Furthermore, my classes are big, with about 18 extremely boisterous young learners in every class, and so although I am having a good time at this school, and although I am gaining some new skills regarding teaching children, the classes are too big for me to put into practise all that I have learnt about creating successful lessons. Simply, teaching children in a second language has additional challenges to teaching them in their first language, and even if I can feel some satisfaction that 18 students are at least learning something during my lessons, I get considerably more satisfaction from watching smaller groups really move ahead in leaps and bounds. Probably this is because with smaller groups more of my energies are put into the actual teaching, whereas with 18 students I have to devote a lot of energies towards controlling and managing them. I'm gaining new skills at this, but I'm worried that my actual teaching skills are slipping away.

The school is, nevertheless, very good. Indeed, it's quite famous in Daejeon among Korean people. It is run by nuns, and so they are of course exceptionally kind to us. We have our own classrooms, and in these classrooms we have a desk with a computer inlaid under glass (i.e., it is visible to the teacher, but not the students). The computers are linked to the Internet, and to a video/DVD player, and to a massive screen visible to the students. This means that I can show them things from DVDs or from the Internet at will. It is quite useful when I am teaching vocabulary, as I can simply type the target words into google image search and come up with good pictures instantly. I particularly do this when I am trying to encourage my youngest students to use a range of objects after the main verb. It's easy and effective.

Teaching 18 kids at once is rather chaotic. Korean children are very loud and active, rather like kids from the English speaking world. (Oh, and the boys have extremely powerful throws for their age!) They are nothing like Chinese children, who are quiet, shy, and a challenge to arouse.

Unfortunately for me, I am also known to many of them as Mr. Hippopotamus. This is because my last name, 'Harman', sounds in Korean like 'Harma', which means hippopotamus. My school is formal, and so I can't just be 'Jonny', like I was in Russia. Given that I'm not too fond of the image that a hippopotamus evokes, I am trying to encourage the kids to call me Teacher Jonny.

My flat is also very nice. It was a demonstration of my school's willingness to make us happy and comfortable that they moved me into my own flat after my flatmate requested it. (We get along very well, but we both like our own space.) My flat, situated right next to the school, and a ten minute walk away from the town centre, is fully equipped with the biggest TV I've ever had (with heaps of channels available in English). I also have a good video/DVD player, a washing machine (an acknowledged luxury after being without one in Russia), and a microwave and a vacuum cleaner (which are also luxuries in my experience). The flat is provided for free, although I must pay the power bill. (Another perk I have is that I also enjoy free lunches at the school, and they are of very impressive quality.)

The only problem is that it seems that many Koreans aren't as fussy about their showers as we are. I can only gather that many of them just stand in front of their bathroom sinks with a shower-hose that they must hold up by hand. I guess they make themselves wet, then wash without running water, then rinse themselves off once they're done. Not very satisfying if you ask me. Following the example of my previous flatmate, I have also found a way to fasten the shower-hose at a level where I can have something similar to a proper shower, but the whole bathroom, being rather small, is completely wet by the time I finish. It's not the worst of problems in the world, though, is it?

This brings me to some comments about Daejeon that I neglected to mention the other day. The night-life here is pretty decent. In the centre, there are scores of little bars and nightclubs. Some of them are very fun places to be. Last night I went to a bar popular with the ex-pat crowd called 'J-Rock'. It was done quite well, and aside from other drinks, they serve Long-Island Ice Teas that pack quite a punch. They also play my kind of dance music, and so I was quite happy there until around 5am. There are many good people, and I haven't met so many Canadians since I was in Darwin, Australia. There are also quite a few Russians and Russian speaking people, and so it is fun to impress the ones who don't know English with my Russian. In fact, I have appalling Russian for the amount of time that I spent there (17 months), but they don't know this, and they are always very pleased to think that someone has actually bothered to learn some of their language.

One highlight of the other night was the prettiest transvestites that I have ever seen. Really, it's a trifle unsettling when someone so pretty turns out to be a guy. In fact, it was only when I observed their lack of hips, and that some of them were feeling some of the other blokes up in rather inappropriate places, that I put two and two together. This took me all of about a minute, and so it is an improvement on other times in my past. Still, I rather upset a friend of mine when I delivered the bad news to him, for he is looking for someone even if I am not, and he didn't want to acknowledge it. Nor did he talk to me for a long time after that. Wondering whether I was mistaken, I did take the trouble to confirm my suspicions with other people in the bar. I wasn't wrong.

