Adventures in History and Culture

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

I'm erasing the below from the group description.

If you disagree, we can add it back.

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In addition to exploring new places, we also have our own bookclub: (we
currently need a new host for this, so please let me know if you'd be
interested!)

 We choose our own book from any genre that is related to that meeting's
 topic.  For example, one topic we had was the US Civil War, where
 people chose books covering culturally-based war tactics, Lincoln's
 funeral train, articles from that time, and fiction.  By having a
 topic that we base a variety of books choices on, we are able to have a
 more holistic discussion from interdisciplinary perspectives.  

 We start out by everyone introducing themselves and their book with a
 brief description of what it was about, an interesting fact, and how they
 felt about it (30 seconds to two minutes each).  Then we open up
 to a naturally flowing discussion.  It is okay to also just sit
 and listen the whole time!

 "Book" is used loosely to describe a possibility of many medias: songs,
 films, scripts, anthologies, short stories, newspaper and journal
 articles, magazines, and art.

Cuisine and Convo events:

 We choose a cultural place in the world (i.e. not strictly geographical)
 and then find a group-friendly, highly-rated restaurant featuring
 traditional foods from that country. Similar to the book club, we chat
 about that culture in an interdisciplinary manner drawing from our own
 experiences of travel, books or movies, college classes, crafts, scanning
 trivia online, to...well, anything at all as long as it relates.

 You can bring books, pictures, artifacts, or just yourself.  If
 you don't get a chance to look up something about that culture, you can
 always bring up a "top 10" trivia on your phone about the
 culture/location.  After we finish our brief
 show-and-tell/sharing, we open up to casual conversation about the
 culture or whatever topic morphs from that.

 Occasionally we will host this with a concurrent cultural festival like
 combining the topic of Germany with an Oktoberfest celebration or Greece
 with a trip to the Greek Festival.