Hi there!

Hi everyone!

Many of you already know me a little, but to introduce myself properly, I might have to go back to my life before English teaching.

I was born in Cologne, Germany and partly grew up in Belgium. I have lived, learned and worked in eight different countries in Europe and Asia.

My educational background has nothing to do with ELT.
I studied at the Universiy of Bonn in Germany and got my "Vordiplom" (about the equvialent to a BA) in Translation for Korean and Indonesian. I still wonder how I mananged to pull this off, as my Korean was rather poor and has by now, safe for a few phrases, entirely vanished from my memory.
I then proceeded to study towards and graduate with a "Diplom" (i.e. MA) in Southeast Asian Studies with a focus on poverty alleviation (I also wrote my thesis on that).
During my studies, I spent some time in China working at the German School in Shanghai, tutoring Chinese children in German - a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience.

After graduation, I moved to first Singapore and later Thailand to work in strategic planning and project development, often with colleges, ministries and universities. All this led to myself and some friends registering a non-profit organisation in Thailand to provide a variety of training programmes for those who felt they needed advice. In the course of those activities it became clear that there was an incredible demand for English language training programmes. It was this demand that had me get some training myself to become an EFL teacher.

Much later, wanderlust caught up with me and led me to Portugal, where I worked as an English teacher for two years before joining CELE here in Nottingham in July 2008, where I have so far worked on both the General and Academic English programmes.

In my free time, I enjoy cooking, music and reading and writing speculative fiction, which I occasionally manage to get published. I love languages and speak a few, some better, some only in a very rudimentary way. But I guess it helps me understand some issues learners experience while trying to become proficient in a foreign language.