Hello - and welcome!

Hi everyone.
Welcome to London, welcome to the University of Westminster and welcome to your class blog. Because it's the beginning of the course, I wanted to tell you a bit about myself, so that you can get to know me better.

My name's Hugh, as you already know, and I'm 42. I've been teaching since 1992, so for almost twenty years now. I started working at Westminster in 1996, so this is my fifteenth year. I still really love teaching and feel lucky to have a job I enjoy so much.

I live in North London - in an area called Harringay. My nearest tube stations are Manor House and Turnpike Lane, on the Piccadilly Line. I'm married and have a daughter. My wife is called Lisa and she's originally from Indonesia, but she's lived here in London for fifteen years now. She's a graphic designer and she runs her own design company. Our daughter is called Maia, and she's two and a half now - and lovely! We're trying to bring her up bilingually, so we speak English AND Indonesian to her. Here's a picture of the two of them this summer in Austria.




















and here we are in New York earlier this year.
















As well as teaching, I do a lot of teacher training and I also write coursebooks for students learning English. I've co-authored two series of General English books, called INNOVATIONS and OUTCOMES. They look like this:




















In my free time, I love watching football - my team is Arsenal, who're having a bit of a hard time at the moment.





















I also love watching movies, listening to music, cooking, reading and travelling. I actually worked out recently that I've been to 42 different countries so far in my 42 years!

My mum and dad are divorced, and they're both retired now. My dad is 81 and lives in the south of England, near Brighton, while my mum is much younger - only 64 - and she lives in Durham, in the north-east. My mum used to be a teacher, so maybe teaching is in the blood. I also have a younger brother, Barnaby, who works with computers. he lives in Edinburgh and is married to a Scottish woman.

Well, that's enough to begin with, I think.
If you have anything you'd like to know, please just ask me.

Also, for homework, it'd be great if you could post a bit about yourself and your family - who you are, where you're from, what you do, what you like doing in your free time and so on. Maybe you could even upload some pictures?