ABOUT ME

I am an English Teacher living in a small town in the Gangwon province of South Korea. I am living in Gangneung, a city on the east coast.
Last year, I graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Cinema-Television and Spanish. After graduating, I did volunteer work in Paraguay, supervising a group of high school volunteers who were participating in culturally immersive community development projects (which is a fancy way of saying hanging around, playing with some kids, and eating a lot of oranges, while doing some good things here and there). After getting TEFL certification, I came to Korea and here I am!

Personally, I prefer living abroad as opposed to traveling a lot. My junior year of college, I studied abroad in Iceland, Spain and Chile and got exposed to a wide variety of languages, cultures and scenery. My current goal is to stick around in one place long enough to fully appreciate it: I feel like in each of the above countries, my time was cut far too short. I'm also moderately obsessed with Iceland, so I hope to return there and study Icelandic in a couple of years.

My goal for Korea is to spend enough time here immersed in Korean culture to appreciate a place that draws from a different root than North America or Europe. My end dream is go back to iceland, and study Icelandic, and with it the enormous cultural legacy of Icelandic literature, but in order to do that, and fully appreciate my own past, I believe its absolutely essential to appreciate a past that is not necessarily my own (although, all pasts are my pasts with the right perspective).

PHILOSOPHY

I actually don't really like travelling: a lot of the thrill of living abroad comes from being constantly confronted with everything that can be different. Each time I've gone to a new country, and lived in a new context, I discover something about myself or my own past I didn't realize I had, and it gives me the enormously beneficial and rewarding opportunity to see through new eyes. I want to live outside of myself as much as possible; to be confronted with how much I don't know.
I find travelling itself to be underwhelming (and expensive!): everytime I take a trip and fall in love with somewhere new, I just want to park my soul there and sit; when I have to leave, I feel cheated out of something. Also, the experience can be rather superficial: a croissant is a croissant, whether it comes from a bakery in Paris or a pillsbury can. The people you're with make the experience, and great people can be found anywhere.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have hosted and surfed in the past. I haven't done much of either lately due to my transitive location and lack of my own proper housing, which is a fancy way of saying that I was living with my parents. In Korea, I'm hoping to use couchsurfing to travel to other places in Korea and meet and network with Koreans and other English teachers, and any other awesome people I might meet along the way.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've hosted people sporadically in Los Angeles. I've also surfed in various cities on the West coast and throughout Europe when I was studying in Spain.

Interests

-Hiking
-Dancing. Dancing in a club, swing, pathetic attempts at salsa, freaking out at drum circles, anything to get me off my butt
-Coffee and talking
-I don't know what to fill in here!
-Walking around and listening to music at unintelligent hours (like at night)
-Trying to learn Korean. Spanish. Icelandic.
-Swimming
-Sleeping
-Eating
-Talking to random people

• culture
• literature
• dancing
• education
• coffee
• walking
• partying
• clubbing
• movies
• traveling
• volunteer work
• music
• cycling
• hiking
• swimming
• teaching
• languages
• volunteering

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Explosions in the Sky, big band music, rodrigo y gabriela, Nano Stern, Chinoy, Inti-Illimani, Kim Young-Im
Movies: Encounters at the End of the World, Grave of the Fireflies, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, El Laberinto del Fauno, Mysterious Skin, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, A prairie home companion and fargo (forgive me, I'm from Minnesota), Cries and Whispers, Clue, Y tu Mamá Tambien, Mysterious Skin, Network, A Single Man, Do the Right Thing

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

-Seeing the stars in rural paraguay
-Hiking in Iceland under the midnight sun. Also partying in Iceland under the midnight
-SOLAR ECLIPSE in Bryce Canyon National Park!! There is no better place in the world for an eclipse
-I have a lot of random memories and experiences with friends that aren't interesting by description alone, but feel free to ask me sometime and I will definitely share some stories
-Hiking the "W" circuit in Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile
-Biking through Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna in Chile's atacama desert
-Seeing Rodrigo y Gabriela live!
-Hiking Mt. Whitney, tallest mountain in the lower 48
-Marching through Santiago de Chile on June 14th, gran paro nacional para la educación. When I studied in Chile, the education system underwent a revolution as students revolted on the high cost of education. Marching with 100,000 students was an eye opening experience

Teach, Learn, Share

I can you Icelandic! And by teach you icelandic, I mean I can teach you how to pronounce the name of the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull. I can also teach you how to order a donut.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Germany, Norway, Portugal

Countries I’ve Lived In

Chile, Dominican Republic, Iceland, Paraguay, South Korea, Spain, United States

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