I think airlines intentionally seat families with young children near one another, as a way to punish them for bringing screaming kids onto the airplane. Within six rows on the Boeing 777, there were no less than six children, all of whom felt the need to cry about something at some point in the flight, creating a perpetual whine or scream for nearly the entire 10 hours of the Seattle-to-Tokyo flight. Not fun.

We had a three-hour layover in Japan, and then another three-hour flight from Tokyo to Inchon, Korea, where we were picked up my mom. My mom lives on the 17th floor of a high-rise apartment building, and I managed to taka few snapshots of the view from her window.





From this high up, Seoul looks like any other large city, with just as much pollution and just as much traffic. It smells like a large city, too.