I live in Germany, work in Luxembourg, married a Czech man, was born in California, grew up in Texas and Micronesia, desperately miss my giant trees in Oregon, work with students from all over the world, and I love to learn.  

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German is my best language, and you can see my struggles by reading my Coronavirus Tagebuch, where I wax on about my fascinating life, captive in quarantine looking out the window of my one bedroom flat.   

 

I love learning languages as well as teaching, but I'm not good at any of them. Here I am trying to teach my own students to have confidence in their language and I don't have confidence in mine!  I've also studied Spanish, Czech, and Latin.  I took a gander at Vietnamese and gave up after trying to learn how to say hello.  There's like fifteen different ways!  I also spoke Swahili and Chuukese as a child--the only words I remember are suga

(go away) and fidigogo (big mess).  There's my childhood in a nutshell.

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Did I mention my son?  I am a mama bear, fiercely protective, of my son and all LGBTQ folks. I was a PFLAG board member in Oregon before I moved to Europe and worked with lGBTQ students, their parents and teachers.

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I learn more from my students than I will ever teach them, but I give them my heart and soul.