It was when I was a 3rd or 4th grader at St. John's Lutheran School that I first became interested in learning a foreign language. I loved reading the adventures of the Happy Hollisters and the Bobbsey Twins and envied their travels to other countries where they solved mysteries and learned neat foreign language phrases. It wasn't until I attended Manitowoc Lutheran High School that I was able to pursue my dream of studying a foreign language. Latin was the only one offered my freshman and sophomore years. During my junior and senior years I was also able to study German.

After graduating second in my class from Manitowoc Lutheran High School, I went on to Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota where I  majored in International Business Administration and German and minored in Spanish. While I was at Hamline,  I took advantage of studying in Erlangen, Germany my junior year. (A link to the university's web page is on my home page). During my year in Germany, I got to realize my childhood dream of seeing the places I had read about in grade school and becoming fluent in another language, German.  Before returning to Hamline for my senior year of college, I enrolled in an intensive Spanish course at the Universidad Salamanca, Spain.  Besides studying in Europe my junior year, I  also spent two winterim terms in Medellin, Colombia and La Ceiba Honduras where I stayed with two families and was able to improve my Spanish. After graduating magna cum laude from Hamline with a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Business Administration and German, I was awarded a graduate scholarship under the auspices of the Fulbright Commission and returned to Erlangen, Germany for a year of graduate study in International Business Administration. It was during that year that I met my husband, Jim Timmermann, who was working in Schweinfurt. We were married in the Rathaus (city hall) shown on my home page.