Before anything else
My name is Lara Drozdek-Lambelet, I'm 27, Swiss and Italian, and I live in Liguria, Italy. I've been teaching for as long as I can remember. My real starting point, though, goes back to a childhood game: I used to play teacher and give my brother homework, with no idea it would be the first step of a long road.
Here are a few lines of my story.
Languages
Languages, for their part, were about travel from the very start. Born in Switzerland, French as my home port. Italian quickly joined the luggage, learned by ear, over summers with my family in Italy. Then English climbed aboard too, from nursery school onwards, carried by a teacher who had us sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm. German followed at school, Spanish in secondary school — but of all these languages, English stayed my compass, the one I always ended up coming back to.
2018 — my encounter with Scotland
Five months as an au pair, before starting university. My love for Scotland had begun long before, watching the show Outlander — and being there confirmed it: the Scottish accent, its own particular vocabulary, all of it won me over. My first real crossing — and it ended with a C1 certificate in hand. Coming back to Switzerland was hard, but I was happy to start my studies at the University of Lausanne, majoring in English and digital humanities.
2022 — back to Edinburgh
Bachelor's degree in hand, I set off again for Edinburgh for my CELTA training — this time, I stayed for two and a half years. On my own, I rediscovered the city, climbed up to the castle, explored the Highlands, and boarded the Harry Potter steam train. Then, partway through, I met my husband, who's Polish. Without English, neither of us would have been able to speak to the other. That meeting gave rise to a marriage in four languages — French, English, Polish and Italian — which has now settled its bags in Italy.
Teaching
Teaching travelled with me the whole way — from my teenage years, helping with homework, then substitute teaching in Switzerland, in English and other subjects, before I left for Scotland and during my studies. Then general English at every age, including a stint at Wall Street English in Sanremo. And since 2024, a more precise direction: travellers, travel professionals, wedding professionals — people who, like me, move between several languages and several worlds.
What I've learned
This journey taught me the essentials: everyone learns their own way, and what matters is the concrete, the lived experience, the spoken word — understanding and expressing yourself through role-play rather than theory. And that there isn't just one English, but many Englishes: British, American, Scottish, Australian... A richness that lets me travel within this language, just as within all the others.
Today
My travels and my marriage, this double journey, are what tell me today that speaking to travellers, travel professionals and wedding professionals isn't a coincidence. It's the road I've already walked.
