We are two people: Allegra and Alejandro.

We love to travel, meet new people, and share and learn.

We spend our time enjoying everything our great city has to offer- food, culture, and great friends.

Allegra works as an arborist at a local nonprofit called Friends of the Urban Forest and Alejandro is chipping away at a PhD in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford.

PHILOSOPHY

"I find it elevating and exhilarating to discover that we live in a universe which permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we."
-Carl Sagan

"Constantly regard the universe as one entity, having one substance and one idea; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one entity; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web."
-Marcus Aurelius

"Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis... we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson."
-Dune

"In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself."
-Marcus Aurelius

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”
-Blood Meridian

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

We surfed all over western Europe summer 2011 and in Costa Rica in 2014 (and Alejandro in southeast Asia in summer 2012) and had a beautiful experience with the couchsurfing.org project. We met many wonderful people and had a truly amazing time. We've also had a great experience hosting people in Berkeley, West Hollywood, and San Francisco and have made many new friends!

Everyone we have met through CouchSurfing has been amiable and entertaining at a minimum, but we're continually surprised at the sheer number of fascinating, intelligent, fun-loving, experienced, and cultured people we meet through CS. We have been able to experience so many different lifestyles from around the world and can't wait to see more.

Interests

It might actually be easier to list what we're not interested in, but let's try this anyways. We like:
music, science, bouldering, socializing, outdoorsy stuff, the internet, reading, crossword puzzles, beer, puns, games, adventure, art, cats (and other animals), cooking ad-hoc fusion meals, multi-culturalism, multi-generationalism, languages, sustainability, introspection, dancing, socioeconomic policy, motorcycles, genderfucking, sports, discovering awesome hole-in-the-wall places, and... :)

• animals
• cats
• arts
• culture
• books
• dancing
• causes
• dining
• cooking
• beer
• motorcycles
• chess
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• puzzles
• bouldering
• music
• sports
• rock climbing
• languages
• mathematics
• medicine
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

Authors
William Vollmann, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Haruki Murakami, Henry Miller, Lewis Carol, George R.R. Martin, Cormac McCarthy, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen Baxter, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, John Steinbeck, Douglas Adams, Issac Asimov, Tom Robbins, Chuck Palahniuk, Douglass Hofstadter, William Faulkner, Joseph Heller, Don DeLillo

Movies
Paprika, Mulholland Drive, Tampopo, Brazil, Life of Brian, V for Vendetta, Surf Ninjas, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Black Swan, Idiocracy, Being John Malkovitch, Apocalypse Now, Tarantino movies, Coen brothers movies, Mel Brooks movies

Shows
David Attenborough shows, The Wire, Twin Peaks, Futurama, Star Trek, Breaking Bad, Metalocalypse, True Detective

Music (a small sample)
Amon Tobin, Between the Buried and Me, Buena Vista Social Club, Calle 13, Charles Mingus, Fela Kuti, Flying Lotus, Galactic, Infected Mushroom, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, Manu Chao, The Mars Volta, Metallica, Mike Dillon, Miles Davis, Mos Def, Les Claypool/Primus, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Rage Against The Machine, Yemen Blues, Red Hot Chili Peppers, RJD2, The Roots, Silvio Rodriguez, Simon and Garfunkel, Sublime, System of a Down, Tool, Traffic, Wendy Carlos

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Alejandro: Heard a tiger while lost in a jungle in Goa.
Allegra: Seen a prescribed burn site in the Southern Sierras that looked like a moonscape.

Teach, Learn, Share

Ask us about pretty much anything.
Besides cool facts/in terms of really practical (maybe more boring) stuff, we can teach some music basics, fix common I.T. problems, teach you more than you ever to learn about ecology/biology/geology, do some handy repair/construction-type stuff, teach chess strategy (maybe that's not so practical...), share books and articles, and teach a lot of useful math :P

We also really love cooking for (and with) our CS hosts. Some of the most fantastic meals of our lives have resulted from this process!

We love learning. Teach us about anything, something we've never even heard of.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Bahamas, Cambodia, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Laos, Mexico, Netherlands, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United States, Venezuela, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States

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