10 Memories of Korea that make me feel warm and fuzzy inside

1 Dinners in my room with Christa and Mary. I should say cooked by Christa and Mary, my job being to supply us with tableclothes stolen from the theatre classroom and clean up the carnage afterwards. With a one-hob kitchen it was tricky, but we always made it work. Wine, soju, sake, and dancing into the wee hours afterwards. I never expected to enjoy Christmas day as much as I did, being so far from home and having to work.

2 Salsa - the classes me and Emma gave up in the dance studio on Sunday nights, to our little band of faithful students, and the nights at Bahia when we put them into practice, particularly Emma's leaving night, after all the locals had cleaned out at the sight of us, and the barman supplied us with cowbells and bongos.

3 Chuseok Japan trip with Christa and Amy. In particular our food crawls - I'm thinking the sushi and okonomiyaki nights - and drinking copious amounts of sake and plum wine in our lodges and laughing for no reason.

4 Singing, in many places: In the norae bangs any night of the week of course; I also have fond memories of the karaoke night we stumbled upon at a bar down the road, that we meant to go back to and now never will, where every table had to sing one song each. Christa, Rob and I sang All I want for Christmas, beautifully but in three different keys. I also have to include Rob and I gatecrashing and singing Radiohead's Creep at a Korean wedding reception.

5 Playing cards and dice over at Shawn and Mel's place. Nertz, farkel, Manatoba Farmers. By the time they left to go to Suwon, it had somehow grown into a nightly thing, though I only went over a handful of times. This was during mine and Emma's period of neverending nightshift. I don't remember why I didn't go more often.

6 Poker nights, every Wednesday in the pool class. We started out hosting it in our alternate rooms, but it soon grew to popular for that. I must've won three times in all the time we played. Of course, since the buy-in amounted to less than three pounds, it was never any great loss.

7 Korean lesson with Christa, and Mary too, at the end. It's quite likely that I'll have forgotten half of what I learned when I get home, and I'll rarely have need for the rest when back home, but I'll never regret giving it a try.

8 Although I think Japan tops the list of places I visited, so far anyway, I can't leave out the rest - Vietnam, Thailand, Gyeongju and the other areas of Korea I've visited. I think I could be persuaded to leave Cambodia out of the list.

9 I don't know for sure why I feel compelled to include this - perhaps just because I'd not had a bath for the best part of six months - and I only did it properly the one time last year, but I'll certainly never forget the (naked) Korean bath-house.

10 Seeing Muse live for the first time at Jamsil gymnasium. They were awesome. Best live band ever. Incidentally, I saw them again recently at Pentaport Rock Festival, Incheon, but the second time didn't compare to the first (they were an hour late and I, by choice, was half a mile away).

Disclaimer: this list is neither exhaustive nor definitive, but the fact that these things are the first that came to mind must mean something. Notice the absence of references to work, teaching, and children in the list.