Anachan's Corner

One woman's journey through marriage, motherhood, and the classroom…

About me

Written By: kkvamme

Anneliese Maughan was born in Germany and graduated from high school in Japan. (That’s usually an eye-catcher!)

Courtesy of the U.S. Army, I lived with my family in the following locations, in order: Boise, Idaho; Provo, Utah; Augusta, Georgia; Pirmasens, Germany; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas; Monterey, California; Ft. Huachuca, Arizona; Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan; and Manassas, Virginia. With seven younger sisters and one younger brother, I never felt truly lonely when we moved.

I graduated Valedictorian from Kadena High School on Okinawa in 1986. I attended Brigham Young University from Fall 1986 to Winter 1990, majoring in physics with an emphasis in secondary education. (Sometimes I think I should have majored in English, instead.) My formal schooling was placed on hold while I served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Osaka, Japan, for a year and a half, which was a marvelous experience. After returning, I married Kim J. Kvamme in the LDS Temple in Mesa, Arizona. I finally received my diploma from BYU in August 1993, after doing my student teaching at a high school in Tempe, taking a few classes at Arizona State University to transfer back to BYU, and taking a few more courses via BYU’s Independent Study program.

After a few years in Sierra Vista, AZ, our family spent a year in Minneapolis, MN, then a year in Alamogordo, NM. After a very brief stay in Rodeo, NM, and two great years in the Dallas area, we moved down to the Austin, TX area. Three years later, we moved back to Rodeo, NM; now, my husband and I live in Lordsburg, NM.

I worked for three years in a government contracting company in Sierra Vista before finally coming home with the birth of our second daughter. Now, there are five princesses (not so little) in our family, ages 28, 26, 24, 21, and 19. For a few years, I used the education I earned in college as I taught my daughters at home. Then, for about a year, I worked part-time as a role-player at Playas Training and Research Center (PTRC), helping to train first responders and military groups. For about four years after that, I worked for PTRC, first in the grill, helping to feed all our students, and then as the Facility Security Officer, ensuring that classified material was handled properly. Our time at PTRC came to an end when the university that owned the facility decided to lay everyone off in 2012, including my eldest daughter, my husband, and myself. Luckily, that BA I had in my pocket came in handy, and I was able to get a job teaching high school science in Lordsburg. After a year teaching science, I was reassigned to teach English, which I continue to do. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to teach not only English, but also Algebra 1, which is fun.

After a few years of teaching English, I decided that I ought to take the time to become more credentialed in that area, so I started working, very slowly, on a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies degree, focused on English and writing. Four years later, I graduated with a 4.0 on May 7, 2021. I was very surprised and honored when a condensed version of my thesis was accepted for publication at Confluence: The Journal of the AGLSP in the fall of 2021. In the summer of 2022, I presented a paper on a similar subject at the 2022 Conference on John Milton, held as a part of the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University.

I like to work bobbin lace, write poetry, cross-stitch, sing, read, and embroider. During my time at PTRC, I discovered I enjoyed baking bread and blogging, which I combined into a bread-baking blog located at Around the World in 80 Breads. (Sadly, my poor bread blog hasn’t been updated in quite a while.) My most recent discovery is that I love being a scholar studying literature. If I could do an online Ph.D. program in literature while still teaching high school, I would love to do it. While I do not think that will be in the cards, at least I can still be a scholar. To be a scholar, one must simply be a scholar.

Ana-chan was a nickname given to me by fellow Japanese language classmates at BYU. “Chan” is an endearing suffix affixed to a girl’s or child’s name. And “Ana,” along with sounding similar to the first part of my name, means “hole.” They used to joke that I must have a hole in my head to be taking advanced Japanese language courses without having first lived among the Japanese to gain fluency.


Updated 1/3/2019