Don Livingston

Born in Tucson, Arizona, Don Livingston started studying his first foreign language, Spanish, at the age of seven. He has now officially studied 13 languages, but hopes to get up to 20 in this lifetime. He has worked as a yoga instructor, a translator specializing in avionics documentation, and administrator and educator for a drug-testing company, and as a teacher of Russian since 1987. He designs computer-aided language learning materials to supplement current textbooks. Most summers he takes students abroad to study Russian either in Russia or in Kyrgyzstan; the latter is where he learned to drink fermented mare’s milk. In his spare time he writes poetry and strums the guitar.  Currently he is also serving as Curriculum Coordinator and Faculty Lead for the Critical Languages Institute at the Melikian Center.