Too small a box to fill in, but in a nutshell...we are out-going, open-minded french-american couple with a thirst for exploring the world and sharing the joy of life with friends, both new and old.

PHILOSOPHY
"Life attracts life" -- Paul Coelho

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING
I cherish people and relationships more than anything. Thanks to sites like couchsurfing, I've met some pretty wonderful people over the years. I'm on CS for the personal exchange. CS allows us to step into the day-in-the-life of someone. We get to see the world from another person's eyes. We get to see that no matter our differences, as human beings we've got a whole lot in common. As a host, I enjoy being a cultural ambassador for my native country (no, Americans do not ALL eat hamburgers, wear white tennis shoes and shop at Wal-mart) and keeping an open mind about the world.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE
I hosted travelers when I lived in Hong Kong and have used CS for a few of my backpacking trips. I've also been to a few CS events. I have always had positive experiences and am a hardcore supporter of the CS philosophy. Everyone I have met through CS further validates the awesomeness of the CS project.

Interests

HEATHER: CHEESE, long walks around the city, learning, sunshine, conjugating french verbs, being fit, photography, baking, cooking, people watching and thinking about how to make the world a better place.

• culture
• photography
• oktoberfest
• dining
• cooking
• cheese
• baking
• shopping
• traveling
• hiking
• backpacking
• scuba diving
• skiing
• sports
• boxing
• soccer
• tennis
• beaches

Music, Movies, and Books

A little long, I know. It's copy/pasted from another profile.

Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kundera), The Story of B (Daniel Quinn), Ishmael (Daniel Quinn), Affluenza (Wann, de Graaf, Naylor), The Over-Spent American (Schor), The Bell Jar (Plath), The Diaries of Anais Nin, Volume 1 1931-1934 (Nin), Death of a Salesman (Miller), A Doll’s House (Shaw), Paris Spleen (Baudelaire), Steppenwolf (Hesse), Demian (Hesse), Metamorphosis (Kafka), Le Petit Prince (Saint-Exupery), Aesop’s Fables, Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), The Rebel (Camus), Myth of Sisyphus (Camus), random Neil Postman stuff, Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), The Alchmist (Coelho), Death of Ivan Iliych (Tolstoy), The Joy of Cooking, books on native plants and animals, Calvin and Hobbes, The Forest People (Turnbull) and poetry.

Fight Club, What Dreams May Come, The English Patient, The Matrix, Amelie , Moulin Rouge, The Big Lebowski, Harold and Maude, Braveheart, Being John Malkovich, The Shawshank Redemption, Little Miss Sunshine, Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies, Tonari No Totoro, Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson films, The Charlie Brown Holiday Specials, Office Space, Waking Life, The Goonies, Dumb and Dumber, Goodbye Lenin, The Usual Suspects, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, In the Mood for Love, Amores Perros, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Labyrinth, Princess Mononoke, I Heart Huckabees, A Christmas Story, Dead Poets Society, anthropological and nature documentaries

Johnny Cash, Sigur Ros, random "world" music, Beirut, Bon Iver, Greg Brown, Paul Simon, Kings of Convenience, Radiohead, The American Dollar, Au Revoire Simon, Bruce Hornsby, Peter Gabriel, Patrick Watson, The Police, Serge Gainsbourg, Leonard Cohen, Ben Folds, Belle and Sebastian, Postal Service, The National and film soundtracks (Big Fish, Amelie, Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Braveheart, The English Patient, Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind...)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Travel stories are best told over a platter of oysters and a bottle of muscadet :)

But my favorite memories are...sipping airag in a Mongolian ger, hitching a ride on a donkey cart in Western China, sleeping in a hardseat for a 28 hour train ride to save $5, diving with manta rays, eating guinea pig, silk worms and pig blood soup, galloping a horse through the Gobi desert, trekking through the remote jungles of Borneo, sleeping in a barn in rural Switzerland, going to Oktoberfest with my 77 year olf grandpa and most recently comlpeting my (and Sam's) first triathalon.

Teach, Learn, Share

I would love to share my passion for and/or knowledge of :
1) CHEESE
2) The english language
3) Photography
4) Frugal travel

What I Can Share with Hosts

French culture and food!

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Laos, Macao, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mongolia, Netherlands, Peru, Philippines, Serbia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, France, Mayotte, United States

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