Hello! I am Torunn from Washington state! Thank you for reading my profile and for considering me as an adoptive parent to your child. As you can see, my profile represents moments of true joy with people and in surroundings that mean a lot to me! Let me start by my dream of adopting a child. After having devoted myself entirely to my work and studies as well as to strong relations and valuable hobbies, I have come to a point in which I am ready to share all the happiness and the opportunities my life presents and to raise and to help a them child to grow, to play and to learn, and to become a caring, engaged and responsible individual. For me, parenthood is a challenging and a rewarding process. It involves living and learning and facing tests as well as taking chances together, and I am convinced that the love, dedication and efforts I invest in this process will benefit my future child and to those around us as well.

I am an energetic, curious and dynamic person. As I love the outdoors, I am fortunate to live in Spokane, Washington, which offers quite extraordinary trails and open-air areas for sports, play-time and gatherings. For this reason, and for the solid school system and cultural life as well as an extensive health sector, my friends and colleagues all believe Spokane is a great city in which to raise a child. Incidentally, I enjoyed very similar sceneries when I grew up, as I was born in Norway in Northern Europe, which is where I developed my active and independent lifestyle.

With a child, I hope to expand the creative side in me! Since my major hobby is to read for pleasure and for work, I consider myself very blessed, as my job as a professor has enabled me to turn my passion into a career. Specifically, I teach Italian and I also Chair the Department of International Studies at Gonzaga University. Besides the rewarding research and administrative tasks I accomplish, what I enjoy about this profession are my colleagues and, especially, my students. With them, even the challenges of teaching foreign languages as well as literature and culture become a pleasure and I can only hope that they learn as much from me as I learn from them.

One of the individuals I appreciate and admire the most is my brother, Vegard. He lives in Norway with his wonderful wife, Randi and my two absolutely amazing nephews, Vetle and Linus. As I have always been very close to my brother, it has been important for me to follow their family life. While I have sought to return every or every other year, we have also kept great contact online and I feel that I have been able to be present throughout the various phases of my nephews’ childhoods. When they were small, we loved going to the movies together – now, as they are seventeen and thirteen years old, I listen to their piano lessons and help them with schoolwork. Since I tend to visit during the summer, we do not celebrate the holidays together but we have great virtual gatherings and I send my nephews their favorite American treats for the holidays and their birthdays. I am lucky to have good friends to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with. Christmas dinner is a special event, as my friends Sima and Daniel and their daughter, Alia, open their house for a group of people and arrange the most wonderful friendship celebrations!

In Spokane, I have a particularly close relation with some of my colleagues as well. With some I may watch a movie or have coffee and dinner, but even if we do not meet a lot outside of the university, I cherish our long conversations in the office. Some of my best colleagues are Tina and Stacy. Among my friends in Italy, I should emphasize Marta who is married with three children. Her family and parents have become a true family for me, and I spend major parts of the summer in their city, Trieste, every year. I have also spent several summers with Ornella and Cesare who are vine-growers in the Lange, an absolutely enchanting area of Northern Italy. In addition to various agricultural activities, they also run a guesthouse and I have helped them with their work as well as with teaching their daughter English. My friends and colleagues are very supportive of my decision to adopt and I can’t wait to travel with my future child!

I love and care strongly about the protection of animals. Since I do not have any pets myself, I cherish the many opportunities I have to dog-sit for Sima and Daniel. Their dogs, Baxter and Barbie, are excellent company and we have gotten to know each other very well over the years. I look forward to teaching my future child to respect animals as that is very important to me.

“Torunn is a responsible, kind, and caring person. I trust her to take care of my daughter and I know that she would make a wonderful mother.” - Stacy, my colleague

“Torunn will provide a wonderful home life for a child. She is kind and patient, two elements which, in my opinion, are the foundation for a healthy and loving home.” Tina, my colleague

“Torunn knows the value of hard work and doing the right thing. Any child raised by her will have one of the strongest value systems of any person I know.” Daniel, my friend

“Torunn treats all people as equals and peers, regardless of their backgrounds or station in life. The child she raises will live a life that is amazing. Torunn’s love and guidance will prepare him or her for the world with a love that is unique and full of opportunities.” Sima, my friend

My home in Spokane, WA is quite unique. I serve as a Faculty in Residence in a Student Residence Hall on campus at Gonzaga University where I have my own apartment. However, my everyday life is very much shaped by a vibrant community of 360 students in addition to some staff members and a priest. On the floor beneath me live Drew and Kimber and their twin boys. I love being amongst students and have the occasion to host weekly coffee hours as well as Holiday parties and fare-well parties where the entire hall is invited to my place. I really do appreciate my unique community and your child will be surrounded by so much love and support within these living arrangements. The campus where I live and work is situated close to Spokane River, so it has a lot of green areas and there are also parks in the areas. The near community is small enough to be well kept and since campus security has an extensive network of 24-hours operation, I always feel very safe coming home at night. Downtown Spokane is a 20-minute walk away so the opportunities for various outings and activities is always there. I am very happy about my community and since there are several solid daycare centers as well as schools here, I am convinced that it offers endless possibilities for children and parents.

As a professor, I am not only an educator who loves teaching, mentoring and spending time with students, but I also have administrative duties as a Department Chair that allow me to collaborate more closely with great colleagues. When I plan my classes or prepare new courses, I am on my own, and I try to be creative in these moments to have fun myself and to make classes enjoyable for students. My motivation for seeking an academic profession, however, was my passion for literature and film. The fact that I can continue to study a lot and to write is certainly a very valuable aspect of my career. I seek to devote a good portion of my time to researching and writing articles and I typically present academic papers at conferences in Italy during summer. These are always good occasions to catch up with friends and colleagues I do not see very often!

For the most part, my travels have been to Italy, where I spend every summer, but I also visit my brother’s family in Norway and over the past years, I have explored different areas of France as well. During my first sabbatical in 2015/2016, I was away from home for fourteen months and that was quite a treat after much hard work. In addition to spending some months in Trieste and Torino in Italy, I also lived for six months in Paris, France and I loved frequent outings to theatres, cinemas and museums. It is also a wonderful city to just walk around in or to read in cafés. I can’t wait to show my future child these fabulous European cities. My most adventurous experiences in France as well as in Italy have been on farms, where I have lived with agriculturalists and helped them with their everyday tasks. One of my favorite things about traveling is that I get to know people from very different backgrounds. Ornella and Cesare have become particularly good friends and I have spent three wonderful summers with them. I also met some wonderful people in Benin, West Africa, where I went with a group of excellent students some years ago. As French is widely spoken in West Africa, I had many good conversations.

As parents, we have a duty to truly devote ourselves to our children. This involves not only to protect and take good care of them, but also to teach them something new every day and enable them to develop their talents as well as to explore new opportunities and face challenges. For me, it will be important to show your child the world’s diversity. Just we much as we will talk about and celebrate people and cultures that in various ways are different from us, we will also talk about your child’s cultural background. As parents, our major task is to be advocates for our children; to make sure that they have all the means and opportunities they need to grow up safely and become happy and successful as well as responsible and engaged individuals.

~ Torunn