Hey! I'm Cat and my partner is Andreas. We are an international couple from Scotland and Germany and after finishing my masters degree in architecture, we moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to live and work. After teaching public speaking I decided to found a small organisation to help teach more women public speaking skills and began running speaking and storytelling events each month while fundraising to provide free education for local organisations helping young girls in poor families in Vietnam. After a year of learning how much stories help us heal and grow, we wanted to travel more and hear more stories from people around the world! So we decided to quit our jobs and travel around Asia trying to meet as many people as possible and learn as much as we could.

We love food! We love cooking, tasting and sharing food with others. We also love socialising, i'm pretty extroverted and chatty but can be quiet and chill too. Andreas is such a fantastic listener and is so passionate about life and meeting others too. We also love coffee, dancing, exploring hidden places and just learning how others live, so we're not that interested in visiting tourist attractions and instead want to fill our travels with as many personal, human connections as possible.

我为什么加入 Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing really fits our mentality towards travel. We don't travel to sit on a beach or take a selfie in front of a tourist attraction, we travel to find out about other people's lives and make friends all over the world. We really appreciate learning from local people and finding out places and things to do that make us feel like we're actually experiencing a place, instead of just looking. We love people, food and stories so of course couchsurfing is really the most perfect fit. Plus it really pushes your comfort zones and makes you remember how beautiful people can be towards each other.

兴趣

• animals
• writing
• design
• dancing
• cooking
• coffee
• walking
• technology
• food
• storytelling
• gym
• foodie
• talking

音乐、电影和书籍

It's so hard to choose just a few, we probably watch at least one movie or show a night, but some stand out movies are:
Amelie
A Beautiful Mind
American Psycho
Cruel Intentions

I watch documentaries more regularly:

Anything by Louis Theroux
Dark Tourist on Netflix
True crime stuff on youtube etc.

Music:

I have a really eclectic taste, I like anything I can dance to generally but also love classical music, electronic (techno and house mainly), acoustic/indie, etc.

The Japanese House is a band I like to listen to while chilling.
DJs like Polly Pocket, Jan Oberlaender, etc.
Really open to all music and I love to sing.

I'm really looking for book recommendations, after travelling for a while I gave up on bringing books with me so i'd love to hear good suggestions!

我做过的一件不可思议的事情

One amazing thing i've done is take a dream idea to reality. After New Year 2019, I had a small dream of being able to start a charity that allows all women from all walks of life be able to access leadership skill training so they felt confident and worthy of achieving their dreams. I was just teaching public speaking in a school at the time but I wanted to reach out to more disadvantaged children and also create a community of women who would support each other speaking up and feel more encouraged to do so. Somehow I managed to make this happen in less than a year in Vietnam and I grew the organisation to a place where I could train other organisations to implement public speaking training to girls growing up in rural and remote areas. This is something i'm really amazingly proud of and fills me with joy that I could do something small and spread the speaking bug to others.

教，学，和分享

Andreas and I are both trained english teachers and in our travels will be visiting schools in remote areas to do some cultural exchanges and teach each other some weird and wonderful things about our lives. We'd love to do the same with others!

Andreas is also an IT professional and i'm a graduate architect so we have some other specific skills that we like to use to help others achieve their ideas.

Most of all we love to learn from others through sharing skills, stories and kindness.

我可以与沙发主分享些什么

I can share whatever I have in my bag! I can share my voice if you like singing, I can share stories and I can share public speaking skills, writing techniques, english classes, weird scottish/german recipes, awful and some pretty good dance moves, jokes, and I can draw you if you like!

我游览过的国家

Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, United States, Viet Nam

我居住过的国家

Germany, Scotland, Spain, Viet Nam