Kat Muckenpoehler's Journal

[OOC Info]
Player name: Katie
Time zone: US - Central
AIM/Email: LadyKatieBug04
RP Experience: Overall, about ten years. Online, two or three years.

[IC Info]

[Basics]
Muse Name: Katherine 'Kat' Muckenpoehler
Muse Journal: esistnurleben
PB: Amanda Peet

[Appearance]
Kat is of average height, with long brown hair and blue eyes. She tends to wear earth tones, browns and blues. She dresses appropriately for her job as a teacher, while still allowing some of her personal sense of style to remain apparent.

[History]
With the exception of college, Kat has lived her entire life in or around Mayhill. Born in 1979 to Michael Muckenpoehler, the county sheriff, and his wife Jennifer, a homemaker, she has a brother, Jeff, who is three years younger than she is. When their parents died in a car accident in 1985, Kat and Jeff went to live with their mother's brother, Joseph, on his farm outside town. It was on this farm that Kat first began to ride horses. She began to compete in the rodeo at the age of ten. When she graduated from high school, she attended the University of Nebraska to study German and education. In her junior year, she spent a semester abroad in Germany. That was the first time she had ever been out of Nebraska. While she attended college, her boyfriend joined the Army. Three years later, Jeff graduated from high school and also joined the Army. Eventually both Jeff and her boyfriend would be stationed in Afghanistan. Her brother would survive being stationed in Afghanistan – her boyfriend would not. After she graduated from college, she returned to Mayhill to teach German at the high school there. Her brother is still in the Army, still stationed in Afghanistan. Five years ago, he married an Afghan woman, and three years ago they had a son. She has never met either of them, because they are in Afghanistan with her brother.

[Personality]
Students have often described her as the “fun” teacher, the one who grades on a curve and understands when a student is struggling with learning the language she teaches. She tries to find ways to make learning German not only more fun, but easier, not just teaching from a textbook but adding in her own lessons to teach vocabulary or verb conjugations. She's very easygoing and easy to get along with, and sometimes throws German words into a conversation when she can't remember the English ones. She's very supportive of the armed forces, no matter which branch or where they are stationed, although that doesn't mean she's always supportive of the battles they're fighting. She believes in hard work and is sometimes shocked to discover that life everywhere isn't like it is her little town.

[Personal Life]
During the school year, she spends most of her time teaching or being involved in school-related activities. During the summer, she spends much of her time riding horses on her Uncle Joe's farm like she used to do when she was a child. She loves her job, and the town she grew up in, and can't imagine ever leaving either. She's not currently in a relationship, since her last serious relationship ended about six months ago when the man she was dating moved away from town and she didn't want to leave. Currently her social life consists mostly of going out for a drink with her friends once or twice a week. In addition to teaching, she has a part-time translation business, translating documents from and into German for people all across the country, and sometimes overseas.

[Writing Sample]
Thursdays were Kat's favorite nights. She spent the rest of the week grading assignments and designing lessons, and even though Fridays were the nights she would get together with friends, Thursdays were the nights she talked to her brother. He'd given her a webcam for Christmas a few years before, and he would use the one on base and they would talk for an hour, getting caught up on everything that had happnened. She had managed to finish what she needed to do before she left school, so her free time tonight was all for her brother. She set down her plate of cookies and mug of tea on the desk and sat down in front of the computer.

She and Jeff had always been close, because they'd lost their parents at a young age and had only each other and their uncle for family. So when her brother signed on and told her that his son was sick, she felt exactly the same way she'd felt when they'd been children and he was sick. She sent her sympathies, of course, and wished for the day that she could actually meet her nephew.

When the conversation ended, it seemed to her that something had been different about it. Normally it was easy for them to find things to talk about, but tonight their talking had been punctuated by awkward silences. When had they started growing apart? She couldn't answer that. She suspected that it was somehow related to their very different lives, and the fact that neither of them could really understand the other's experiences as long as they were on opposite sides of the planet.

She couldn't wait for him to come home, so she could have her brother back. All of him.