Gwangju International Center

 

 

Speaker : Heather Aitken

Writer : Taehoon Park

Co-Writer : Ashlyn Winter

Date : February 7th 2015

 

 

Heather left Australia, her family, friends and career to move to Korea to start new chapter in her life. She was working really long hours as a scientist, sometimes up to 20 hours a day and, through her job, she even had many opportunities to travel around the world. She came to Korea looking for more fulfilling job and thought she could find that through teaching, so decided to become an English teacher. She wanted to work with people, not for people. 

Heather interviewed five people for her talk. There were three things in common about these interviewees: they had a passion for the arts, they were women, and all foreigners. The questions asked their opinion of community and what that word means to them. There was a common thread throughout all their answers: locality, interests and goals. They felt Gwang-ju was a great community as it possesses all of these. One of her interviewees said that the Gwang-ju’s community is so special in comparison to other communities because smaller communities exist within the bigger community.

Heather ended her talk by sharing some thoughts about how we can improve Gwang-ju’s community life: don’t be exclusive, include in people activities you want to do and don’t wait for people to come to you, go and find them. If you have an idea, act upon it. Be adventurous and try something new and invite other people whether they are foreigner or Korean. Heather, at the end of her talk, said “Gwang-ju is full of people who don’t want to create a barrier between foreigners and Koreans” and this sums up exactly why Gwang-ju is the perfect community to be a part of.

 

 

photo : http://goo.gl/47e6G2

video : http://goo.gl/w8DKnF