My name is Jeremy Palmer and I live in Turku, Finland. I work as an English teacher at a university in Finland. I was born and raised in the USA, but I have always been interested in learning about new cultures and languages. My background is in applied linguistics (Ph.D. University of Arizona) and I have lived or worked in eight countries (mostly in Europe and the Middle/Near East). To learn more about me, keep reading below.
We moved to Finland in 2015 for work and now it looks like we will stay here for the foreseeable future. Our kids speak Finnish well and we are thriving in this new-to-us country.
Other than teaching and running, I also volunteer as an English language editor for the Finnish website Run in Finland.
I wrote an article about running in Finland for the US-based website irunfar.
Background about running and exercise
I started running in 2013 because extreme gardening (see photos below) wasn’t stopping my ever-expanding waistline. In reality, I have always been active doing something – soccer, skateboarding, snowboarding, paintball, camping and more, but my body and brain needed something more organized and difficult.
My first official race, for which I actually trained, was the Dubai Marathon in 2014. Since then I have participated in many events ranging from distances of 5km to 168km (100 miles).
You can read more about my running at my Running CV page.
Other than running
This wesbite is mostly dedicated to my adventures on foot in Finland, but if you want to learn more about me professionally, check my LinkedIn profile. I promise to update that profile in the near future. At the moment it is rather lacking in detail.
Since languages and cultures are so important to me, I will mention my linguistic skills here according the CEFR guidelines:
- Arabic – B2 (Used to be C1)
- Russian – B2 (Used to be C1)
- Finnish – B1 (hoping to arrive at B2 in the next couple of years)
- German B1
Jeremy in Finland 