My name is Anna Wittow and I am one of the Community Outreach Interns. Here are the top ten fun facts about my history that have interested me in the National Parks Service.   

Top Ten Facts About Me

1. I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and I lived there until my family moved to Seattle when I was 6. I grew up in the outdoors of Alaska, getting carried in a backpack a lot of the time.
   

   So excited by snow in June that I forgot I was wearing a formal outfit.

2. I loved joining a first grade class at Graham Hill Elementary School in Seattle and I immediately joined the Double Dutch team because I was excited to get to jump rope and play at recess without a snow suit on.
3. At Garfield High School I worked on the yearbook and was very interested in sharing people’s stories of the old and remodeled buildings.
4. I went to college in Michigan, moving to a third state that shares a border with Canada and there I enjoyed four years of snowy winters.
5. I worked for an urban farming company in Michigan one summer and it made me so excited about growing food that I planted an old Ikea under bed storage tub with tomatoes, peppers and basil in the driveway of my rental house.
6. I studied linguistics in college and was especially interested in the various sounds different languages have, especially their use of vowels. I hope to be fluent in at least three languages someday.
7. When I moved back to the Pacific Northwest, I started working at an overnight summer camp in Arlington, WA. In addition to its huge garden, the best part of camp was the five goats, ten chickens and four ducks-all of which I could name and tell apart.
8. I love the smell of pizza. As part of our sensory tours of Seattle Tilth’s learning gardens, we have kids check out the smell of thyme, rosemary and basil together and see if they think it smells like pizza too!
9. I have always loved transportation-buses, trains, the streetcar- you name it, I’ve been on it and unbelievably excited about it. At the University of Washington, I have the opportunity to represent graduate students on the school’s Advisory Board about the student U-Pass, our pass that lets us take unlimited rides on the regional transit systems.
10. My graduate program is in Environmental Policy and is a two-year program that gives me the chance to have a summer internship between the two years. After an awesome year of classes, I get to intern for In My Backyard this summer, and I could not be more thrilled about that!