About Me

 

I guess I should start out with a “Get to Know Me” post.  Warning: I am terrible at introductions.  I can talk for days about some things—I can describe with minute detail the quirks and traits of my cat, Billie.  I can tell you a hundred and one ridiculous stories from my travels and misadventures and tell even more horrifying if not hilarious stories from my days as a preschool teacher (kids are gross, honest, and endlessly entertaining and exhausting).  And I can wax poetically about my favorite books or shows and do my darndest to convince you to love them almost as much as I do.  But I cannot describe or introduce myself.  I get awkward, sweaty, and a little bit twitchy.  Even in writing. 

I’ve already walked away from this introduction and forced myself to come back.  It shouldn’t be this hard.

(Confession: I’ve withheld from applying to more than one job because they required a Statement of Purpose or Cover Letter and I’m so appallingly bad at these that I’d rather convince myself I don’t want the job than write the letter.)

I am an expat.  I’ve lived in Warsaw, Poland, for the better part of eight years now.  I moved to Warsaw in 2012 expecting to stay for a one-year contract with a bilingual preschool, and then I planned to move to Italy where I could practice my Italian and sip Italian wine every day.  I did not expect to fall in love with this city and its people.  While I’ve left Warsaw a few times (I spent a year in China and spend most summers abroad) and I’ve cheated on Warsaw numerous times (Leiden, Pisa, Budapest…), this city has become so dear to me that I can’t really fathom leaving. 

Reading on the beach in
Flogita, a small Greek town
near Thessaloniki

I am a traveler.  As I said, while I call Warsaw home, I travel whenever I can.  Or I did before COVID hit.  I love the thrill of a new city and the fear of navigating a foreign bus system.  I live for food and acquainting myself with local specialties and national dishes is probably my favorite aspect of travel.  I love cobblestone streets even though they’re murder to walk on, and I’m a sucker for a fountain.  I have far too many pictures of foreign cats, and I love when cities personalize their sewer covers with their own insignia.  I have a collection of foreign notes and coins in two jars—one is a jar of Euros that I dip into whenever I go to a country that uses the Euro; the other jar holds the coins I’ll probably not use again but treasure more because they hold memories of market squares and the trinkets I bought there. 

I am a reader.  When I cannot travel, I travel through books.  I love the possibilities of a new book—the physical allure of a new book with its smooth matte cover and its unbroken spine.  Crisp, untouched pages waiting to be underlined, dog-eared, bookmarked and returned to.  It’s as good as wine.  And I love the transportation of a really good book—the kind that leaves you disoriented, or otherwise moved when you leave it.  I was the kid who tried to sneak in pages at the dinner table, and I’m that friend on a group holiday who still tries to sneak in pages at the table.  Some of my favorite memories are sitting on foreign beaches with a cold drink and a good book.  This is also how I’ve earned some of my worst sunburns, but I’d still say it’s worth it.

An example of a brag: yes, I got
to do yoga on a rooftop in 
Florence. At sunset. 

I am trying to become a writer again.  I studied history in graduate school, so I wrote on an almost daily basis.  After grad school I kept a blog for a while, writing about books I’d read, and then writing about the early days of my life as an expat English teacher.  Somewhere along the way I stopped writing, stopped telling my story.  In large part I was too busy; teachers who are just starting out have so much work cut out for them by way of lesson planning and preparing materials, and (sometimes) learning the lesson material before teaching it.  Add to that a social life and a Netflix account and I just couldn’t find the time.  Or the words.  But I’d like to try again.  So here it is, my Statement of Purpose.  I want to keep a blog where I post reviews of the books I read (thanks to friends and NPR’s Book Concierge I read some damn good books), and I’d like to intersperse that with pictures from my life.  I’m an Idaho girl who moved Warsaw, and who, from time to time, finds herself in amazing places, like the ruins of the ancient Roman emperor Hadrian’s summer villa, or the white sand beaches of Boracay in the Philippines, and I’d like to tell a few of my travel stories.  And brag.  I might want to brag about this life I’ve found myself living.  And who knows, maybe it’ll inspire another girl from Idaho (or some other small-town home) to get out and live the life.

Oh, I also have a cat.  I think he’s kind of incredible so I might post about him from time to time too.  People love cat pics, right?