My name is Lynne Welton and I’m an English teacher who left the United States (California) in 2005 after George W. Bush was reelected. I had just finished my Bachelor’s degree in Social Science and was ready for an adventure. I moved to Hamburg, Germany, got my CELTA* and started teaching English in private language schools. But I got bored after 3 years and decided to go back to university, to the Hamburg University’s Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy where I studied Political Economics and Nuclear Arms** Control.

I was going to save the world! But actually I realized that teaching English is important, maybe I was just teaching people who already had lots of good English teachers. So I went to Kosovo for 2 years, then Palestine for a summer, then Ukraine for another 2 years, where I met my husband and got married. We decided to go to Japan for a while. I thought maybe I could learn more about Japan’s nuclear tragedies past and present while also getting some much needed R&R***.

And that’s where I am now, making this podcast because I have some free time now, and I still want to do my part to make the world a little bit better.

* CELTA – The Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

** “arms” in this case means “weapons”

*** military slang for ‘rest and relaxation’ when they can leave the battle field for a while

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