Who we are
Contributors
PocketCultures wouldn’t be half as interesting without our contributors from all over the world. Meet them here.
Carla Arena: Brazil
Carla Arena is a passionate Brazilian educator who loves to travel, enjoy life, and be with her family and friends. She was born in Brasília, but has seen the world through other cultural lenses when she lived in Key West, Florida, Mestre - Venice, Italy, and Ellensburgh, in the US.
Carla enjoys teaching, learning, taking photos, networking through social media, cooking, and playing tennis. She is thrilled to have the chance to share with you a bit of the Brazilian beats and culture here. Carla blogs at Collablogatorium.
Ana Astri-O’Reilly: Argentina
Ana Astri-O’Reilly is from Argentina, where she lived until five years ago. She currently lives in Dallas, USA with her British husband, but they move a lot. Previously a translator and English and Spanish teacher, Ana first started writing to share her experiences and adventures with friends and family. She speaks Spanish, English and a smattering of Portuguese. If there’s something you want to know about Argentina, contact Ana and she will be happy to write about it.
Ana co-hosts the PocketCultures Facebook page, and you can also find her on her blog A pinch of this, a dash of that.
Napatra Charassuvichakanich: China
Napatra Charassuvichakanich is a Bangkok-born, Melbourne & Virginia-bred young professional now working in Beijing. She is a development fellowship recipient, working in fundraising and microfinance project management at a local grassroots NGO in cultural heritage preservation.
She can easily be found on a badminton court, a DDR pad, or on her Beijing bicycle. Read more about Napatra’s Beijing experience at Napatra.
Kitty (Alisara Chirapongse): Thailand
Kitty was born, grew up and still lives in Bangkok, Thailand. Her Thai name is Alisara Chirapongse but she got the nickname from her Catholic background - her saint is Saint Katherine.
Kitty works as a writer for several local English language publications and an online Asia guide by CNN called CNNGo.com. She also has her own blog at Gnarly Kitty
Carmen Cristal: Romania
Carmen has been working for the Sales Department of a Bucharest Radio station for the last 13 years. She loves music (especially U2) and English and has a passion for Ireland. Carmen understands French and in a small measure Italian. She has a real passion for foreign cultures and people.
Carmen’s blog is Bucharest Daily Colours
Marta Garcia: Spain
Marta Garcia grew up in Barcelona, Spain, and has also studied in Belgium and the UK. She works as a professional translator, translating English, French and Italian into Spanish and Catalan.
Marta adores languages, music, cinema, photography, kayaking and picnics. After translating films, documentaries and books by many different authors, she now hopes her writing will let others enjoy the rich culture of her own region through PocketCultures. You can also find Marta on her own blog English in Barna.
Rebecca Kinsella: Australia
After two years overseas discovering Irish family and foreign cultures, Rebecca has recently returned home to Melbourne. She was inspired to share Australian culture after getting exposure to how others live through her travels.
Find Rebecca on her personal blog The Distance to Here, where she writes about food and travel.
Marcel Krueger: Ireland / Germany
Marcel is a German expat living in Ireland and working for an online company with a colourfull logo. He loves doing stuff with words, and did not go to school to learn this. He likes Heavy Metal and trains and dislikes many other things. He is so old he still buys CD’s, but has not yet caught up with the idea of becoming an adult.
Besides this, he loves travelling, has worked as a promoter for metalbands and a radio-DJ for four years. And has also won the Irish Blog Awards with his fellow writers of the Dublin Community Blog this year. Marcel also blogs at King of Pain.
Sanjay Kumar: India
Sanjay Kumar is a linguistics graduate, advertising copywriter and an itinerant traveler. He lives in New Delhi and will be sharing more insights about life in India in the months to come.
Sanjay is also the NileGuide Local expert for New Delhi. Look him up on his Nile Guide blog or on Twitter @brokenquill
Arwa Lokhandwala: The Netherlands / India
Arwa grew up in India. She relocated to The Netherlands with her husband 1.5 years back. She works as a professional writer and editor writing on expat and travel related topics.
