About Me

ABOUT ME

I thought a webpage might be a good place to tell my readers not only about my professional life but also to present my more personal side. On this page you can find short paragraphs describing different moments in my life that have shaped me and made me who I am today. As the child of a German mother and Spanish father I have had the good fortune to get to know different cultures during my childhood. Being bilingual and 'bicultural' enabled me to 'switch' between different languages and cultural norms. Therein, I believe, lies the main motivation to -professionally -study others much like myself.

"Fruta Canaria"

My first trip occurred just a few months after my birth in Essen (Germany), when my mother packed up her suitcases and me to go back to Tenerife, Spain, where my parents had moved to several years earlier. Now, you wonder, why was I born in Germany? Well, you see, my mother did not really trust the local hospital in Santa Cruz, Tenerife with my birth which made her decide to fly back to her native Germany for that occasion. Menos mal, since my birth actually turned out to be a somewhat life-threatening adventure...but I digress.

I spent the first (almost) 5 years of my life on Tenerife, one of the lovely Canary Islands, and although my memories are not plentiful they are quite pleasant: for example being in my first Kindergarten and running around during break in the warm sun; my mom sitting in the banana plantation near our house (for shade) and me running around busy being scared by the little lizards. To this day I attribute my love for banana plants and palm trees, hot and humid weather and 'non-standard' varieties of Spanish to those first but important years of my life. We lived in Los Realejos, where my father found a good position in a hotel and my mom followed her vocation which meant "running after Eva-Maria" as she often said. (She still says this frequently and with fervor. How much trouble can an only child cause, I mean... really!). Los Realejos, part of the larger Orotava Valley and has several banana plantations (at least in my memories), is only a short drive away from the capital of the Island, Santa Cruz. Life was good (apart from a few serious sandstormes, called sciroccos, that came from time to time to the island from the neighboring Moroco) but not for long, at least not for my parents; they decided to separate. So, one day I left the sunny island that I knew to start a new life in my other home country, Germany.

Essen, Germany

Essen and Tenerife really don't have anything in common, except that they once had the honor of having me as one of its citizens. Essen is a relatively big industrial city that, much like the whole region of the Ruhrgebiet (Area of the Ruhr) in Central-Western Germany, had grown due to a large coal production and steel manufacturing industry that has been at the heart of industrialized Germany since the early 1800s. My grandfather on my mother's side, a master mechanic, had decided to move here from his native village of Rudersdorf, to open up his own business there.

Essen became my home for many years and therefore it is and will always be a part of me. Returning, as I do, every year always bring with it a host of memories of going to school and being with friends, many of whom I still am in contact with. Among the schools that I visited were the Graf-Spee-Schule, in which I completed my primary education, and my 'high school' (or German: Gymnasium), Luisenschule. It was here that I was priviledged to become part of a then innovative project in which a group of 5th graders (beginning year at this school) were to acquire French and not English as their first foreign language. Looking back it was a great opportunity for me to aquire this language, unfortunately I did not always appreciate this during those years. Now, however, I do appreciate this greatly and am incredibly greatful to my mother for her guidance and her tenacity in making me stick to it over the years.

Ruhr-University Bochum

Bochum, a neighboring city to Essen and also within the Ruhrgebiet, is the home to one of the largest universities in Germany, the Ruhr-Universität Bochum with more than 33,500 students. It was in these hallowed halls that I started out my life as a student, studying History (with focus on North American History and Medieval History) as my major in my Master's Degree studies. American Literature and Politics were my minors. My aim was to start working at a museum or a gallery. This ambition also lead me to do an unpaid internship at SFCamerawork, a non-profit gallery situated in San Francisco, CA. In those three months I learned a lot about work in this field and I still am happy to have made this experience.

Atlanta, Georgia

Life does not always go as we planned, and that is, as most people will tell you, not always a bad thing. I moved to Atlanta to be with the man who would later become my husband. Once settled in my new home, I tried to use the education that I had received in Bochum in my new life in the U.S., looking for employment as a lecturer in several smaller and larger universities in Atlanta. While I was looking to find the 'right' job, I decided to make my knowledge of languages of use to me and looked for employment with Alta Language Services in Atlanta, where I initially worked as language tester, evaluating e.g. the language skills of flight attendants who were looking to pick up international flights. This stint quickly opened the door to other possibilities and within a few months I also started to teach German and English for Inlingua. I worked for both companies during the following years learning about teaching, work environment in the U.S. and simply about people. Needless to say, I loved every minute of it. But all good things must come to an end and after 3.5 years it was time to move on.

Pennsylvania State University

Our move to State College in the lovely Happy Valley turned out to be a fundamental turning point in my life as it lead me to return to school and pursue a career in the field of linguistics. It all started rather innocently, when I decided to take a few classes at Penn State to deepend my understanding of the processes of language acquisition and bilingualism in order to answer some basic questions that had occurred to my during my tenure as an instructor in Atlanta. My interest in this research area then lead me to apply to the graduate program in Spanish Linguistics offered by the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. I received my Master's Degree in Spanish Linguistics in 2005 and am currently working towards a PhD in this field. My interests and previous research experience encompass language and dialectal contact, bilingualism, phonology and syntax.