Bio
Chris was born in 1978 just north of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. At age ten he had the first opportunity to study a foreign language – French or Spanish – and he picked Spanish without hesitation although he didn’t really know why. He studied with teachers from Puerto Rico, the U.S., Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela (in that order) until in 1999 de decided to participate in a study abroad program in Spain offered through his university. Chris knew he would like Spain even before arriving but once again couldn’t say why. In fact he loved the country so much that he returned again to study Spanish in 2001 after finishing his degree in electronics engineering.
Chris lived for seven years in Sunnyvale, California – Silicon Valley – but never let go of the idea of returning to live in Spain, permanently. In a moment of economic euphoria in 2008 he managed to convince his employer to send him to Spain to sell microchips together with the company’s only other Spanish employee, a native of Guadalajara. (The original Guadalajara is in Spain!)
Thanks to amazing good fortune Chris continues to ham it up, enjoying the good weather, great food and wonderful people of Spain.
Synopsis
They say that you have to go and live in a foreign country to really understand that people in other places live in truly different ways, but it’s not easy when you live in a country as big as the U.S. Chris Richardson was three years into his electronics engineering degree, had more than ten years of Spanish language studying under his belt and had spent his entire life inside the United States when he decided in 1999 that it was time to see some other countries and put his Spanish speaking skills to the test. His university offered a study abroad consisting of six weeks in Spain, and going on that trip was the best decision of his life. Chris spent time in El Puerto de Santa María (a town near Cádiz) and Madrid, and then an extraordinarily lucky night in the city of Salamanca made such an impression that he returned to that enchanted city for another study abroad in 2001. This is the story of all the funny events that befell him as he “studied”.