure-tweaking and vignetting in snapseed:

Spring in the Sonoran Desert...

So, from architecture to wildflowers, Perspective Correct 

can be such a useful tool...

...and snapseed still remains my favorite 'go-to' tool.

The 'slap-on' filters available in so many apps and in so much of social media can be convenient, but if you want to get beyond the 'pre-fab' feeling you get when you use them for your photos, spend some time getting to know what you can do with an app like snapseed or Laminar. True, many apps are 'one-hit-wonders,' but even within those limited effects, there's so much potential customization available at your fingertips.