“When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter.”

                                                                                                Mark Twain

I came to Brigham Young University-Idaho in the fall of  2002 after 9 years of teaching Spanish at the college level.  After finishing my studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee (where our daughter Hannah was born), I moved my family to Pella, Iowa where I taught at Central College, a private religiously-oriented school that was funded by the third reformed church.  (I never figured out what happened to the first two reformed churches.)  Our son Adam was born in Iowa.  These years are known in our family as the “testing” years as we were Dickensianly poor (my tribute to Charles) and I was writing my soon-to-be forgotten doctoral dissertation.  After three years of living in the desolation of what is central Iowa, we moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I began teaching at Augustana College.  Teaching for the Lutherans proved to be an enjoyable experience and I had opportunities there that I shall never forget, one of them being escorting a group of students to Argentina for a month of Spanish studies.  Our daughter Katie was born on the prairie in Sioux Falls.  After four years of living in our literal “little house on the prairie,” we were blessed with the tremendous responsibility and blessing of coming to Rexburg and working at BYU-Idaho.  It has been such a pleasure so far to teach Spanish to people of my own religion!  The pattern of having a child born in every state in which we’ve lived continued when our son Caleb was born in Idaho Falls in the summer of 2003.  Needless to say, we hope to live in Idaho for a long time.

My interests, both personal and professional, include:  reading good literature, playing the piano, singing, playing Nintendo Gamecube with my kids, Argentine literature and culture, the Spanish author Benito Pérez Galdós, teaching strategies, family history, the American Civil War and its portrayal in literature, and probably too many other things to name here.  I feel extremely fulfilled at BYU-Idaho as I expand on my teaching abilities, as I mentor fabulous students, as I work on my testimony of the gospel by living its principles, and as I grow in my role as husband, father, teacher, advisor, friend, and primary chorister.

Some of my favorite literature links:

http://www.literatura.org/  (This is the Contemporary Argentine Literature page)

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/galdos/  (This is a page dedicated to Galdós)

http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Dickens.html  (A site dedicated to Dickens)