CURRENT MISSION

Have adventures in new places; discover hidden beauty in new cities; make friends and have a great time with cool people from all over the world; learn ALL the languages; try new things; find as much crazy art, music, and theatre as I can

ABOUT ME

I was raised by hippie musician parents in Cleveland, OH, USA, a fantastic city of art galleries in warehouses, vegan food cafes tucked behind abandoned factories, and friendly people.

I am totally enamored with the arts in every form - I'm currently trying to make my way as a playwright, but I'm also really into visual art / multimedia stuff, love any and all types of theatre and film, and play viola, piano, and guitar and love music, especially classical, folk, and indie rock.

Literature is my great passion. I ADORE reading anything and everything, but especially crazy experimental postmodern novels from all over the world and philosophy/literary theory.

I went to college in Boston, MA, USA (just graduated!), where I made some amazing friends, spent an incredibly wonderful four years, and was very active in the theatre and music communities.

I'm currently living in London and having a fantastic time getting to know this new and wonderful city while continuing to study Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish literature. I love how London is such a mosaic of different architectural styles, cultures/languages, and countercultures.

I am obsessed with learning new languages, with the way in which every language presents a distinct worldview and contains words and ways of thinking that can't be translated into any other tongue.

I love traveling on my own, throwing myself wholeheartedly into new cultures and places, alternately emptying my mind and furiously pondering everything I'm experiencing, taking long walks and just noticing everything. BUT my favorite part of traveling alone is meeting new people everywhere I go. Some of my favorite travel experiences have been: a summer spent in Morocco (based in Fez, but traveling all over, including to France and Spain), a summer spent in Israel (based in Jerusalem but also traveling to other Israeli cities, the West Bank, and Jordan), and a recent whirlwind trip encompassing five cities in Italy as well as Tunis!

If you can't already tell, I am a person who gets incredibly excited and passionate about things - I don't do anything halfway!

PHILOSOPHY

I want to see, do, and learn as much as I can.

I often like things that are unusual, quirky, underground, avant garde. I also like things that are simple, like taking a long walk through a new city with no planned itinerary, or sitting by a lake and writing for a while.

I'm a really passionate person, and I want to spend as much of my life as possible seeing and doing things that fill my heart with joy and my mind with inspiration, with similarly creative/idealistic/fun-loving people.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Just starting to participate! At the moment I'm not really able to offer people a place to stay at my flat in London, but if that changes I'd love to return the favor. Right now, I'm focused on finding places to crash and people to meet during my European travels!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Just had my first CS experience in Italy! I stayed with an awesome host in Tuscany and had a great time getting to know the area (and its food!) and hanging out with my host and her other CSer. A very positive experience.

Interests

Literature - especially contemporary postmodern novels and plays from all over the world

Writing - especially plays and poetry

Art - especially post-WW2 art, especially really contemporary performance art pieces that push the envelope of what art is

Music - all kinds

Going out, especially to interesting/nontraditional places/bars/clubs!

Exploring new places

Languages

Vegetarian cooking

Philosophy and literary theory

Theatre

Learning new things

• arts
• culture
• humanities
• writing
• literature
• poetry
• performing arts
• beauty
• dining
• cooking
• vegetarian
• vegan
• clubbing
• reading
• traveling
• billiards
• music
• guitar
• piano
• history
• languages
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies -
Sense and Sensibility
Harry Potter 7 Part 2
The Graduate
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Royal Tenenbaums
A Single Man
Love Actually
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
La Belle et La Bete (Cocteau)
Harold and Maude

Music -
Classical: Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovitch
Non-classical: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Doors, The Velvet Underground; Mumford and Sons, Noah and the Whale, Damien Rice, Lisa Hannigan, Fionn Regan, Grouplove, Iron & Wine, Neutral Milk Hotel, Radiohead, Simon & Garfunkel, lots of random stuff of all genres

Books -
The Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse)
Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino)
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)
Underworld (Don DeLillo)
Little Mountain, Yalo (Elias Khoury)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust - currently on #4!)
Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I went with friends to a little Berber village in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where we found a mountain pool with a waterfall, jumped in and swam fully clothed, then were treated to mint tea and a homemade meal and exposed to the warmest, most wonderful hospitality I've ever experienced, from the Berber community.

Teach, Learn, Share

I love to talk to people about literature and all the things I've learned in my studies, pleasure reading, and personal writing practice.

I also love to teach people about the Middle East, the region I study and love, in hopes of correcting a lot of common misconceptions about the people and cultures there.

I want to learn about everything. Especially anything to do with languages, humanities, arts, culture, food, history, philosophy. But really, anything. I LOVE to learn, and I love to listen to other people talk about the things about which they are passionate.

Countries I’ve Visited

Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Spain, Tunisia

Countries I’ve Lived In

United Kingdom, United States