I live in the Umbrian hills with my Iranian-American husband Josie and our two daughters, now 15 and 18, working from home as a freelancing writer, translator and book reviewer. I met Josie while passing through Bamako, Mali, in 2000, and by 2003 we decided to stop living out of our backpacks and settle here. It's a beautiful place, but also one that I need to go away from and come back to on a regular basis - as do the kids.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I love to travel, not necessarily to check countries and sites of a bucket list, but to really learn something new about a place and its people - including people making that place their new home (as we did here in Italy). In fact, most of the traveling I do and have done in the past is visiting the many friends and family members we have all over the world - and having them visit us here in Italy.

Interests

• theater
• reading
• music
• opera
• backpacking
• outdoors
• bicycle riding
• hiking mountains

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Went down the Niger river in Mali on a local traders' pinasse boat from Mopti to Timbuktu.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can share our experience with living in rural Italy, raising two girls here being a mixture of three different cultures ourselves (German, American, Iranian). How it is living with trilingual and quadricultural kids. How you can travel a lot, while staying on a low budget, with children.

I'd like to learn about people and the places where they live. What makes the place special, what makes it challenging. I think that life is always a compromise, and you have to try things and pick what works for you, always avoiding to lament what "could have been".

What I Can Share with Hosts

My own and our kids' experience with adapting to different cultures (see above), things to do, see and taste around Spoleto, where we live, our experiences traveling to many different parts of the world.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Armenia, Austria, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Macedonia, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Northern Ireland, Norway, Oman, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, United States