Of course, this will now make two things seem as if they are there when really they are not. First, it may seem as if I am looking for girls. I'm not. As I've said, I'm interested in someone in Russia. But I'm capable of forming friendships with women and it's always nice to have attractive company. Second, that I have mentioned transvestites might make Daejeon seem a little more adventurous than it actually is. I'm sure every city has some transvestites. I only comment on these ones because they really could have fooled me for a long time if it weren't for the touching. (I never saw anything of the sort in Russia. Incidentally, I met my first openly gay Russian man since coming here.)

I also want to say that I think Koreans are cool. The women know how to present themselves, and most of them are very nice. The guys dress with a style and class resembling that of Japanese men, but without the serious label-bashing that I've seen of some of them, and with a slightly more casual air. Some Koreans can even dance quite well, and definitely they are cool about it. Since coming here, many people (Korean and ex-pat) have been complimenting me on my dancing, and I have had a few good times dancing with other groups of boys and girls who can pull off a few moves with rhythm. I'm enjoying their company tremendously, and I'm pleased that I've already found a place where I can meet many good people in a short amount of time.


16 April 2006 To Seoul

I've now been in Korea for one month and five days. It's been a good time and I am fairly settled into my work. The students are getting a bit easier to control now that they're fairly familiar with my routines and expectations. Because of this, I feel that I'm making progress. I enjoy teaching most of the time. Also, I finish most of my classes before lunchtime, with only a couple of classes remaining after lunch, which means that my days aren't too demanding. I typically finish at about 4pm.

Back at my flat, when I'm not socialising with a few friends, I spend far too much time watching TV and DVDs, but I'm also doing a minimum of forty leg-ups and forty sit-ups every day. My stomach never recovered after having all those scalpels sliced into it. A week or so after the operation, when my infection burst open, I had to endure the doctors poking around in there with all sorts of tools for another five days. I can only suppose that this wasn't the best for its form, and so it bulges out as if I've got a bit of a potbelly. I have hope that if I do stomach exercises every day, I may eventually bring it back to something approximating its original shape. Meanwhile, I continue to avoid junk foods like Coca Cola, crisps, and ice-cream, and so I can feel myself getting a bit trimmer. After I buy myself a pair of sneakers and an MP3 player, I'm even planning to start running again - something I haven't done since Germany.

If my weekdays are normally quiet affairs, I still like to party on Friday nights. I like to say that this is simply part of my culture. I've gone to town almost every Friday night since I was about fifteen years old. It's how I like to reduce stress after a busy week. I'm still impressed with how much a drinking culture Korea proves to be. One can go out on the street on almost any night and probably find at least one drunken guy staggering home. Many stagger home over the weekends; girls, as well as boys. It doesn't seem to be looked down upon here. As far as I know, drinking in public is legal, and even walking down the street holding a beer in one's hand is ok. I haven't seen any fights, but I've heard they can be rather like the Irish when it comes down to it. I'm generalising, I know, but this is to say that maybe, according to what several friends have said, Korean people can be short-fused and pugnacious when they get angry. I've yet to see this proven.

Friday night made for another good evening. I went out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant with three of my colleagues, and then we went to J-Rock, where I introduced everyone to the bar's potent Long Island Iced Teas. I stayed out till about 5am, as there were plenty of nice people to mix with.

This weekend has proven to be fairly casual, but last weekend saw me on the speed train (300KPH) to Seoul. Leslie and I stayed in a hotel in the very lively Gangnam district. I had a fairly quiet night on the Saturday, as I came down with an intense cold that lasted for about thirty minutes (with sneezing, coughing and a runny nose), and then somehow disappeared like I've never experienced before. That's ok, because another one seems to have hit me.

An early night was good because on Sunday I went out to the Korean War Memorial museum, where I had a fascinating tour of Korea's past with everyone from the Mongols to the Japanese. Naturally, there was also much on the Korean war, and I stood for a moment's silence when I read the 43 names of the New Zealanders who died to keep South Korea free from oppression (or maybe it was 33 who died, as that's the number I come to when searching the Internet).

Anyway, I thought it was a good museum, if not extraordinary, and for me it was time well spent. I always like to check these places out. After perhaps 2.5 hours exploring every room I could find and checking out all the ordnance on display outside (heaps of fighter jets, attack helicopters, etc), I decided it was time to get more of a feel for Seoul. Choosing at random to explore another hustling and bustling area called It'aewon, I was rather amazed that I managed to run into Leslie right outside the subway station in this city of around ten-million people. (We had separated because museums aren't really his thing.) So, we spent another good couple of hours exploring the busy streets and just generally soaking in a feel for the place. Overall, I really like Seoul, even if I have to agree with Leslie that it isn't the most scenic of cities, and I look forward to going back there sometime soon.

