I kept trying to catch pictures of propaganda signs, but always got the camera out too late or the bus was going too fast. I'd sit there for tens of minutes with a camera ready, waiting for a sign. Then I'd put it away and we'd pass a giant sign. The red and yellow sign in the middle looks like it says something from the government, but you can't tell from the picture. On the other hand you get a nice picture of a North Korean town.

Now we're getting to one of the most colorful interchanges of the trip, illustrating how much visiting a place and interacting with them differs from hearing leaders of each place positioning against each other and calling each other evil, imperialist, or whatever.

Mr. Kim and Jordan started playing children's games -- rock-paper-scissors type games. Here Mr. Kim was teaching Jordan a North Korean game where one player tries to guess which way the other will turn his head. If he guesses right he gets to hit him (lightly) on the forehead. Jordan realized he was getting hit in the head a lot and Mr. Kim wasn't. Everyone in the bus started watching these grown men acting like children.

Jordan switched to the game where you try to slap the other guy's hands while he tries to keep from being slapped. By now the whole bus excitedly watched them play. Who knew what to anticipate, but we all knew someone was going to get slapped.

Somebody got slapped! ... I may be reading too much into this picture, but it illustrates to me people can compete and even hit each other without becoming enemies. The joy in this moment is to me unforgettable. Kids are kids the world over, it's more fun to behave like children than not, and mature people can do it. We've transcended cultural barriers.

The exchange reminded me of something similar at my older sister's wedding. Since she had lived in Japan for years, one of her friends came and brought her children, who spoke no English. My cousins' families came too with their children, who spoke no Japanese. For hours during the reception the kids found ways to play together -- duck-duck-goose, stuff like that, or made-up games, we adults couldn't tell -- having no problems with the language and cultural differences. Inspirational. It was perhaps the first time I thought the words, "If the world's leaders could see this there would be no more war."

On a more sobering note, last night's beer didn't go over so well with John. We all sympathized, but I was closest to him so I was responsible for recording the consequences of his earlier antics. He might have kids one day and they should know.

If you're going to take a picture of a man's well-earned misery, you should do it right.

You should do it not just right, but several times.

He had no idea I was there and didn't see these pictures until days later. They wouldn't let him empty the trash can just anywhere later and had to hold on to it responsibly. At a rest stop he recovered better. He was a great sport about it.

One of my favorite shots of three men by the side of the road.

If it looked good once, might as well take two. I took the shot from the bus. In person would have been rude for North Korean culture.

Copying from the other site: This sign looked like propaganda, or at least nationalistic. Can anyone who speaks Korean translate it? It was one of the few signs I saw on the street. I saw only one advertisement, which was for a car. I saw many like this and a few big ones that were clearly propaganda. I had to look to find stores. None of them had the telltale signs of stores virtually everywhere else in the world, like bright and colorful fruits and vegetables displayed to the street and signs in the window announcing the products on sale. In Pyongyang stores we passed in the bus had no special markings I could identify. When I could see in the windows the shelves seemed sparsely populated, like one item per shelf division. I couldn't tell how people got food. When I described what I saw after getting home to a friend, who grew up in Romania, he smiled with recognition of having seen the same thing growing up. Outside Pyongyang I saw no stores at all, except the tourist shops for us, which just sold tourist stuff. In Kaesong, a city of 300,000 people, I saw no stores, though I wasn't looking intently. I met an economics teacher in Beijing who had visited North Korea. She said she had passed by some buildings that she could tell held markets inside from the noise inside, but the authorities keep them secret since they imply a breakdown of the centralized system. We also passed a department store in Pyongyang, I think near the library, but they didn't allow foreigners in it.