Personal biography

Hello! I’m Eleanor Hamer, a British/Mexican bilingual/bicultural, teacher/translator, author/general enthusiast of all things cultural, geographic and historical.  I live in central Mexico in the City of Eternal Spring (Cuernavaca) and have never laid eyes on a single narco or heard a single shot fired.

I was born in Mexico to a British family which moved around a bit during my youth due to my father’s work (he was then a banker), first to Halifax in Nova Scotia  (one year) , and then to Honduras (one and a half years) when he switched to an administrative position with the then United Fruit Co., the Dominican Republic (four years), Jamaica (one year)  Guatemala (one and a half years) and Costa Rica  (11 years). In Costa Rica, I was part of a team that founded the first (and probably only) English-language weekly in Central America, The Tico Times (still going strong).  

After school and university (Havergal College – Toronto and Boston University, plus an unsuccessful six-month attempt to study journalism at the University of Missouri, then an equally unsuccessful attempt at marriage, I moved to Guayaquil, Ecuador for a couple of years and then to Lima, Peru (with a  slightly more suitable husband), for four years. In Lima, I taught English as a second language (ESL) at the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano and the Universidad de Lima.  I then moved back to Mexico, where I was made Director of the Insurgentes branch of the Berlitz School of Languages in Mexico City, then struck out on my own after a couple of years when I set up the Pennington Cultural Center with a partner.

Over the next few years, not entirely happy with any of the ESL courses I had had to use up to that point and with many years of experience under my belt, I was finally able to develop my first audio-visual ESL course, designed specifically for Spanish-speaking business executives (books, slides and audiotapes), and eventually established the Hamersharp schools (Hamersharp.com) where that course is still used. I also wrote Writing Business English for the most advanced students.  During that time, my team and I were also the official translators of business correspondence for Price Waterhouse (now Price Waterhouse Coopers) Mexico.

After a particularly unpleasant earthquake (about 20,000 dead), I decided on a total change, handed my complete portfolio over to my eldest daughter, built a house in Cuernavaca and moved there to do what I had always wanted to do . . . write. 

Once I had finished readjusting and updating the 10 ESL books, I wrote drafts of a couple of novels that had been knocking around in my mind for many years, but  I was still itching for something more sophisticated having to do with language teaching. One of my deepest aspirations had always been to celebrate the vibrant richness of Mexican culture by offering resources that hadn’t existed before, because learning a language isn’t just about memorizing words and construction formulas — it’s about feeling the pulse of a culture, embracing its traditions, and truly living in its rhythm. It’s about understanding the little things, like the warmth of a greeting or the meaning behind shared meals, and slowly becoming part of something bigger.

Just then, as if ordained from on high, I was invited to work with a famous Mexican writer and journalist on a book explaining and providing samples of Spanish idiomatic expressions for speakers of English, i.e., stuff not taught in the classroom and without which  Mexican Spanish is usually only half-understood (496 pages of it), as well as a dictionary version requested by Hippocrene Books Inc. in New York.  After quite a few years of very hard work, several  versions of that book are now in circulation, and we are getting ready to put out the latest update, much improved and expanded, after which I may go back to finishing those novels, although also in the works is a manual dealing with all the stumbling blocks and cultural idiosyncrasies encountered by foreigners moving to Mexico, some of which (the stumbling blocks, not the foreigners) are enough to make you turn around and head back home. Vocabulary and word-for-word pronunciation are an added bonus of that handy little trouble-shooting bible.