One other great reason for going to Seoul, which I've been saving until now, was that I finally got to buy myself that laptop that I've been after. That is what I spent my Saturday in Seoul doing, as after finding my accommodation, I hopped straight back onto the subway and headed for the Youngsan Electronic Arcade, which is Asia's largest electronics' market. The place was massive. I had my eye on several laptops, some being Samsung, others being LG, and in the end I decided to buy a Samsung. It's difficult for me to say yet, but of course I think I've got myself a good one. It should be, for 1,300,000 won, or about $2175 NZ dollars ($1349 US). Since one of my biggest hobbies involves computers, I feel I deserve this. Comparative to my income, it didn't even cost that much - amounting to about 13 days' work. Had I instead taken two weeks off work, unpaid, I would have thought nothing of the loss of income for the sake of a good holiday. So, likewise, I feel I deserve this.

For those who are interested, it is a Samsung NT-R45/C171. It's got an 80GB Hard Disc Drive, 512MB memory (DDR2 533), Windows XP Home (although I'm going to upgrade this to XP Professional very shortly, because my XP Home is in Korean and I obviously need it in English), Intel Pentium M (Centrino), wireless technology (meaning that I can get online without needing to connect to a phone line), Re-writable CD drive (which can of course play all the discs, like DVD and MP3, etc; but also allows me to dub my own CDs), and a PM-740 (1.73GHz) Central Processing Unit (which in terms of computing power is, I believe, the most important element of a computer system). Its display screen is also nice and wide, although I can't recall it's specifications (15" maybe), and it's packed with heaps of other features that I intend to discover with time. As I've said, now I only need to install Windows XP Professional in English (and it beats me why XP can't have several language options, the same as other smaller programs, like Microsoft Word) and hook myself up to the Internet, and I'll be in business. This will all be happening this week, with luck. I'm quite pleased.

I had thought I had a whole lot of other observations to make, but if I did, they've all slipped from my memory. No doubt they'll come back to me the moment I walk away from this computer, but this is all the more reason to make another update within a couple of weeks.


06 June 2006 Taiwan

About six weeks have gone by since my last update (okay, so I can't be trusted to meet personal deadlines) and my life in that time has been full of some of the lowest lows and some of the highest highs. So that this entry may adopt a more positive attitude, I will start with the lows first and work up to the best of highs. By placing more emphasis on these positive points, I will do my best to leave anyone reading this feeling in an uplifting mood. So that this may not seem to be a lie, I can also assure everyone than in fact things are mostly positive for me right now. Life is full of highs and lows, but overall I think it's well in my favour.

The worst thing is the fact that my poor little sister, Anna (26), is suffering nastily from bone cancer. She has been undergoing chemotherapy for several months now, which is no fun for anyone, but on top of this she had also broken a leg that couldn't be set while there were problems with her bones. It got to the point where she had to have an operation giving her an artificial knee. On top of this, she has also suffered several other highly upsetting tragedies in the last year (I won't disrespect her privacy by saying what they were), and so it seems that she’s going through worse than anyone I've ever personally known.

The effect of this on me is a mixture of emotions that are difficult to sift through and sort out. Naturally, I was quite upset when told that she could die. Dad now says that it was always fifty-fifty according to the doctors, but I wasn't aware of this several months ago and somehow in my mind the probability seemed considerably worse. I really couldn't imagine how I would get along if I lost her. But then I also feel distanced from her in so far as I haven't seen any of my family for four-and-a-half years. It is horrible that it should be like this, but on one level it is. I have gotten kind of used to not being around them. I feel as if one level of consciousness my mind is incapable of appreciating just how devastating it could be if I lost her. I find myself mainly continuing on with my life, and I feel a little guilty that I am not there for her and that I am having a fairly good time while she is having such a bad one. Of course, if her condition becomes terminal, I will want to spend the last months with her, but this tragedy may not come about. I hope with all my being that it doesn't.

To add to this confusion, my dad is going through considerable problems of his own. I won't write any more about this on my website, out of a son's respect for his father, but my sense of concern was at one point as bad as or perhaps even worse than the worry I have for my sister. This is a short paragraph, but I have written pages about it both to my father and to some of my closest friends. I will come back to say more about this in a few years' time, once it has all been resolved one way or another.

