Issue number one hundred and sixty-six (November 2014) from the WorldU3A Service, sent on the first of every month to U3A members anywhere in the world.

Feel free to copy any or all of this information in your newsletters.
 Please send items of possible interest to the editor, Tom Holloway.

The U3A Network Queensland and U3A Asia Pacific Alliance International Conference will be held in Brisbane, Australia on 28-29 May 2015.

The Conference Venue is the recently-restored Brisbane City Hall in King George Square in the centre of the Brisbane business district, and close to transport, shopping, restaurants, accommodation and cultural venues. Within walking distance of City Hall across the Brisbane River is Southbank, Brisbane's urban playground, as well as the city's cultural precinct - comprising the Performing Arts Centre, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland Museum, Gallery of Modern Art, and the modern State Library of Queensland. Click here for more conference details >>>

For 'Grey Matters', the bi-monthly newsletter of U3A Brisbane. please click here >>>

Congratulations to U3A Nepal for the very successful international conference recently held in Kathmandu. Our picture above shows some of the foreign delegates and includes Australia, India, South Africa. Below are the delegates from U3A Lucknow visiting one of the many Hindu Temples. (Both pictures courtesy of Dr A.P. Singh of U3A Allahabad, India).
Walking/Rambling Groups: The website of the Royal Geographical Society offers an exciting series of geographically themed walks around Britain, designed to tell the unique stories of our landscapes. The walks are designed to be fun, informative and inspiring. They are completely free, self-guided and suitable for all ages and abilities. Prepare to discover something new and to be surprised by what is right on your own doorstep.

"Our ambition is to create more than 100 inspirational and informative walks that bring our islands’ geography and history alive. We are creating new walks and adding to the website all the time".

Language Groups: If you want to learn the Japanese language (or "Nihongo" as it's called in Japanese) online, click here >>>

These lessons can get you well on your way to learning how to speak, read, and write Nihongo. On this site you will find such things as the Japanese alphabet (including Hiragana and Katakana) as well as Kanji (Chinese characters), vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and common words and phrases.

The Japanese language is actually very simple but so unlike English that many English speakers find it difficult to learn. The goal of this 10 free lesson course is to help you study the basics of the language and to teach you how to learn Japanese in a way that is fast and easy to understand.


The November issue of the U3A Alliance Australia Bulletin is now available at http://u3aaa.org/u3aaabull12.pdf and the picture above shows the U3A Choir which performed at Melbourne Town Hall in October.

Moving to smaller premises? or simply decided to 'downsize' your life, reduce the clutter and 'Learn to Live with Less'. Here's one way to do it.

The Freecycle Network is made up of 5,167 groups with 8,139,200 members around the world and there will be one near you. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by local volunteers. Membership is free. To sign up go to https://www.freecycle.org/ or click here >>>

You might also sign up to two other groups, FREEGLE (400 groups in the UK) or GUMTREE which also offers all sorts of community services such as house-swaps and car-sharing.


Art History and History Groups: When browsing this website the word "cornucopia" comes to mind. Make sure you have some spare time in hand before clicking here >>>


U3A Online: A complete GEMs Archive - Rick Swindell's newsletter - pdf printouts of all prior editions can be found at www.u3aonline.org.au

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