Hello and Goodbye

Hello everyone. I realized that I asked each and everyone of you to write an intro and include a picture and I never really did that. For those of you who don't know, my name is Katherine Jenkins, but most call me Kathy. I just turned 40 this year. I was born in Bellevue, Washington. I've been writing since I was 10 years old when I received a Little Twin Stars diary from my mom for Christmas....that was 1979. Since then, I have a diary for almost every year of my life. Writing was survival for me for a very long time. Whenever I had a problem or a question or an idea or whatever, I'd write in my journal. My journal was my friend. In high school, I won Outstanding Journalist of the Year and continued to write for the newspaper in college and published some of my poetry back then. I've always been afraid to share my writing, so I've kept it in closets all these years. In January 2009, I decided to come out of the closet and I created my blog, Lessons from the Monk I Married. Yes, I married a former Korean Buddhist monk.


Namaste!-Biking on Lopez Island in Washington State July 4th 2009

My story is a little unusual, so sometimes it's hard for me to tell....but I feel compelled to tell that story and that journey. Several chapters of my book Lessons from the Monk I Married, appear on my blog. So if you are wondering how I ended up in Korea and married to a monk, you can read about it here http://www.lessonsfromthemonkimarried.blogspot.com/. After living in Asia for 10 years, Korea for 8 and Japan for 2, I moved back to the United States with my husband in 2006. I teach ESL at a local community college and my husband is a yoga teacher in the Seattle area. I spend my days surrounded by people from every corner of the globe. In my classes, which just finished this quarter, I had students from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Somoa, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Congo, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia, Ukraine....well the list really goes on..


I feel, in this life, I want to expand, share, open and understand people from all different walks of life. While I love to create and expand, I also find a need to retreat and gain energy. The world moves so fast these days and I feel a necessity to unplug and stop at times. Tomorrow I will be gone for 10 days of silent meditation.........but please, carry on with your conversations here...I think it is sooo wonderful and I'm so happy to meet all of you here. We really do have a fantastic group of authors. I look forward to catching up on all the reading on this blog when I get back on December 20th. Peace to you all, Kathy