Amy is an American from the state of California. Like most Californians, she is proud to call such a beautiful state home. Though she isn’t blond, blue-eyed or a surfer, she loves to swim and boogie board and is occasionally guilty of excessive “like” usage.

Amy received her BA in English literature and a minor in Spanish from Azusa Pacific University in southern California and her MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from San Jose State University. Amy began teaching English when she was in college, initially as a volunteer in community and non-profit organizations. She enjoyed the challenge of teaching and liked interacting with students from different cultures.

Also in college Amy had the opportunity to study abroad: one semester in the Dominican Republic at the Universidad Nacional Evangélica and another in England as an Associate Student of Trinity College, Oxford University. Amy found that she loved living in other countries. She was bit by the travel “bug” and wanted to travel and live in other countries. As a result she pursued her MA in TESOL which would allow her to travel and teach English internationally.

After the completion of her MA degree, Amy taught English for the 2010-2011 school year in the Republic of Georgia, a former USSR country on the Black Sea that borders southern Russia and Turkey. Georgia is a small country of only about 6 million people who speak their own language and have a very old and rich culture. Teaching in Georgia was a wonderful, but challenging experience. Amy lived in a rural village and taught at a school with only 120 students.

For the 2011-2012 school year Amy will be teaching in the School of Foreign Languages here at Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai campus. Though she loved Georgia and hopes to return to it the future, Amy wanted the opportunity to teach more advanced students at the university level. This is her first time in China, either as a tourist or a teacher. She is looking forward to teaching university students, exploring the area, and experiencing life in China. She was very happy to accept a position at a university that is right on the coast and plans to explore some of Zhuhai’s “hundred islands”.

Other than traveling and teaching, Amy loves learning languages; she is always working on her Spanish—a language near and dear to her heart. She learned basic Georgian as a result of her year there and plans to learn as much conversational Mandarin as possible. She is a voracious reader, a novice singer and guitar player, an insatiable coffee drinker and a gardener.