In April 2001, we went to Okinawa together on vacation.
Before I taught at KETC, I taught at Nagasaki Wesleyan Junior College in Isahaya, Nagasaki. I liked teaching there too. I met my good friend Yuko Nakamura there. We are still very good friends.
I am from Vermont. Vermont is a small state in the north-eastern part of the USA. My town has 3,000 people. This is why I think that Komaki is a big city. I grew up on a farm. When I was little my family had cows, but when I was about ten we changed to goats. Now that my sister and I have left home, my family doesn't have many animals. My mother only has a dog, a parrot, 3 koi and some goldfish.
My mother, my sister and I are very close. We all like the same things. We like to read, we like to knit and we like to listen to music.
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More of my knitting
We are very different too. My mother doesn't like to talk as much as me. My sister (Marin) likes to change her hair color a lot.
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I only dyed my hair to purple once and I was with my sister when I did it. My mother and my sister both like to garden. I have no place to garden, but sometimes I think about putting an umbrella table and some plants in my parking space (since I don't have a car).
I like to travel and I have lived in many different countries. When I was seventeen I went to France and Germany for six months. In France I stayed with three families. One family had a grocery store and I helped by working at the cheese counter every morning. In Germany I worked as an au pair. I took care of a seven month old girl.
I went to college in Washington, D.C. at Georgetown University and studied English Literature (books). My junior (3rd) year in college, I went to Warwick University in Coventry, England. I had a very good time. I studied English and Sociology and saw many many plays. I saw 65 plays that year!! I also got to visit my friends in France, Germany and Greece during spring vacation.
After college I joined the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps sent me to Niger, West Africa to teach junior high school English. Since Niger is a French speaking country. I taught classes that were very similar to Japanese junior high school English classes. I taught four classes. My classes met for one hour every day. I had fifty-five students in each class! But the classes were very different from Japan because my students didn't have textbooks. I had to write everything important on the blackboard and they had to copy it into their notebook. I hated my blackboard because it was very bumpy and difficult to write on.
When I was in Niger, I decided that I liked teaching English. I decided to go back to university and study Linguistics. Ohio University gave me a job teaching English one hour a day, so I decided to go to school there. I liked Ohio and I made many good friends there.
After Ohio, I went to Isahaya for a year and then one of my friends told me that Ohio University was looking for a teacher to work in Komaki -- and here I am!!
This page last updated on September 12, 2002