About

Where am I coming from?  Seattle, Washington.  I’ve been an ESL teacher at North Seattle Community College for more than 15 years.  In another sense, I “come from” Columbia, Missouri, where I was born and raised, and where Mom still lives.  I have learned that where one is coming from has a big effect on one’s response to a place.  Thus, when I went to Hawaii (1977), I was literally coming from Japan where I had lived for more than a year.  For me, Hawaii was a bit of home, not nearly the exotic place that it was for friends and family from, say, Missouri, who had never been East of New York.

I come to Honduras having spend the early 1990s in Tanzania, East Africa as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity (yes, Habitat has international projects).  I don’t know what that corner of TZ is like now, but then, I lived in a village which had no electricity, no running water, no email, no Skype….  I listened to BBC World Service, and I cherished the cassette tapes of A Prairie Home Companion sent to me by a friend. Sending a fax required an hour-long motorcycle trip (there was no scheduled public transport) to Kigoma, and during the rainy season, there were certain days the roads were just too muddy to be worth the trouble.  Compared to my African experience–albeit 20 years ago, and more rural–my developing country experience in Honduras  is luxurious.

I believe it’s important to understand viscerally that there are more ways to live than those one experiences in the US.  I came to brush up on my Spanish (my husband had the same goal) but more important to  once again experience  other worlds and other ways of being in the world. It’s easier to write about what I find strange, unusual, trying or even unappealing than about the friendly, the familiar, the beautiful. Frankly, I came to be a little uncomfortable;  I can get all too complacent living in Seattle.

I do my best to write based on my experience or to quote reputable sources when I am giving information.  Sometimes I don’t discuss a topic because I lack either the personal knowledge or the time/resources/inclination to do the research.  That said, I welcome questions, comments.  If I succeed in arousing (or satisfying) your curiosity, please let me know.  I’m always interested in learning and broadening the perspective of others and myself.