About Me

Hello everyone! :-)
I am Natalia Kozyakova, but prefer to be called Natasha. It is less formal, and simply friendly.

I am a Fulbright scholar from Russia at Saint Michael’s College. I taught English for a year at a secondary school and then for 8 years at teachers training college in the small town of Slavgorod in Siberia. And here I am, in the United Sates, at the Applied Linguistics Department of St Michael’s, working hard on my Masters Degree in TESOL. Hopefully, not hardly working… :-)

I call myself a “forever student”. You ask why? Well… 10 years at school, 4 years at teachers training college, 5 years at the Linguistic Institute of the Pedagogical University ( by the way, a college and a university/institute in Russia are two different things:-) ), now 2 years at Saint Michael’s Colleg, always a full-time student, and I am thinking of further studies.

I am having a wonderful experience studying at Saint Michael’s! I feel at home: everyone is friendly, attentive, caring, helpful, and the list of attributes is endless. Classes increase my knowledge and provide an opportunity to link my studies to personal experience and their practical use. I am excited to share my educational and cultural experience with my Russian colleagues when I return home.

I am enjoying my stay here in Vermont, although I believe it is not cold enough here in winter, and not hot enough in summer. It is a gorgeous state! I have fallen in love with the autumnal Green Mountains and sunset on the Lake Champlain awakes romantic poetic soul…

I am a newly-born blogger and all questions and interactions are highly appreciated to help me grow as a blogger.

Sincerely yours,

Natasha