Hello! I'm from Idaho, a state in the western US whose renown derives primarily from being the largest potato producer in the Union 🥔 . I spent all my formative years in this starchy, bucolic nowhere, attending Boise State University in Idaho's capital, the thoroughly treed city of Boise. After obtaining my Bachelor's, I took a gap year teaching English in a sunny city in southern Spain called Murcia. Now I'll be studying for a Master's degree in Computational Linguistics in (the decidedly colder than southern Spain) Stuttgart, Germany.

I enjoy reading, watching film, playing video games, the guitar, and running. I speak English natively, am conversant in Spanish, and have recently begun the tall task of learning German. I'm pretty difficult to offend and am generally easy to get along with.

Deserving of its own paragraph: I'm always happy to get a beer.

Interests

• politics
• technology
• guitar
• history
• languages
• indie music
• programming
• indie films

Music, Movies, and Books

My favorite book is a somber, pseudo-autobiographical WWII family drama written by an author best known for his satires of Interwar England. This novel is called Brideshead Revisited and its author is Evelyn Waugh. Also worthy of note is this novel's TV adaptation starring Jeremy Irons.

Favorite musicians: Bon Iver, The National, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (as composers), and an outlier: blink-182.

Huge Game of Thrones fan: Jory and Oberyn best characters, end of discussion.

Favorite movie: Lord of the Rings trilogy + whatever Oscar bait movie I recently watched

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was homeless in Valencia for a night and was forced to hitchhike in the rain.

Teach, Learn, Share

The origin of the name of my home state, Idaho, is unknown. When Congress declared it wanted to establish a territory in the Rocky Mountains, a lobbyist suggested "Idaho", which, he claimed, was a Shoshone word for "sunshine". He later admitted to making that up.

If you were born the day Jimmy Carter vacated the presidency, you could have run for president in 2016 and Jimmy Carter would have been alive to watch your inauguration.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Spain, United States