KatieCollom

Though born in the USA, Katie moved abroad as a baby and spent an exciting childhood in Mexico. As a teenager, Katie made the decision to travel to Cuba (her first solo trip overseas) to do her pre-professional dance training at the National Ballet School. She later took this love of dance abroad and worked as a dancer and dance instructor in the US, the Philippines and Singapore. Katie also obtained a dual BA from UT Austin, majoring in Chinese and Asian Cultures and Languages. She garnered extensive experience as a language student at UT and went on to study abroad in Taiwan for a year on a language scholarship. Later, she participated in a business language case competition at BYU in Provo, Utah. Against all odds, Katie managed to locate another third-culture adult like herself and made sure to marry him, too. She now forms part of a traditional Hindu Indian family, which can be interesting, wild and weird at times! This along with Katie’s love of learning new languages has given her a unique worldview of life as a multi-cultural expat. One of her passions is to help others make these same sorts of transitions in their own lives—whether they’re moving to another city or country, going abroad on holiday for the first time, travelling for business or learning a new language. Katie understands that travel, expat life and language learning can be intimidating at times and she strives to simplify these concepts through her writing. She lives by J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous quote: ‘Not all those who wander are lost’, so much so that she has a tattoo of it in Elvish (another language she’d like to learn)! When not busy splitting her time between family in India, the US and Mexico, Katie lives in the UK where she dreams up new travel plans, works furiously on her writing, and hunts up unique activities to do in her spare time. She loves old pubs, train travel, coffee and the work of Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson.