We were supposed to go to Tokyo, but that was before.

The Swiss embassy, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, was not welcome to the idea of travelers coming back tainted from Japan so we changed course. Traveling to Korea with the MFA class of the Basel School of Design in Switzerland was an amazing experience that helps explain the world to me in a broader holistic fashion. Just flying over the Middle East and through Dubai for the first time was an eye opener for this Idaho boy. I saw the Himalayas, I saw the effects of high-level corporate marketing on a large emerging Eastern-world economy and I saw a North Korean soldier looking at me through binoculars.

These photos try their best to represent those moments.