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81 W e all know about drinking away your problems, but is it possible to drink your way to speaking Korean? If you trade liquor for coffee and maybe even open a book or two, could you simply walk outside after a cup of joe and have some sort of meaningful conversation with a random ajeossi in perfect Korean? Not so much. Learning a new language takes hours of hard work, ded- ication and motivation, like needing to tell your landlady she has to knock before coming into your apartment. But while coffee alone can’t teach you Korean, the people selling it can — at least if you come to the You Are Here café in Seoul. Catering to a growing need The creators of Eat Your Kimchi and Talk To Me In Korean have come together to turn an old house in the city into a creative space for artists, a study hub for language learners and a coffee shop for thirsty people. The café had its opening Aug. 9, drawing a crowd of more than 1,000 people who feasted on milkshakes with such enthusiasm that they broke the blender. “It was huge, way more than we were expecting. One girl flew in here just for the opening, and then went back to America the next day,” said Hyunwoo Sun, language teacher at TTMIK and co-owner of the café. “We’re trying to help people connect, to make a place where people can meet, people can study and bloggers can meet. There’s not really a place for that in Korea,” said café co-owner Martina Stawski of Eat Your Kimchi. Located in the heart of Hongdae’s guesthouse dis- trict, this café changes that. For a traveler it offers a place to get breakfast and plan out one’s day. For the local resident it offers so much more, acting as a space for creative projects and guided self-study sessions led by members of the TTMIK team. The café has its own classroom with a wall-sized chalkboard, where three times a week someone from TTMIK will be in house to answer Korean questions. Sun hopes other teachers will use the café for their classes as well. “We (the TTMIK team) can’t always be here. We want other teachers to form their classes and use this place freely,” said Sun. This is part of his goal of making TTMIK “the center of Korean education in the world,” a plan he talks about with evil-genius determination. Korean teachers and professors around the world are already using TTMIK material in their lessons and looking to them for guidance. You Are Here is another step on their road to making Korean accessible to anyone who wants to learn. ‘We’re trying to help people connect, to make a place where people can meet, people can study and bloggers can meet. There’s not really a place for that in Korea.’ —Martina Stawski, co-owner, You Are Here café