Christopher Kliks - Travel Writer
Christopher Kliks
My full name is Christopher John Kliks. I'm originally from Portland, Oregon, but I've lived most of my adult life so far overseas. I've lived in places as diverse as Poland and the Philippines.
I draw on many of my overseas experiences and my views of humanity for my writing. I like to try to write, fiction or non-fiction, using my experiences as a vehicle for relating differences of culture and ways of life. I am also interested in writing cultural anecdotes for use in the EFL/ESL classroom. I believe that to learn a language is also to learn the culture. It surprises me how little people know about another culture, even though they might speak a particular foreign language extremely well. As a teacher of English by profession, teaching cultural awareness is one of the biggest items on my curricula.
I guess my interest in living overseas began in the 1970's when my father was assigned to the Air Force in the Philippines. The three year experience, plus a visit to Japan, opened my eyes to a wider, more diverse world. In high school I began to study other languages; first German and French, and then Japanese. I've picked up bits of many other languages including Korean, Italian, and Polish.
I majored in Asian Studies, specializing in Japanese, at the University of Oregon, and graduated in 1990. Within two months I was in Japan teaching English. I didn't expect that I would end up teaching English; it was the easiest way to be allowed to live abroad for more than a year at a time. Over the next few years, I found myself becoming more and more interested in teaching. I think it was the diaries that I kept which got me more interested in writing.
My interest in science fiction movies and stories, as well as a more recent interest in the movies, has further enhanced my writing. I realized that I could draw even more inspiration from Hollywood and then mix it with my own cultural experiences. Though I am not yet published, I have written a little of everything from fiction, short stories and science fiction, to travel diaries, cookbooks and translations of other works.
My hobbies include cooking, painting, photography, listening to music, especially vintage jazz and blues, collecting Star Wars toys, and, of course, writing.