If my strongest concerns relate to the troubles facing other members of my family, I still have one that is directly related to me. I have had consultations with four doctors - two on-line, and two in person - and I am now aware of just how absolutely those doctors at an under-funded, small-town, and isolated Russian hospital made a butchery of my abdomen. They have left me with a hernia - a hole in my stomach muscles where my intestines push out against the flesh - and there is no cure other than to have another operation that will cost in excess of $6500 US dollars (and that's at cheaper hospitals in Thailand). For a while I thought I was making good progress when I built my fitness up to the point where I could do 100 sit-ups in one go (I attempted the same thing once when I was young, without training up to it, and I was crippled for three or four days), but apparently even that won’t do any good for this condition. It may seem unreasonable to blame the hospital for what could be nothing more than an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of this lifesaving procedure against peritonitis; but I won’t pretend any more that the hospital was up to scratch. For a start, another doctor who later came in from Moscow told me that my doctors had 'had no right to perform this operation' in that under-equipped hospital. Also, I don't think it's right that I was left to lie naked in my own faeces for several hours after they finally cured my constipation, and, given this lack of hygiene, I'm not surprised that my healing wounds were soon infected so badly that they burst open once more - spilling cupfuls of pus and leaving me with something of a second belly-button.

It is a shame that at that time I wasn't whisked to a hospital in Moscow. It is also bad luck that this thing didn't happen while I was in Germany, or somewhere over-all more modern and developed. However, as my girlfriend, Ania, points out, perhaps if I hadn't been on the school camp I wouldn't have gone to the doctors about my problems in the first place. I said this myself once, but in fact, I think it was this that I was wrong about. I think my constipation before the hospitalisation was bad enough to force me to find help. The upshot is that I'm left with a tummy that I'm too self-conscious of even to go to a sauna with people, and now that I know it won't be going down, I find myself feeling a little depressed about the state of physique.

'I cried that I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet'. It could be much worse; as it is for my sister. It's lucky for me that looks don't seem to be as important for many girls as they seem to be for many guys.

With these few pages of negativity out of the way, I can now move on to the good stuff. Plenty of decent things have been happening. For a start, Korea has proven to be a good move for me. I have no regrets about coming here. My work is okay, even if I miss having adult classes, and I have my groups all trained up now to respect me as captain of the ship, to follow my orders, and to allow for easy sailing.

I still apply a near-on-zero-tolerance policy for misbehaviour, speaking in Korean, or interrupting me when I'm speaking. If only a few people are offending, I get them standing up for up to five minutes. If they are repeat offenders, or if many are offending, I require them to sit somewhere else with someone else (thus depriving them of their chosen place most commonly next to one of their friends). This calms most of the groups down; and so for the majority of classes, being very familiar with this system, I seldom have to apply more than the first punishment during any single lesson.

A few groups comprising twelve-year-olds require a little more effort. I am frequently forced to keep some of these students back after class. I remember being their age quite well. Some will never learn; but others will learn, and at least the majority stay in line. Thankfully, I seldom have to go any further than this. Some of the other teachers take real problem students to the head mistress, Sister Agatha, and she does anything from spanking them on their hands (corporal punishment is normal here) to running them around the field for a number of hours. I did this for the first time just last week with a couple of boys who were completely ignoring the 'English only' rule. I asked Sister Agatha just to go easy on them, but of course she let them know what will happen to them next time.

So, over all, my students require that I put a lot of effort into controlling them, thus detracting both from my efficiency as a teacher and from my own personal levels of enjoyment, but at the same time I am starting to derive some pleasure from teaching most of my groups. As I say, I am now firmly at the helm, and most of them are working together like good little sailors. If I know anything about child psychology, they sense that they are in my control, and they respect this. They work increasingly harder for me, as I also use a range of positive reinforcements to encourage them, and I've picked up some sensible techniques for teaching larger children's classes since being here. I have begun to maximise the language output time for each student and I know that they mostly enjoy my lessons in the process. All of the groups have some really lovely children, and I like many of them on a personal level. There are some pretty interesting and friendly characters among Korean children.

Still, this doesn't stop some unpleasant things from happening at school on occasions. I needed the toilet a week ago five minutes before class. In the first cubicle there was one of those squat-toilets, and so I opted for the second sit-down-toilet. Upon lifting the lid I saw that it hadn't been flushed - common in children's schools; although I often saw this of adults in China too. I placed the lid back down and I held the flush-lever so as to finish the job thoroughly. It didn't occur to me that it was blocked. Suddenly, stinky-brown sewage water started gushing over the side, and in the moment it took me to jump onto the toilet seat, my socks - for we don't wear our shoes inside the school - were befouled. Not a very enjoyable experience, especially when some kids were laughing as I left the toilet. Oh, the joys of working with children....