Arwa likes learning about cultures and meeting new people. Having traveled extensively in India and Europe, it has given her an excellent opportunity to know varied lifestyles and cross-cultural dilemmas. She also maintains her blog Orangesplaash wherein she shares her expat experiences, travel adventures and expat tips! She is excited by the opportunities that the social media presents and is an avid twitterer. You can catch her on twitter at @arwalokhandwala.
A voracious reader and an amateur photographer, she also likes cooking, cycling and listening to music.
Mike Lynch: Japan
Mike is a freelance photographer and writer who has been living in Okinawa, Japan for over 30 years. Published in several magazines, his work appears regularly in Apogee Photo Magazine and Matador Travel Network (Ryukyu Mike).
Learn more about Mike at: www.mikesryukyugallery.com
Bryan Ocampo: Philippines
Bryan Ocampo is a tour guide by profession. He was an office drone before but then chose to pursue his real passion—reaching out to others and telling them about his country as a Filipino Tour Guide.
He has found another way of doing this as a contributor to Pocket Cultures. You can also follow him in his blog Filipino tour guide.
Bryan lives with his lovely wife of three years who has taught him how to love Bob Marley, coffee, and soon, dogs.
Sean Oliver: USA
Sean Oliver is a project manager for Language & Culture Worldwide, a cross-cultural training and consulting firm. He grew up in Ohio, has travelled extensively and lived in Costa Rica and Chile. He moved to Chicago during the Summer of 2002 and now has no intentions of living anywhere else; Chicago is one of his favourite places on the planet.
Having studied anthropology, he is interested in American, European, and Carribbean/Latin American cultures and subcultures. Sean will be writing about American culture, and drawing attention to the vast differences between Americans across ethnicity, class, gender, generations, etc. You can find Sean on Twitter @SeanJamesOliver
Marie Szamborski: Contributing Editor, New Zealand
Marie lives in Auckland, New Zealand but was born in the United States and is a dual-national. She has lived in five countries altogether but sees New Zealand as her true home. She loves travel, and living in multi-cultural Auckland is the next best thing to being out there.
As a writer and teacher of English and literacy skills she has met many interesting people and is intrigued by the concept of identity. She explores the relationship between identity and food in her blog Five Flavours, and you can also find her on her other blog Shantiwallah. She would be happy to hear from anyone interested in New Zealand or who just wants to say Kia ora.
Nuria Villalobos: Costa Rica
Nuria Villalobos is Costa Rican. She is a current English professor at Universidad Nacional Costa Rica and a former exchange student in the United States.
She loves languages and cultures and enjoys meeting people from different places.
Find Nuria on her blog World Experience.
Elizabeth Watkin: Zambia
Elizabeth is a Brit living in Zambia with her American husband. She was an English teacher for many years, which is when she got the travelling bug; she has also been a VSO volunteer. She is now a freelance writer and education consultant as well as volunteer at a local art gallery.
She loves documentaries, foreign films, Tom Waits, art and her new Kindle! Her ambitions are to finish her novel and write an English language textbook.
You can also find Elizabeth on her own blog Scrapbook.
Do you have something to add about your country? Become a contributor - find out more here.
Founders
Marcello Boschetti
Marcello is an Italian designer who has been working in web design for more than 10 years. He spends his days in a constant quest to make the Internet more beautiful, useful, simple and accessible to everyone.
At the moment Marcello takes care of the technical and creative side of PocketCultures.com
Lucy (Liz) Chatburn
Lucy is English and lived in the UK until she was 19. Since then she has tried to make up for it by seeing as much of the world as possible. She loves learning languages, learning about different cultures and hearing different points of view.
Lucy currently coordinates day to day running of PocketCultures.com as Managing Editor of PocketCultures and also tweets on behalf of @pocketcultures
Karim El Hamel
Karim lives in Turkey and spends his days working in the automotive sector where he is part of a team whose goals are people development and innovation. While living in west Europe, north Africa and north America, he discovered that everywere in the world there is so much to learn and be excited about.
He is currently taking care of business development for PocketCultures and works to ensure that inspiring local stories free from stereotypes can be always shared in the future between people like you.
