My name is Raina. I am 24 and I currently reside in Columbia, Missouri.

I was born in American Fork, Utah on December 24, 1979. After calling me "Pumpkin'" for a few months my parents finally decided to name me Raina Janel Olsen. They then decided to call me by my middle name. Who knows why, maybe Janel Raina just didn't have the same ring to it. This, however, caused a bit of stress later in life when, going into high school, I decided to change to Raina. I didn't expect my family to change, but it still prompted my dad, from whom I inherited my wry wit, to do things such as ask me "what, the name we picked for you wasn't good enough?" and say "there's no Raina living here, you mean Janel" when my friends called. Since that fateful December day I've lived in Utah, Illinois, Utah again, and finally Misery (some folks call it Missouri). Despite my dislike of humidity and the hypocritical Ozark "mountains" I decided to go to college here at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where I just graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.S. in Computer Engineering. I'm currently working on my graduate degree part time.

I am married to a wonderful man named Christian who opened up this webpage for me as a surprise. We have many pets, which you can see here. I work at the university where I do research for a professor in mechanical engineering.

Here's some other little facts about me. My favorite musician is Dan Fogelberg. (You old fogies might know who that is.) I like Gordon Lightfoot too. He's sort of like Dan, only older and Canadian. (You really old fogies might know who that is.) I also like the Whitlams, an Australian band that most of you probably haven't heard of either. The rest of my musical tastes vary a lot. I have a lot of hobbies, some which I do more than others. They include reading, biking, running, swimming, archery, medieval reenactment, weightlifting, coding, websurfing, and a bunch of other things I can't think of at the moment.

I've been a Christian for about three years. I've been going to a GCM non-denominational church ever since I converted. Right now we're searching for another church that focuses more on inductive bible study than topical stuff. (I.e. a church where the sermon this week is "Mathew 10:1-4" rather than "Why you shouldn't steal.") Before I converted, I was your typical lost soul, and before that I was Mormon.

As for my nickname, RainaBear, I got it in high school. Towards the latter part of high school I became friends with a girl called Nani. She had two younger sisters, and they all had nicknames for each other, Nani-bear, Hana-bear, and Melia-bug. They sort of inducted me into the family by calling me Raina-bear. My husband thought it was cute, and so has continued to call me that. I like it much better than some of my other nicknames, even if it is a bit cutsey.