I continue to find heaps of things to say about Korea. Sometimes I get some of the minor ones that I want to write about out of the way by running through them at a rate of one or two sentences each over a few paragraphs. I'll do this now. Town remains a fun place in the evenings to visit about once a week, and it's quite remarkable how inconspicuous the police presence is. I almost never see them. This says a lot of good things about the Korean national consciousness, as there seems to be very little violence or crime. I have never seen any graffiti. On buses, I just hop on, put some money into a one-way container, and take my own change from the open till. On two occasions I have opened my wallet to find that I had nothing smaller than 5000 won (about five dollars), and the bus driver just waved me on board. Also, taxis are good-value and are typically cheaper for three or four people than any other form of transport over moderate distances. Nor do the drivers sit behind any kind of protective shield. Korea is a place where the occasional drunken man and woman may be found walking down the street at the same time as young school children walk to their homes alone (not to say that this is terribly early, as classes can run till after 9pm). No one seems to bother anyone else.

I started this journal about Korea by saying that part of the reason I am here is because I am interested in what makes one small culture survive along side two or more massive and imposing ones. I was not just trying to sound deep and thoughtful. Before I went to Russia, based on what I'd seen of some appalling Russian students in Auckland - who had slouched around, been uncooperative, and had even made-out with their lovers during my lesson - I believed that Russian students would be quite an unpleasant challenge and that I was going there for something other than teaching. Happily, I was wrong.

Likewise, based on what I'd seen of Koreans in New Zealand, I had similar anxieties about teaching over here. In Christchurch my friend Anthony and I used to drum up interest amongst our Asian students for going out on Friday evenings. Chinese, Japanese and Thai students would all come with us; with the Thais leaving us halfway through the night to attend other parties, with the Chinese leaving for home at about the same time, and with the Japanese students generally staying with us until the end. However, we could never encourage the Korean students to join us, and so it seemed to me that perhaps they were rather racist and arrogant. The few Korean students that I had in Auckland seemed much better, but then they were mixing with Japanese students precisely because neither race was willing to mix with the Chinese, who formed the overwhelming majority in the school. Of course this could seem racist, but knowing Chinese people as I do, I can quite understand why Japanese and Korean students would prefer not to be a minority amongst them.

So, before coming to Korea, and appreciative of the lesson that my time in Russia had taught me (as I found Russian students to be the best I ever taught), I wondered just what perspective I would take on this once I had lived here for a while. Naturally, I don't believe any more that Koreans are an arrogant culture. In stead, I think perhaps they are a little conscious of the fact that two cultural and political giants surround them, and perhaps it is the very fact that they remain withdrawn that they retain what is theirs.

This is especially noticeable to me with their cooking. It wasn't long ago, from what I've heard and read, that many Japanese people felt quite repulsed by cooked meat. In a book I read recently, Shogun, the Japanese in the story often referred to the Koreans as 'garlic eaters', and it was observed that they didn't appreciate their style of cooking meat. I also find Korean cooking to be quite unlike most Chinese styles. It is more akin to my own style, even if I'm not taken by it all. They are mad about this fermented and spiced cabbage stuff they call 'kimchi', which appears along with other similar hors d'oeuvres before every single main meal, even if it is at a foreign restaurant.

Anyone coming straight from the West could be forgiven for feeling that this place is very Eastern in culture, especially if they were young, but others I know who have lived in other Asian cultures agree with me that this is the most 'Western' of the bunch. As I may have said, walking around some of their quieter and wealthier suburbs is enough to take my mind back to living in Germany. The Western feel is everywhere, from baseball, to their style of housing, to their general democratic and capitalistic affluence - which, to some who oppose Western culture, is also a negative influence of ours it seems.

In my opinion, this is a natural progression, given both their rebellion against forceful Japanese and Chinese influence, and the influence that the US has had on them since helping out in the Korean War. Underneath all this remains a strong Korean spirit, and it is this spirit that must account for such differences to many Western countries as filial piety, a system of respecting senior people, and the lack of crime and public violence in their culture.

As I have said, my time in Korea continues to be very nice. At times it is almost leisurely. I have had about a week of holidays in the last thirty days, not including individual classes that were cancelled, and yet we are still paid our full salary. We get time off thanks to the students' trips, exams and holidays. As I wrote the first draft of this update I was enjoying my second of two days off, with last Tuesday being something about the school's foundation anniversary, and last Wednesday being a public holiday for the Korean elections. As I complete this final draft a week later (Tuesday), I am enjoying yet another holiday. It is Memorial Day in Korea, commemorating, from what my Korean colleagues told me, the Korean War and also the Koreans who fought in Vietnam. Still, my holiday time gets better.

Two weekends ago the school sent the four of us foreign English teachers on an all-expenses-pain three-day-weekend to Taiwan. This magnificent piece of serendipity came about as a direct result of the same stroke of seeming bad luck that kept the four of us from getting our working visas in the first place. (For the record, it didn't take long for the pluses of leaving within six months to start outweighing the minuses. For one, I doubt if I could really hack twelve full months at this school, for as I have said the classes are very draining and I miss teaching adults as well. For another, I'm hoping to return to Moscow by September so that I can be with Ania, whom I shall have more to say about later.) The awesome repercussion of our only having holiday visas is that we each needed to leave the country to renew our visas for a second term of three months.

