Salena_VanCleef

Hi Everyone!
My name is Salena and I live in the Midwest here in America. My family has a Postcrossing account that my husband and two son's take part in, but I wanted one of my own. This account was started for a sociology course I teach as a way for my students to gain extra credit by sending and receiving post cards. My profile photo is of some of those students taking part in a food drive I have them do as a service learning project every semester. I teach sociology at the college level, and am most interested in topics like multicultural studies, sex, gender & power, social problems, aging and the elderly, comparative religions, and lots of other sociological topics. I have been teaching for 14 years. I never intended to be a professor, but someone asked me to teach a course many years ago and I fell in love with the job. I cannot even imagine doing anything else with my life. As I mentioned before, I have two sons, a loving husband of 16 years, and one 8 month old Shih Tzu named Wrigley (we are Chicago Cub's fans).

I am not picky when it comes to the sort of cards I get in the mail. I am just happy to see something that does not say "amount due" on it! I suppose the cards I am most interested in are city post cards so I can see where you are from. One aspect of Postcrossing I love is seeing stamps from different countries. When I send out cards I try to put different stamps on my cards that are representative of our American history, important figures, or popular culture. I am a total nerd!

I am one of 5 children, the youngest, was adopted at birth, then graduated from Purdue University, Indiana University, and finally Valparaiso University. My husband and I are avid travelers, and will go anywhere we have never been before. While I have traveled outside of the US many times, my goal is to visit each state in the US - I have covered 34 out of 50 so far including every state between the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. We live just outside of Chicago, IL in Northwest Indiana. Our home is minutes from Lake Michigan - we live a pretty suburban existence, but both my husband and I work in the city. My husband's job took us to Boston for a little over a year from 2012 until September 2013. We loved living on the East Coast and made every weekend a treat by visiting other states like Maine, Vermont, New York, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and anywhere else we could get to within a few hours of our home in Boston.

So that is me in a nutshell. I look forward to hearing from you!

Happy Postcrossing!
Salena