Great Success!

Today Esperanto@UIUC's Esperanto-Week came to a fulfilled end. We met for an hour Monday-Friday over snacks and jollity and worked through a chapter of "Teach Yourself Esperanto" per day. We had two new members who came every day (they should get a trophy--what brave souls) and are now speaking beautifully and clearly learning beyond what the class has taught.

I really feel that people of every level improved drastically, though in different ways. There is of course the ubiquitous improvement in fluidity of speech, but also some tricky aspects that some of us were shaky on became clarified to all. Due to our group's diversity, we were able to identify cognates for most of the roots we came across, often leading to helpful mnemonics. (I also got some really helpful insight on the Japanese language from a foreign exchange student from Yokohama!)

We all came away from that with a sense of accomplishment, and we had fun while doing it! We will *definitely* be doing it again next semester. For those interested in organizing a similar event, I may have the group draft a page for the Esperanto-USA Book (we read certain things aloud, translated things, did pair-work, etc). I can't recommend this type of event enough. Woo success!