Naturally, since it was the school's oversight that we couldn't get working visas, it was up to the school to pay. We had thought that perhaps we'd spend a night in Beijing or Japan, because to renew our visas only requires that we leave the country for one night and then come back again, and so we were thrilled when we found out that the school was paying for us to go to Taiwan and that we'd leave early on Friday morning and come back late Sunday evening. And not only were they paying for the flights, but also for everything down to the meals, bus tickets, a guided tour, and four-star accommodation at a holiday resort upon a river in the rolling and green Taiwanese hills. As an English teacher, schools have paid for my flights to China, Europe and Korea; but this is merely part of my remuneration for the work I am hired to do. Take away the flight reimbursement, and I would simply look for a higher salary all up. So, with these other flights aside, this little bonus is quite easily the best, unexpected plus to have come out of my career. I was very happy and very excited.

On Friday, 19 May, the four of us, Felicity, Gordon, Leslie, and I, met outside the school and were driven to the bus stop by the travel agent who had arranged our tour package. We then sat in the bus for two or three hours until we got to the Incheon airport near Seoul. A few hours after that, we were flying over Taiwan. I kept my eyes out the window trying to take in as many of the farms and fields, spotted with little houses, as possible. Then, shortly after that, we landed.

It wasn't straight to any average hotel for us. After waiting thirty minutes for our tour guide, who acted surprised to find out that we weren't Korean despite our names being written in English on his register, we jumped into the bus and headed straight to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. This shrine was designed to be impressive, and indeed it was. Having read and written about this guy before [Mao vs. Chiang], I soon recognised the spin-doctoring for what it was. The hall made it out as if the guy could have done no wrong. Oh well, that's not surprising considering how much Chiang Kai-Shek did do to put Taiwan on it's course, and still I found the hall very interesting from a moderately historical view. Some very interesting memorabilia lying around.

After our time in the hall, the bus drove us to downtown Taipei. I had a quick look inside a nearby temple before breaking free of the others. I wasn't much in for hanging around, as the tour guide couldn't speak a word of English and he was giving us zero attention even though we accounted for forty per cent of the tour group. I had a pleasant hour walking around the busy streets of the capital city. It immediately took me back to China, minus some of the negative aspects: not as noisy; not as dirty; not a lot of spitting; not as dangerous on the roads; not a whole lot of ugly new buildings. Also, it was a step up on some of the good points: an excellent variety of Taiwanese, Chinese and foreign food; a whole lot of ugly old buildings ('old and ugly' being preferable to 'new and ugly'); and exceptionally detailed and well-maintained monuments, temples, and heritage buildings of exquisite design and beauty. Also, the frequency of these buildings around the country impressed me. There were heaps of them, when in China one must travel far and wide to find these things.

My overall impression of Taiwan was that it is as China probably should be. Don't forget that China suffered considerably after not only around one-hundred years of foreign interference, but through more than fifty years of communist dictatorship, where the grand-finale was the Cultural Revolution, until a relatively recent turn for better. With the whole point of the Cultural Revolution being to 'wipe the cultural slate clean' and start over, I don't think it's unreasonable to point out that China, which continues to rebuild its culture and country under an authoritarian dictatorship, may be somewhat behind where it would be the people had been freely allowed to grow, build and learn. Taiwan showed me how the Chinese people could really be, having had a longer go at freedom and prosperity.

I must also say that I now realise just how 'Chinese' Taiwan actually is. For one thing, they speak Mandarin Chinese, and so I had a great time brushing up on my survival Putonghua. Somehow, it's still easily my best foreign language, however bad this may be. It's 'survival', as I say; nothing more. I can get by with basic greetings, requests, numbers and currency, and all that, but I usually fall down after a discussion has been back and forth more than four or five times each way. This is because I am surely one of the world's worst polyglots. To be in this category, it is not enough that you don't know many languages. We all don't know thousands of languages, but that doesn't make us bad at them. To be bad at a language means that you have tried to learn that language, and you have failed. This is me for Chinese, German, Polish, and Russian. I'm not counting Korean because I have not been trying to progress any further since I learned how to read and write the Korean alphabet. A wise idea, I think, considering my batting average. Anyway, I'm diverting. The point is that I had a lot of fun using my Chinese with everyone I could - this in itself is something, as I don't always enjoy practising languages - and I got to see just how related to China Taiwan is. It will be interesting to watch as the two countries move closer and closer together in their political outlook.

