Women Migrants’ Center

When I first created this blog, I thought of writing more about life in Korea as a foreign wife, daughter-in-law and a mother. However, I’d been too busy the past few weeks but I’m not going to abandon the original idea.

Last year, I joined a Korean language class sponsored by the Korean government at the Women Migrants’ Center in Sungin-dong, Jongro-gu. I was introduced to the center by a Filipina friend I met online. She has been studying the language at the center for almost a year that time. The place is just sooooo near my residence but I didn’t know about it until then. I guess the government needs to step up their information campaign.

I could already converse in basic Korean that time. I could also read Korean well but I was assigned to the elementary (초) class since I didn’t ace the evaluation test that they gave. It was a little harder than I expected.

The class is totally free. The textbook and its accompanying workbook are also free, and so are the snacks. In my class are two other Filipinas, six Vietnamese, six Chinese, two Bolivians and a Japanese. The elementary class ran for six months. It was a once-a-week two hour class every Thursday afternoon. If you have a child, the people at the center would even take care of your son or daughter so you could concentrate on the class. I liked my class a lot, but the Vietnamese are just soooo noisy! They would talk to themselves in their language even while were having a class. So the teacher almost always complain. LOL

The intermediate classes started on the third week of January, while I was on vacation in the Philippines. This time, they increased the frequency of the class to three. The class meets on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning at 10:30 AM. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the classes because of my son who sleeps for 14 hours a night. He almost always wake up beyond ten in the morning!

I hope to join the next class this fall. I’ll be attending the intermediate classes and hopefully I’ll be able to learn enough Korean for me to be able to guide my husband’s family when they go to the Philippines. Everyone in the family wants to travel to my country but my father-in-law insists that we’re not going there until I can be their tour guide. Oh well!

Anyway, the Women Migrants’ Center doesn’t only offer Korean language class to foreign women married to Korean men. They also have Vietnamese classes for the Korean husbands of Vietnamese women. Isn’t that nice? They also have classes for cooking Korean dishes. (I can cook Korean dishes really well, according to my mother-in-law, so I didn’t think I needed it.) And of course, counseling and help to those who need it.

Last year, we had special activities like an introduction to “hanji” or Korean paper. We had several parties and excursions, all paid for by the Korean government! Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend the Christmas party where I was tasked to sing the first stanza of Wonder Girls’ Tell Me. I had the flu and I didn’t want to infect the people at the party.

Here are some pictures of my class. Not everybody was around at that time. It was just our practice session for the Christmas party last year. I’m the one in the beige jacket.