I'm an American writer who has lived alone a couple years each in Peru and Ukraine, the perfect way to round out classroom education. Other countries and cultures have always fascinated me, and I've been to about 15 countries on 4 continents, most of them multiple times. I've had an affinity for language and art from a very young age, and that so far has turned into a novel (in English and Russian), a play (in Spanish), and studying 5 languages, 3 of which are fluent (Russian and Spanish). And since a language can't fully be learned without understanding the culture behind it, the years I spent in Peru and Ukraine apart from Americans gave me invaluable insight! Whenever guests did come from my grandparents' missions organization, I often acted as guide, interpreter, and the one who gave them a crash course on the country to avoid making cultural blunders.