I graduated high school with more art classes than PE classes. Afterwards, I spent six months in Bolivia where I learned some Spanish and toured around the country. After returning to the States, I spent four months working at the Furnace Creek Resort in Death Valley. In the fall of 1997, I enrolled at Arizona State University and graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts. Currently, I live in Seoul, South Korea.

Beginning in 1994, I spent eight summers working for the Orme Summer Camp, in northern Arizona working with the youngest age group (6-9). During summers of 1997 until 2000, I was a Head of Camp, a job that placed me in charge of the program, counselors, and kids in the youngest group. In 2002, I worked as the Counselor in Training program developer. I was a mentor and guide for 16 and 17 year olds. I taught daily leadership and life skills classes in addition to working as a counselor. The last two weeks of my summer were spent co-leading an Intensified Horsemanship program. Children remain an important interest— During the summer of 2001, I worked with ASU's Conexiones project, an outreach program that teaches technology to migrant workers' children.

I didn't think much about Asia growing up. It was on the other side of the world and had really hard cities to spell on geography tests. Through high school and university I knew people who had an interest in the contemporary culture, took their karate classes for as much a cultural experience as an aerobic one or had some other interest in it forced upon them. I had a friend live in Japan for a year. I knew a Chinese girl briefly my first year in college. A friend pursued a romance with a Japanese exchange student.

I watched cheaply produced cartoons on Saturday morning as a kid. I saw my first breast on a recorded Japanese comedy show. I learned how to use chopsticks at a friend's house when, in an effort to keep us busy during a graduate party, his parents gave us a bag of Skittles and told us we could only eat the ones we picked up. My parents took me to Buddhist classes when I was young, during which I drew dinosaurs or played outside. None of these things had much of an impression that cried out, "Asia." I was not left with a burning desire to learn more about the other side of the globe.

Through high school I fantasized about mysterious French women having improbable love affairs with me. Or being swept up in some sort of complicated, equally improbable, international intrigue that would leave me with large sums of money and beautiful women calling on my doorstep only to be turned away by Jeeves. Classical music, candles and drafty castles on remote mountain tops consumed my personal fantasies of international travel.

Some of that was satiated when I went to Europe for New Years in 1999. I smashed my forehead against a lot of really low doorways in a Victorian-era house, caught a killer flu in Belgium and discovered that Paris was astoundingly cold in early January. It's hard to be mistaken for an American looking for romance when you're outweighed by your clothing.

After completing my B.F.A. at ASU, I got a TESOL certificate from a Canadian English Teacher program and took a job that offered airfare to South Korea. On November 14th, 2003, my plane touched down at Incheon International and I started my professional life here.

Seoul has been my home for the last four and a half years and has been, in the most objective way I can describe, a mixed bag of cats. I have found a lot of good things here and have changed a great deal. I have taught everyone from kindergarten to adults and enjoyed it all a great deal. Teaching is an incredibly rewarding thing to do with your time. The struggles that I have faced: linguistic, cultural and just the usual problems that everyone deals with have been tough. Just like anywhere else, nothing is as easy as it could be. More about my life here can be found in the archives.