“My name is Genta Hoxha and as of August 30, 2019, Mullett too. I am 33 years old.
I am the second of four children. I am a professional viola player, [and] violin and viola teacher. I started playing the violin at eight years old, which means that this year marks a quarter of a century of my life with an instrument in my hand.
Both my parents are teachers. My dad retired last October, but he taught for over 45 years. My mom teaches English now. My older sister started teaching straight out of high school. So somehow it made very much sense that I would teach too. I started once I was done with my bachelor’s degree, and I worked together with my sister for several years. We commuted together, at times by bus, at times me driving.
I am from Kosovo, a very small country in South Eastern Europe, about two borders away from Greece. Older generations might remember hearing of Kosovo in 1999 when we were at war and wanting our freedom from Serbian regime. Exactly 22 years ago, on March 24, 1999, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), after months of peaceful talk, decided to start bombing the Serbian Army, who for about two years kept killing, massacring, innocent civilians and calling us terrorists in the international media, claiming we are attacking them. It wasn’t until January 1999, when William Walker, Head of OSCE at the time, saw it with his own eyes one of the most terrible massacres in Recak-Kosovo, that the internationals actually knew for sure what had happened. An army had been formed by volunteer ‘soldiers’ who called themselves UCK (KLA-Kosovo Liberation Army), and for those two years they tried to fight the Serbian Army, but it wasn’t until NATO helped that we could get our freedom. Bill Clinton, the US president at the time and Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, took it upon themselves to speak in our name. We are forever thankful. If you ever decide to visit, you will see that we have a boulevard and street named after him, and we have his statue there too.
I moved to the U.S. on August 24, 2019 to marry my now husband. I met him in Kosovo. He came there in August 2016 to work as a security contractor at the U.S. Army camp there called Camp Bondsteel. We matched on Tinder sometime in September, met in person on October 5 and then just kept wanting to see one another. Four and a half years later, here we are. His mom and stepdad live here, so we came to stay with them for a short bit, which turned into almost two years because, you know, COVID[-19] happened. But, we love the area. We love our family of four adults, two dogs, Kosovo rescues that we brought with, three cats and two birds. FULL HOUSE.
My mother tongue is Albanian or Shqip as we call it, because I am Kosovo Albanian, just like the Albanians in Albania, but from Kosovo. English would be my second, Swedish my third, Spanish and Italian that I’ve learned from TV. I understand more than I can speak German and Serbo-Croatian. At the moment, I am learning French from Duolingo. I love languages, different accents, I find them very amusing. I have been told that because I am a musician, I learn languages easier, which makes sense to me. Albanian is a very interesting language with 36 letters which make different sounds, which makes it easier to learn foreign languages too.
I studied journalism too from 2006 to 2009. I should’ve finished my bachelor’s degree. I am down to one exam and the dissertation paper, and my teacher is surely mad at me for not finishing. I am not a quitter and should’ve just finished it, but I never felt very good as a journalist in my country. I worked as a journalist for the biggest newspaper in Kosovo, started in the summer of 2007 all the way to December 31 of that year. I think I was good, but just did not find joy in that.

So, at the same time I was studying journalism, I was studying music performance in viola. I have my Bachelor’s in Music Performance for Viola from my home country’s University of Prishtin, my Master’s in Music Performance for Viola from Lund University – Malmo Academy of Music in Sweden (I had a full scholarship) and in 2019, just before coming to the U.S., I finished my MBA Degree from Staffordshire University in the UK.
I love studying and learning, so I cannot seem to stop myself, and I am sure soon enough I’ll find a Doctorate Program that I will like and most probably will pursue also. I am crazy like that.
I want to teach instrumental music here at Fauquier, though I enjoy learning English, languages in general. I’m moving to Washington state to teach violin and viola there, I already have a job lined up.
I see myself teaching until I am very old and cannot hold myself up anymore. My style of teaching involves a lot of teaching of self-confidence and independence. I like to remind my students of their progress as the time passes. [Teaching] just comes naturally. I love helping other students grow, just as I am growing at the same time. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I see my students achieve their goals.”