After the look around town, we went straight to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and I was thrilled when my request for gong bao ji ding, which is also known around Hong Kong as 'Kong Pao Chicken', turned out to already be on the menu. It's one of my favourite dishes made of chunks of chicken, chillies, and peanuts. I ate it and the other orders with relish, as did my ex-pat friends, but the Koreans who were on the tour were noticeably not enjoying themselves. When queried, they replied that there was too much oil. Personally, I think perhaps they could open themselves up just a little bit more to other cuisines.

We then drove for about an hour to get to our hotel. We stayed at 'Le Villa's Resort' on a valley river surrounded by forests and hills. I don't know where we were exactly because the guide wasn't speaking to us (I don't mean he couldn't speak to us, I mean he wouldn't). Also, the brochure is entirely in Korean and it doesn't provide a website, and my web-searches have been unsuccessful also. I guess it wasn't the most important part of my stay in Taiwan, but it really was in a beautiful location. I'll put some photos up in due time.

The next day we breakfasted early and then head off in the bus once again. I thought it was a good day, although it wasn't for everyone. One of my friends didn't want to be part of the tour at all, but he was told that we would be free from lunchtime to do whatever we wanted in Taipei, and so he stayed on feeling increasingly frustrated with being constantly driven around and having to listen to the incessant Korean over the speakers. By the time we discovered that we weren't going to have the afternoon off, it was too late for him to bother separating with us. He didn't enjoy himself at all. The other two were fine. As for myself, I was quite content sitting at the back, gazing out the window at the beautiful countryside, losing myself in my thoughts and fantasies, happy that the guide was there to worry about where we should be and when, and listening to various albums (Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Jamiroquai, Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, and a few electronic music compilations).

Our first visit for Saturday was to the Window On China Theme Park. We weren't too sure what we were in for at first, but it turned out to be a highly interesting place. One especially memorable area was the so named Mini Taiwan / Mini China section, featuring 'selected famous buildings' and other monuments (the great wall, etc) in miniature. Naturally, there was every attention to detail and I couldn't help but be impressed as I walked around the place. There were also a whole lot of miniaturised structures in another area where you are supposed to feel 'that you are really in Europe and America'.

Another part of the park was devoted to fun rides and theme shows. One moderately amusing but childishly pleasing ride that I went on was aptly named 'Splash', where you drop from the height of about ten stories in a kind of toboggan that slams into the water sending up giant waves. I also quite enjoyed the mini-train that we caught between the two areas, and on the way back I had to break all the rules by jumping on a moving train, as otherwise I may have been late for the tour rendezvous.

As happened, I was on time, but the guide was late. Turned out that this was okay for him but not okay for us. After the theme park we went to Taipei, where we learned that we were going to have Korean for lunch. I told the others that they were welcome to go along with this, but I would exercise my liberty to drop into a nearby Taiwanese restaurant and they were welcome to join me. Everyone agreed. When our bus arrived at the spot, however, I was informed that Korean 'pugogi' (a delicious, marinated beef) had been ordered for us and now it would be rude for us to go off on our own. I thought about this. I could eat Korean in Taiwan, when I live in Korea and severely miss authentic Chinese food, or I could enjoy the food of the culture I was in. I feel that it is unnecessary for them to be insulted just because I choose not to eat what they eat, and so I opted to go my own way on this. I had no regrets. I went down the street and found a superb spicy Chinese stir-fry with rice. I'd never be able to find this in Korea. Of course, I made sure that I got back to the bus on time.

We then went to some expensive jewellery shop. I asked our guide how long we had and he said half-an-hour, so I went off in search of an Internet cafe to write a quick email to my parents and to Ania. I completed this within the time limit and got back to the jewellery shop with five minutes to spare on my half-hour. Our tour guide who was waiting outside started beckoning to me very impatiently when he saw me coming. This display didn't encourage me to move any faster. When I got back on the bus, people were staring daggers at me, but I pointed out that I wasn't late, I was merely last.

Later, I quietly apologised to our Korean friends, and explained again so that they would understand that I had in fact returned early to the bus. The woman whom I spoke through said that she had also been treated badly at one point when the guide accused her of being late for something, and all this after he was more than thirty minutes late for us at the airport. I felt better, and later explained my innocence to my friends also.

To defend myself a little more, as I realise that it's pretty bad to go against the flow when you're part of a tour group, I think it's also quite wrong for a tour guide to completely ignore four of his ten charges just because there's a language barrier. As one who has dealt with these barriers ever since I started teaching 4.5 years ago, I know for a fact that some level of communication always remains possible. There was nothing stopping our tour guide from using one of the Koreans from the group as a translator, as she had willingly offered, and so it was unacceptable that we weren't kept informed of even some basic details, such as where we were going, what we were doing, and what time allowances we had, without us having to go to chase him down to find out. I absolutely loved my time in Taiwan, but I think the tour guide needs to re-think his career path.

