Victoria&Leo

our history...  

Leo...

...was born in the 'town' of Weimar (population: ~2000), Texas, to Eddy and Josephine Peters, 30 years ago. He grew up a few miles to the southeast of Weimar, where his childhood was spent participating in local activity groups (4-H, Boy Scouts and running). After attaining the rank of Eagle Scout, his continued participation in scouting included working five summers at El Rancho Cima Boy Scout camp as a camp counselor, twice serving as a staff member at the National Boy Scout Jamboree, and for the 1999 World Scout Jamboree in Chile.

Upon finishing high school, Leo attended Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he earned undergraduate degrees in geology and chemical engineering.  He also entertained a variety of part-time jobs to earn money while at university, including bartending, a petroleum laboratory internship, and a year as a live-in babysitter. During his final year at Rice, he pursued his interests in the geosciences by becoming involved in geophysical research project on Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. This valuable experience focused his academic studies to the geosciences, in part leading to his next step in life.

...was born in Buckinghamshire, England some 30+ years ago to Brenda and David Miller. She and her sister Jennifer grew up in the 'village' of Hazlemere and later moved to the 'town' of High Wycombe, where she remained until venturing off to university in the much more scenic city of Plymouth.

Victoria set off from her home in High Wycombe for the last time in 1995. She packed all her worldly belongings into Urman, her beloved first car (a 1970 Fiat 500L) ok, so some extra stuff came in Ma and Pa's car, you can't fit much in a Bambina! Her final year honours research project for her BSc (hons) Environmental Geology became her 21st birthday present, one month spent undertaking geodetic studies on Mount Etna, Sicily (after that there was no turning back). After completing her undergraduate degree she remained at the University of Plymouth to work for a spell prior to departing on the travels (Hawaii, for a 2 month volunteer stint at the volcano observatory and Western Samoa) that would lead her to Wellington, New Zealand to undertake her masters degree at Victoria University of Wellington.

After completion of her masters, Victoria took time to travel through Indonesia and Italy before returning to the Wellington region and beginning work as an Emergency Management Officer / Rural Fire Officer for the Upper Hutt City Council, (Upper Hutt is a satellite city of Wellington and has half the population of the town of High Wycombe!) During this time she learned lots of cool stuff including search and rescue in an urban environment, vegetation fire fighting and she also completed an extramural graduate degree in Emergency Management at Massey University (which included a research project writing the Provincial Disaster Management Plan for Vanuatu and of course a visit).

After nearly four years in New Zealand, Victoria got her citizenship (joint with British) and itchy feet. After finishing her degree and job she traveled in NZ for a month and then left for ~3 months in Australia before spending ~3 months back in the UK working and taking short trips to Ireland and Holland. The journey to Pennsylvania took her via Hawaii again and Mexico (Guadalajara) before arriving in the US to attend The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) to begin her PhD studies. Her research started less than a week after arrival as she promptly departed for her study area of Montserrat, WI.

our story... 

Victoria and Leo met shortly after Victoria arrived at PSU in 2003, and they became friends. Their friendship grew stronger after they moved only four doors away from each other on the same road (Easterly Parkway, State College). Their proximity allowed them to hang out, walk home from parties and go food shopping together (Leo had a car, Victoria didn't!) It didn't take long before their common interests and mutual 'appreciation' lead them into a relationship.

After buying their first house together in July of 2005 (no mean feat considering Leo was on an internship in New Orleans that summer and Victoria had two visits to Montserrat and a fieldwork course in Kamchatka, Russia), they adopted their two dogs Karymsky and Mutnovsky (yes they are both named after Russian volcanoes). Victoria and Leo have enjoyed the challenges of home ownership, they are always working on something!...and particularly enjoy the physical nature of outdoor projects and landscaping (some of those fieldwork skills come in handy) - we'll try to keep you up to date on these here. When not working on their research or on house 'stuff' they enjoy spending time as a family, whether cuddling downstairs or hiking through snow to see ice-falls, even traveling long distances in the car...nothing seems so bad when you are together.