History

I was born in Stavanger December 20, 1975 and lived there about four years until my father, who works for an oil company, was transferred to Aberdeen, Scotland. My sister, Carleen, was also born in Norway but I get the feeling she found a very strong love for Scotland. In Scotland we both went to the American School in Aberdeen. Many of my best memories of these years in Scotland are trips we made to the beautiful countryside, some of the highlands, and many of the castles that this country is dotted with.

I had something of a bad 6th grade year and went back to Norway to live with my grandmother for a while, going to Norwegian school for half a year. I then returned to my family in Scotland and stayed there until my father was transferred back to Stavanger. I was happy to be back in Norway but never fit into the Norwegian education system as I discovered earlier. I had studied all my elementary years in English and my written Norwegian was and is very poor to this day. Until graduation from high school I studied at the International School in Stavanger, taking classes from the British and American system and graduating with an American high school diploma in 1993.

I was a very poor student in high school, loving learning, but not giving much effort to classes. I was, however very active in a wide variety of things. In the area of athletics I playede a year in varsity basketball, lots of baseball and softball, and trained karate. I one year had a leading role in the school play, for two years served as the editor of the school newspaper, did lots of MUN (Model United Nations), and lots of Student Government culminating in a position as school president my senior year of high school. I sang solos in a few concerts, also singing with a friend at graduation and a solo at our baccalaureate. I also wrote lots of poetry and stories, winning 3 creative writing awards.

Important to note, however is our school was very small, less than 20 students in my graduating class, so ISS was the perfect environment for a student to pursue a wide variety of activities and have a good chance of receiving recognition for ones efforts. It was beginning in this period that I realized that I couldn't focus myself well on just one thing. I had a deep interest in a great many things and juggled them all, less than perfectly. I was a fast learner and very versatile but never could seem to master anything. This has and always been my both my greatest weakness and my greatest strength. I have chosen breadth over depth, and that will affect everything I do in life.

I applied to only one college, Western Washington University. I decided on Western by a kind of geographical elimination process. I wanted the ocean, forest, and mountains that I love so much — an area full of nature, and not too many people. I originally wanted to study history and biology and be an international school teacher, since I believed that would allow me to move from country to country and school to school. I also wanted to learn more about Asia, which my uncle teachings in karate sparked my interest in. Western is best known as one of the best Education schools around and this was one of the primary factors in my decision. My later change of heart doesn't make me regret going to Western though, my years there were truly happy.

At Western, I continued my record of studying a variety of things. After taking what my father might note was "forever", I graduated in December 1998 as the first Western student to graduate with four majors: Japanese language, History, Philosophy, and East Asian Studies.

After studying two years of Japanese and a summer in Norway working at a day-care center and a children's program at our karate club, I was able to spend a summer at a Japanese kindergarten thanks to the help of my friend George. I was housed and fed by a kind woman named Ushio Takahashi and I volunteered at her private kindergarten and English academy. It was an idyllic summer. I spent most of my spare time studying Japanese and riding a bicycle around the countryside outside Tateyama, in Chiba prefecture. I came to love the beauty of Japan's countryside, the peace I found in the gardens and temples, as well as the friendliness of the people. After another year of Japanese and my first year of Chinese, I was to return to Japan for a whole year of study.

The next summer was an exciting one. My sister was graduating from high school and we were to travel Europe together. We had both been to various places in Europe during our childhood, sometimes on trips with our school or with our family. This summer, however, we decided to go "Inter-Railing" (in the US it is also known as "Euro-railing". Together with my sister we caught the train from Stavanger to Oslo, Oslo to Hamburg, and then Hamburg to Paris. There we met up with a Japanese friend from Western, Kaori, and walked all over Paris for two days. After this we took the train to Cherbourg where we caught the ferry to Rosslare, Ireland. On the ferry we met a group of Americans, among them a Michael and seperately, Emily who were to become a good friends and join us in our ride all over the southwestern coast of Ireland (together with another close friend from Western, Chris). We then embarked on project "Arctic Meatball" which took us straight from Ireland to Bodø in northern Norway. After some adventures there and in Trondheim where my great aunt and mother made us a great meatball meal "mormor godmat", we returned to Stavanger for some great backpacking.

I returned to Western and among other things studied a year of Chinese with my sister, who came to Western for a year. I fell in love with the language and vowed to pursue it further after I had improved my Japanese. I worked a lot with the Asia University America Program as an International Peer Advisor as well, and eventually helped make the program's web pages. I made a great many good friends among the students who came to study in 5 month cycles at Western and I would come to spend much time with them in Japan as well. I also met a number of exchange students from Obirin and Tsuda universities, among them Noriko who is now one of my closest friends.

I was accepted to Stanford's Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in May and attended that program from September 1997 until June of 1998. My year in Japan was wonderful. Studying together with mostly graduate students from some the best schools in the world and in one of the greatest language programs was both inspiring and ego-busting. I realized that I would have to work much harder and focus much more in the pursuit of future ambitions. I learnt a lot during the year but also had much fun. I got to see Norway take one of their many gold medals in the Nagano Olympics, be a mountain mystic in northern Japan, ride my bicycle along the coast of northern Japan and around Sado island for over 400 km, and also ride other areas of Japan closer to my school, in Yokohama. It was an amazing year of discoveries and language learning.

While I was in Japan I applied and was accepted to another great language program, going directly from the intensive IUC program in Japan to the, in some ways more intensive 8-week PiB program in Beijing (Princeton in Beijing) hosted by Beijing Normal University. Students sign a pledge to speak nothing but Chinese for the duration (on threat of expulsion) which I for the most part kept with exceptions for my Japanese friends there and visits by my father who was in Beijing on buisness. I went from speaking almost no Chinese before I started the program to enough for daily survival and simple conversations when I left. I didn't fall in love with China the same way I had with its history, culture, and language. My appreciation for China has grown though when I attended the sister program to IUC in Yokohama called IUP ( Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies) at Tsinghua (Qinghua) University.

After graduation in December 1998 but efore begining IUP in September 1999, I spent eight months in Stavanger, working at Telenor Nextel (Norwegian Telecom International) where I worked in their tech support department for PCs. I answered tech support calls from all over Norway and helped our internet customers (the company is an ISP with about 70% of the Norwegian market) with their connection, mail, installation, and various other internet problems. It was a really fun job as well as a great opportunity to learn computer skills and practice my Norwegian. I made some great friends at Nextel.

I recently finished the IUP program at Tsinghua University. It was very demanding but I feel like I have made some serious progress in my Chinese. Also like IUC there are a great many fascinating and inspiring students, most of whom are in graduate programs in the US.

I am now attending Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs for their Master of International Affairs program and pursuing a certificate in East Asian Studies.

More about my family.