People die every day, just ask anyone who works in a hospital, but that doesn’t make things any easier when it happens to someone you hold dear. Last week, while we were away in Basque Country, a beloved friend of the Language Academy passed away unexpectedly in Savannah, GA. His name was Kojo Afenyi-Annan. Kojo (above center), his wife Teddi (to...
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We’ve been working with Roberta Pietrobon for over 10 years and I didn’t know until recently that in addition to teaching Italian and French, she also teaches cooking classes! After learning this I decided to ask her a few questions about it, and here are her answers….. I always knew that you were a great teacher but I recently le...
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The Language Academy turns 15 this week and anniversaries like this can make you reflective. As I look back, I can’t help but go over all the things that have happened, the lessons I’ve learned about running a business, and the people I’ve met and spent time with along the way. One of my favorite things about the Language Academy are the frie...
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It’s that time of year again. You get in the car, you turn on the radio, and your favorite station has switched to all Christmas all the time. It’s the same songs every year, over and over and over again. You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere. This year I bring to you some good news – there’s great Christmas music out there, and I me...
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Since we are on our way there next year I thought it would be a good idea to give you a little more information about our destination. The Basque Country sits on the Bay of Biscay, mostly in Spain but also in France as you can see on the map above. We’ll spend the majority of our time on the Spanish side but will head over to France on the final ...
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For the past 10 years I’ve been working with a German company called PFAFF Molds and during that time I have had the opportunity to meet some truly interesting people. One of them is Vesna Hoerr. She’s from Croatia, likes to fly planes, was trained as an aircraft mechanic, speaks 4 languages, and isn’t afraid of anything as far as I can tel...
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A few weeks ago I did the unthinkable – I gave up my iPhone and switched to an Android Phone. I realize that in the grand scheme of things this is no big deal, but we use these devices everyday and spend what amounts to a lot of time on them so I thought it was worth telling my story. I remember the first time I saw an iPhone way back in the summ...
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Matt Yarmey has been taking Spanish classes at the Language Academy since September 2017. Somewhere along the way we found out that he was the owner of a craft coffee business in Charlotte called so I decided to talk to him about his business and his experience with his classes. If you are interested in finding out more about what Matt does you can...
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If you’ve ever been to the 7th Street Market in Uptown Charlotte, you’ve surely seen Josh Villapando working the counter at the Assorted Table Wine Shoppe. I first met Josh when he worked at the Common Market and over the years we’ve become friends. We have done a number of events with him including The Language Academy’s 10th anniversary p...
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I adore Elaine Tolbert. She is everything that you could possibly want in an English teacher. She’s smart, funny, empathetic and very professional in the way she deals with clients. She also loves auto racing. I’ll be watching a race at home on the weekend and Elaine will message me live videos from the stands. What’s not to love about...
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