About Me

This story starts about 30 years ago, back when my mom was a junior in college. Her cousin decided to elope, and my Grandma McCrae furious for not being invited to the wedding, told my mother that she could choose anywhere in the world to study abroad for a semester. She chose Rome and ate gelato on the Spanish Steps while studying fashion and pasta for an academic semester.

When I gradauted from high school and was preapring to study journalism at the University of Iowa, my mom told me the same thing (just no eloped cousins in this part of the story). Spain escaped my lips faster than I could let her words fully process in my head. It was settled - I would go to the land of toros, tapas and sunshine to study Spanish and the art of the siesta.

I chose Valladolid as my destination of choice - a former capital once inhabited by Cervantes and Columbus. While I was there, I learned enough Spanish and enough about the siesta to want to go back. As my mom embraced me a few weeks later at O'Hare Airport, I simply announced, "I am moving back to Europe."

And there it was. I found a job teaching English in Sevilla and haven't looked back since. Three years, three jobs and what is apparently a marriage later, I'm finding olive oil to be an appropriate substitute for butter, that teaching is my thing, and that Spain might just be my final destination.