International

Until I went to China after my sophomore year at William and Mary, my only international experience was a brief, one night stay in Canada with my family when I was a kid.  Once I started, living abroad seemed to be addictive.  So far, I have spent about five years outside the US.  Most of that time I have spent studying either languages or music.  I managed to pick up three other languages (Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, and Italian) and mostly forget one of them (Italian). 

What will probably be my largest exposure to international culture is only tangentially related to my studies.  Marrying my wife, Hyounsoo, fulfilled a prophetic joke I made when I was in Hong Kong - "Wouldn't it be ironic if, after all the time I spent in China and learning Chinese, I ended up marrying a Korean or Japanese lady."  Well, not only was I studying the "wrong" language, I was in the wrong place as well.  After spending four and a half years in Asia, I met her back in Indiana.