The name sounds very ambitious. I suppose anytime one tries to form a club or social grouping, that’s rather ambitious. I’ve been working on this for a month or two. I guess I’m hoping we can have an institution of “foreigners” in the Yeonggwang area who meet to study a little bit, find out more about the culture or language without the overwhelming aspect of trying to do so with actual Koreans.
We’ve been meeting every Tuesday. One day, we made kimbap. Another time, we watched a movie. Each class, we try to talk a little bit about the language – but everyone’s at a different level, so it doesn’t always go smoothly, in that respect.
Today, only two people (along with myself) showed up. We sat in the Paris Baguette (a Korean chain bakery store, about the closest Yeonggwang gets to cafe culture) by the bus terminal and drank some coffee and talked about verbs for a while.
I hope the group can be successful, but it’s hard building any kind of expat community on any kind of basis, here, because there are so few, and interests are so diverse. A guy named Jim has done a fabulous job with his Friday night pizza & beer gatherings, and I often go to those, too. But I was trying for something that would provide some group encouragement and motivation for the language study – I figured even though I was more advanced, I would nevertheless benefit from a motivational standpoint. And I have.
Having so few people able and interested in participating is a little bit disappointing. But … 아자 아자… I hope this can work.
