• Born and raised in Arabia from 0-14, an ARAMCO Oil Company 'Brat'

• Evacuated along with ARAMCO wives and children from Arabia during the '67 Arab-Israeli war, which my sister and I sat out nursing measles with grandma
  

• Attended public high school in Iowa boarding with my uncle and aunt

• High School graduation present: an odyssey by car from Holland to Arabia with my father, transiting Germany, Austria, (then communist) Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and then Turkey, Syria, and Jordan

• Attended Wheaton College, a fundy-ish (but academically solid) evangelical college in the Chicago suburbs, graduating with a BA in French

• Family was transferred to the Hague, Netherlands, where my parents lived for 7 years and where I visited on school breaks

• Did my proletarian stint working a year in a cannery after graduation

• Got my MS in Linguistics (TESL primarily) from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, during which time I lived in Alexandria, Arlington and DC proper

• Taught ESL in the Los Angeles area, both at a private, now-defunct ESL institute for Taiwanese and at the Burbank Adult School long before Burbank became a hip media city

• Got my first "foot-in-the-door" EFL job overseas in Arabia teaching English for the national navy and played piano in an informal little golden oldies band named "Ricky and the Rockets" composed of navy teachers (YOW-za!)
  

• Got my first 'real' university-level EFL job at American University in Cairo (AUC), where I taught English composition to the jeunesse dorrée of the Egyptian ruling class and EFL to Egyptian government ministry employees
  

• Visited Prague, Czechoslovakia the first Christmas after the fall of the communist regime in 1989 (before it became the cool Eastern European hangout for US students).  Memorial candles were still burning on imprompteau sidewalk shrines from the days of confrontation

• Twice received a bottle of Bell's Scotch from the British Ambassador and his wife (definitely not single-malt) for accompanying carol singing on the piano for the expat British community at the British Embassy two Christmases in a row
  

• During the uneasy lull before Gulf War I, had an exclusive tour of the Sphinx restoration with my AUC class from the assistant head of the Pyramids plateau in the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry (even my team teacher, an Egyptologist, hadn't had the chance in 13 years!)

• During the war, sailed down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor with expat friends in Egypt (no reservation problems then due to an inexplicable drop in tourist interest)

• Served on the coordinating committee for All Saints' Cathedral's  Joint Refugee Ministry for displaced Sudanese in Cairo and other refugees from the Horn of Africa - learn more about Africa's longest and bloodiest civil war (in Sudan) and the largely ignored sufferings of the southern Sudanese
  

• Heard two Islamist bombings only blocks from my apartment near AUC, one killing innocent Sudanese café patrons on Maidan el Tahrir - the terrorists first terrorized their own countries ...
  

• Started a PhD program in Linguistics at the University of Illinois (UIUC) in the SLATE certificate program, serving a year as president of our informal Linguistics Students Association

• Transferred to the Department of Educational Psychology (UIUC) and, while waiting for acceptance,  taught EFL in Arabia a second time to earn tuition money 

• Visit old Cairo friends in the UK, hopping from train to train with my BritRail Pass - May 1996

• Visited Brazil for 20 days, during which time I saw Rio, Brasília, Manaus, Foz do Iguaçu, and Salvador da Bahia, where I got my inspiration for my dissertation topic - August 1997
  

• Took computer multimedia courses in the Dept. of Instructional Technologies at San Francisco State University and at at their Multimedia Studies Program (Downtown Center) - Fall 1997

• Volunteered 3 years as an airshifter (DJ) for a weekly world/Brazilian music show on our local community radio station WEFT 90.1 FM
  

• Gathered information and multimedia materials (photos/video) for my dissertation in Salvador, Brazil (during Carnival!  Research, don't you love it?!) - February 1999

• Observed almost all 24-hours of Millennial New Year's festivities on TV while drinking champagne and eating Dungeness crab at an old childhood friend's home in the Bay Area - Dec. 1999/Jan. 2000  (I make it to the new millennium!)

• Volunteered as steward for Educational Psychology and the College of Education for the GEO (Graduate Employees Organization), which won student elections by a landslide in December 2002! - Fall 2000-Spring 2002

• Urged by the GEO to put my name on the ballot for UIUC Faculty-Student Senate on the Progressive Students Coalition ticket for the 2001/2 School Year. I and two other GEO graduate candidates serve on the Senate for the 2001-2002 academic calendar
  

• Passed my dissertation proposal defense ("prelims") becoming an official ABD ("all but dissertation")! - Sept. 2001

• Following the Sept. 11 attack on the US capital and New York City, called our local police station to urge protection for our local Islamic Center and wrote a letter to the ambassador of KSA in Washington, Prince Bandar, urging the Kingdom to cease its recognition of the Taliban in Afghanistan (it was 1 of only 3 nations that formally recognized them), which it did soon afterwards
  

• Played piano at my sister's wedding to a fellow Aramco Brat in Santa Barbara, California - June 2002

• Took a 6-month leave of absence from the university to spend time with my mother, who courageously fought terminal melanoma, dying in August 2002.  (Carpe diem!)

• Lost my father, also, in April 2003. (they're both in a far better place ...)

• Participate in Bridges, a student-led group at the U of I dedicated to constructive dialogue between Arabs and Jews and, one day, Lord willing, peace in the Middle East.

• Defend my dissertation before my four committee members, including one emergency late addition to the committee - July 19, 2004

• Make a return visit to friends in the UK scattered from Surrey to Scotland, stopping in York for the first time - Sept/Oct. 2004
  

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last updated:  18 November 2004