Hello! My name is Lauren, and in the spirit of tradition, I decided to continue blogging as I start a new chapter in my life.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I moved to Los Angeles in 2004 (blog name: laureninla) to do my undergraduate work at my dream school, UCLA. During my time here, I moved to Florence, Italy (blog name: laureninitalia) for a bit to learn the language, work at an art gallery and travel. I’m back in LA now, getting ready to graduate in under two months with degrees in History, Art History and a lot of coursework in Music History as well.

I just recently joined the 2008 New York City corps (blog name: laureninnyc duh) as an elementary school teacher, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Some Likes:
Visual Art (especially post-1850)
Theater (with roles as actor, director, stage manager, playwright, or simply audience member)
Music (whether creating or listening)
Food (good food with make me happier than most things in this world)
Learning to cook (to accomplish the above goal)
Travel (my top five places I still have to visit: Thailand, Greece, South Africa, Peru and Egypt)
Wine (gotta blame Italy for this one)
Sunny California days (I’m going to have to wean myself off of this one…)

Some Dislikes:
Chalk (I really hope I have a whiteboard)
Pumpkin Pie (Food poisoning is forever)
Seaweed (I have an irrational fear…)

Mostly I’m just so excited to start my time as a Corps Member!

(Here’s me while still in Italy this year. This was one of the more beautiful spots I found while in Bologna)