Hello, everyone! For those of you curious about my life in China, here’s a short summary of the last decade, each section of which I will expand in future posts:

I’m originally from Minnesota, just south of St. Paul, and it was in Duluth that I got my bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. After discovering that my real passion was in teaching, I decided to try teaching English in China based on my interest in the language and culture kindled by my Chinese labmates.

After a week-long orientation in Shanghai, I began teaching middle school students in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province. I remained there a year and a half and really enjoyed the language and cultural exchange with the local university students, so I decided to move to teaching at a university in a different city.

My next home was in Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi province, where I taught at my university for the next five years. We had a really good collection of foreign teachers there – enough that there were plenty of different people to hang out with and that no one was forced to be friends just because they were the only two Americans.

My years in Nanchang allowed me to really get the feel of teaching English and develop my own syllabus for the first-year students (mine were mainly Economics and Finance majors – a different set of teachers taught the English majors in the Foreign Languages College). It was there that I decided to pursue my master’s degree and commit to being a teacher long-term. It was also where I met my future wife.

After getting married, KK and I didn’t want to keep living in separate cities, so I accepted a position at a university in her hometown, Yichun. It was nice having the experience of living in her hometown during that time, but it was a step down financially from what I had previously done.

Fortunately, I soon found a job posting for a position in Suzhou looking for an English teacher with a science background, and I got my documents together and replied immediately. After two interviews, I was accepted and we made the move to Jiangsu province.

Due in part to the small size of our team, I moved up rapidly and was already one of the most senior teachers in the office by the time KK accepted an English teaching position at the university next to mine. A few years later, not long after the birth of our daughter, I was told the dean wanted to make me the head of our English Language Center. I accepted, and have been working on developing our English for Science curriculum and managing our team since then.

As I complete more posts, I’ll add the pertinent links into the text here, so be sure to check back for more details on my story!