my life
I was born in Ronda, the capital of the Sierra Blanca, the queen of the mountains in the South of Spain.
I grew up in Marbella, the town that is always caressed by the sea and its breeze.
Thanks to my father wanting to make a hunter out of me, I have loved animals and nature for as long as I can remember.
Thanks to the unconditional love of my mother, I was able to pursue the love of my life.
I grew up in Marbella, the town that is always caressed by the sea and its breeze.
Thanks to my father wanting to make a hunter out of me, I have loved animals and nature for as long as I can remember.
Thanks to the unconditional love of my mother, I was able to pursue the love of my life.
I love the sky and anything that flies with feathers. I love the Mediterranean sea and to let it embrace me in its warm waters. I love the mountains, the slow slope that spreads the pine trees around the coves as they pour over the shores. I love the animals who live in these places and all the orographic accidents which allow the plants and the trees to scrape their sustenance out of the arid stone.
I love the World. I admire its endless and shifting perfection, its colors, and above it all, I am in awe by the myriad of peculiar solutions the World has found to send life to the most unthinkable of its corners.
I love it all and I cry for it. I agonize over how humans destroy what they think is theirs by divine right... and I pity how blind they are, to what they have and to what they are.
I want to help the World. I want to make it a better place. I wish we could live our lives without destroying it and I want to help people to understand it.
And that is why I am a teacher.
I love the World. I admire its endless and shifting perfection, its colors, and above it all, I am in awe by the myriad of peculiar solutions the World has found to send life to the most unthinkable of its corners.
I love it all and I cry for it. I agonize over how humans destroy what they think is theirs by divine right... and I pity how blind they are, to what they have and to what they are.
I want to help the World. I want to make it a better place. I wish we could live our lives without destroying it and I want to help people to understand it.
And that is why I am a teacher.
My education has been quite atypical.
I went to veterinary school in Cordoba. I was there for several years but never finished my studies. I wanted to work with animals and deal with animals. I wanted to help animals but in the university every thing was about how to maximize products and extract benefit. This program was not the place for me.
I eventually found a job in a business that imported all kinds of exotic animals to Europe. It was really hard work and dirty, but it was about helping animals in the most literal sense of the word... because they died, indeed, in huge numbers. By now I was working 4 days a week and attending college 3 weekdays.
Eventually I was offered another job in a private national reserve whose owners I had been working with for a long time. That was the end of my studies.
In this natural preserve, I found out I was good with kids. The person in charge of the education department was not exactly very motivated. I found myself involved in substituting for him more times that I liked. The owner took notice of how I was doing things and pushed me to take over the work in the education department. That was not in my plans at that time.
Long time before all this, back in my early years in college I met a wonderful girl. I did not know back then, but much later we decided that we wanted to be together more than the brief vacation time we had available. By the time of that decision my mother also decided to cut relations with the biggest drag of her life, her husband, who then begun giving her a hard time.
I left everything and took a job as an accountant in my home town, just to be able to live with my mother while things got normalized. During that time my wife and I got married (3 times) and I went through the year of waiting until I got my green card and was able to join her.
By this time the love of my life was working at Minnesota State University Moorhead: The gateway to Fargo and North Dakota.
Long time before all this, back in my early years in college I met a wonderful girl. I did not know back then, but much later we decided that we wanted to be together more than the brief vacation time we had available. By the time of that decision my mother also decided to cut relations with the biggest drag of her life, her husband, who then begun giving her a hard time.
I left everything and took a job as an accountant in my home town, just to be able to live with my mother while things got normalized. During that time my wife and I got married (3 times) and I went through the year of waiting until I got my green card and was able to join her.
By this time the love of my life was working at Minnesota State University Moorhead: The gateway to Fargo and North Dakota.
Coming from the Mediterranean sea it was hard for me to even understand the kind of cold that affects Fargo. Therefore it is not surprising that after three years I finished two degrees: Biology and Science Education, even though I spoke very little English at the time of my arrival. There was not much to do when temperatures reached - 40 degrees. So I studied pretty hard and, and with the invaluable help of my wonderful wife, I graduated summa cum laude and in three years.
Just after my graduation my wife was offered a job at Sonoma State in California. I was super lucky to find a job the week we came to look for an apartment and this is the place that saw me put weight around my belly button and the birth of our two little angels.