Leigh in Azerbaijan

After having been an entertainer for a generation, (my web page is here) I travelled to the USA with my wife, Tanya, while she completed a M.Div. While in the USA I had 11 weeks of Spanish tuition in Guatemala and found the experience both hard and exhilarating. On returning to Australia (God bless her) I found that I didn’t wish to continue with entertaining, so used the last semester of 2003 to complete a B.Ed (In service) majoring in Ab. Studies.

I taught at Crossways Lutheran School, Ceduna, SA from 2004 to 2006.

On returning from a trip to Latin Am and Nth Am. Tanya and I passed through Hong Kong where we stayed with Mark Altmann and Cathy Wiebusch who were teaching at Hong Kong International School. It was then that I decided that it would be good to teach at an international school, so I sought out an agency that linked teachers with schools.

On attending a school fair in Sydney, in January 2007, I was offered a 6 month position at The Koc School, Istanbul in Turkey.  Towards the end of that time I was offered a two year contract at The International School of Azerbaijan, which is where I am now.

Azerbaijani people are turkic and and have a language very similar to Turkish.   They understand each other somewhat but the language sounds very different to my ear.  The language also is influenced by Persian and Arabic, both very different languages.