Americans Abroad

for starting this thread and inviting me over!

I live in Coppet Switzerland, right along Lake Geneva, and about nine minutes by train from the center of Geneva. Coppet is a beautiful little town with associated with some famous figures in French literature, politics, history, and philosophy. Germaine Necker (aka Madame de Staël https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_de_Sta%C3%ABl) had a family home here, known as the Château de Coppet (http://www.swisscastles.ch/vaud/coppet/), where she hosted such individuals as Benjamin Constant among many, many others, wrote a couple novels herself and has a spot among the French romantic writers.

She and Napoleon Bonaparte were initially friendly and she moved freely between Paris and Coppet at first, but later on her royalist tendencies resurfaced (her father had been Louis XVI's Minister of Finance) and she went into exile in Coppet in the early part of the 19th century.

I first came to Switzerland in 1994 to work with a special UN Commission and in 2001, transferred to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), from which I retired, so I was able to exercise the option of residing in Switzerland as an expat. I love living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but having the option to visit family and friends in the US from time to time makes my life close to perfect. My birth state is Montana (as can be guessed from my DU name) and my voting residence is in Maryland. Family and friends are scattered around the US and the world. Interestingly, considering that you are now in South Korea, one DIL is of Korean origin - the first in her family to be born in the US (Arkansas!). Her older brother and sister were both born in South Korea and were very young when their parents immigrated to the US in the late 1950s.

Before coming to Switzerland, I was a 1960s Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, and stayed there for an additional six years, first as a teacher and later as a development worker with a USAID-financed project. I am a long-time teacher, but also have a Master's degree in business as well as a J.D. (public international law), so have had some different career incarnations.

The American Democrats Abroad -Switzerland (ADACH) group here is an outstanding group of expat Dems with all ages, genders, and many, many different cultures represented. We may support different candidates for the primaries. But there is absolutely no question but that every one of us will vote BLUE in the GE. None whatsoever!