After our lunch the bus took us to the northernmost part of the island and we had a walk around the rocky bays. It was a beautiful day and so it was very nice to see the ocean. It is the first time that I've seen the ocean (other than from the sky) since I last left New Zealand. Somehow, I never saw it the whole of the time that I was in Europe, and I haven't been to the coast in Korea yet. After about an hour of exploring, we headed back to the bus and then for a quick trip up to some hot-bathing-pool area near the top of a very large hill. I'm not ready to go to such places with my tummy the way it is, but I still had a nice time reading some of my James Bond book, Thunderball, and watching over the splendid view. After that, we all drove back to the villa for a delicious barbecue. After our busy day, we allowed ourselves to unwind with good food, good beer, a cigar each - let's be real: a cigar every year or so is going to kill me any faster than will a hundred other things - and some very tranquil scenery.

Our Sunday was equally packed. We left the villa promptly at eight and our first stop after some marvellous views from atop various summit roads was at the 'Martyr's Shrine' which, according to information I got searching the web, rests on the Chingshan Mountain (really, a small hill from the perspective I had) and oversees the Keelung River. Again, the details of the shrine were exquisite, as can only be hinted at in the photo I have provided. After a short time there, we went to the 'National Palace Museum', where we had a good look at a huge variety of artefacts dating back to all Chinese dynasties. Most of these were brought across from the mainland after the Guo Ming Dang escaped from Mao Zedong's communists.

Following these culture-stops, we were driven to a very expensive shopping mall where we were told to "stay here", undoubtedly so that the tour company would get a small commission from our purchases. It was the kind of deal where we were given some voucher offering a ten per cent discount on prices that were already inflated by two or three times the normal price. Again, I wouldn't typically consider it right to go against the grain on a tour, but nor am I one to take bad treatment without giving some back in kind. I was surprised that the others weren't thinking similarly, as I chose to interpret stay here a little more liberally than undoubtedly our guide intended. I stayed in the general area. Humouring the guide until his back was turned, I went straight back up the escalators and down the road about one hundred metres until I found a hustling-and-bustling shopping area. I had a great time speaking a mix of Chinese and English with a very nice, elderly Taiwanese couple, and I was happy to buy from them a few souvenirs to send to my dear sister and my dear girlfriend. When I got back to the shopping mall, on time of course, the others seemed a little dejected at their experience and perhaps even slightly resentful that I had escaped. I pointed out that since it was down either to my guide's happiness or my own, I would always choose my own. My happiness doesn't deprive him of anything, whereas he has wrongly made it so that his happiness deprives me of personal autonomy. Felicity observed that this kind of thinking is more-and-more seen as right in today's world.

Our final stop before the airport was another Chinese restaurant where we had a seafood 'three serves' hot pot. It wasn't one of my favourites, but I enjoyed the meal nevertheless, knowing that it would be my last in Taiwan. The other three enjoyed it too, but clearly the Koreans did not. They didn't enjoy a single Chinese dish. I think perhaps this is a display of a certain nationalist pride that Koreans feel, and probably this has just a little bit to do with why Korea has survived as its own culture and country. They simply don't take to the ways of foreigners. This may seem to be negative to some, but then I think that in the name of multiculturalism, if we want to actually have multiple cultures to speak of in the future, there must be some kind of balance here. If as a culture we are completely absorbing of ideas, then soon all cultures shall mix together homogeneously as one. Still, I think perhaps Korean people could be a little more willing to try different foods when they are in a place. It goes back to my reasons for opting out on Saturday from a lunch of Korean pugogi.

At the airport, we did a desperate shop-around for gifts and souvenirs to take back to our colleagues. Otherwise, our journey home was fairly uneventful. Simply: a flight to Incheon, a bus to Daejeon, and then a shared taxi ride back to our flats. It had been a highly memorable and pleasing long-weekend.

At this time, I have rather a few new comments to make about the life I have been living in Korea since my last update and since getting back from my holiday in Taiwan. Also, if I can be very happy about the serendipity that got me to Taiwan and helps to offset some of the less pleasing things that have been happening recently, I can be exceptionally happy about the way things have been going with Ania, my long-distance girlfriend of several months. This last thing is the best thing, and as I promised at the start of this update, I have been working 'up to the best of the highs'. However, I will save this for a few weeks' time so that I can include it as a fresh update on a new page. This present update would simply be even longer in coming and too long on the page otherwise. Sometimes it is better to save content for future updates, and in the scheme of things, when this update comes it will help to fulfil my promise.

Till then....

From here, proceed to Korea II