CURRENT MISSION

Holistic Nutrition, Waldorf Education

ABOUT ME

I am a Waldorf teacher living in Chico, California. I am a student with the Nutrition Therapy Institute, studying holistic nutrition. I am a kind, compassionate person. I love to travel and see new places and meet new people. I generally like to be neat and organized. I am creative and I love to draw and paint. I love to read and write, and I love to learn new languages, new things about the world. I am passionate about education, working with children, nutrition, nature...

PHILOSOPHY

I value kindness and compassion, creative community, living simply.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have slept on many friends' couches and always feel grateful for a place to stay with people I love. Using the couchsurfing website is new for me, but I look forward to this opportunity to meet people that I otherwise would not have encountered.

Interests

I love to work with children - I have worked as a preschool teacher and have done Waldorf and Montessori teacher training, and someday I would like to open my own preschool. I love to spend time in nature, and I love to garden and grow food. I value community, creativity, friendship. I like to draw and paint, cook, knit, hike, run, do yoga, meditate...

• animals
• education
• dining
• cooking
• yoga
• dieting
• running
• meditation
• gardening
• traveling
• socializing
• knitting
• painting
• drawing
• hiking
• wrestling
• teaching
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Books: Tattoos on the Heart; The Poisonwood Bible; Nourishing Traditions, Autobiography of a Yogi; Born to Run; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; The Elephant Whisperer; Life, Love, and Elephants.........

Movies: Princess Mononoke; LA Story, Lost in Translation; Baraka

Music: Appalachian music / old time banjo music; Inti Iluminai; Joni Mitchel; Bob Dylan; Animal Collective; Beirut; the Beatles; Lauryn Hill......

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I lived in Shanghai, China for a year, teaching toddlers at the British International School. Living in China was an eye-opening experience, to a whole other way of living, speaking, thinking, moving, eating, etc. I am grateful for my time there because eventually I found a way to flow, to surrender my ideas about how the world is and harmonize as much as I could with the Chinese way of life.

A few years later I traveled to Southern India, to the town of Tiruvanamalai in Tamil Nadu. I spent a month there on a meditation retreat. I rented a bicycle and road around the town and the outlying farms and jungle. I loved to watch the families of monkeys together, the little ones always playing and wrestling. I loved seeing the rich, dense green of the jungle, and I especially loved watching the pink peach sunset over the green fields of rice. While I was there, I made friends with a young Australian traveler turned monk, who had found a stray, raggedy puppy in an alley. We caught it and the two of us rode his bicycle to the local animal shelter and handed it over to the vet there. I discovered they had a few litters of puppies there, and from then on, I spent many an afternoon visiting the puppies and giving them love.

Teach, Learn, Share

I am very passionate about nutrition and love to talk about health, diet, food, cooking, etc. I especially love to make fermented foods (sauerkraut, cultured veggies, kefir, etc), and I am very happy to explain, show, teach how to make cultured foods!

I also love to knit, and would be happy to teach anyone who would like to learn.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Guatemala, India, Mexico, Nicaragua

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, United States