CURRENT MISSION

wanderlove

ABOUT ME

Jake Wachtel (alias walk/tell) was born into the bubble that is Palo Alto, California. There he grew up, nourishing a love for sauerkraut, three dimensional puzzles, and magic. At age 13, he decided he wanted to make big Hollywood movies when he grew up. At university (also in Palo Alto—he didn't make it very far), he studied film, which convinced him that he should instead study psychology, focusing on children and linguistics, and how children learn languages, and the way the language you speak shapes how you see the world, and the different ways people see the world, and the ways that different people see the world the same way.
Then he became interested in farming, and left the Palo Alto bubble to work on organic farms in Italy. Somehow he ended up in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Norway, Poland, Israel and Greece before he made it to his first farm in Sicily. But he didn't mind, because he started to realize how much there is out there, and how moving through these foreign spaces was slowly taking apart everything he had once known, to fill him instead with glorious visions of the diversity of human experience side by side with universal brotherhood and sisterhood. And then he farmed, and picked lots of oranges, and decided that he had absolutely no desire to go to Hollywood, but lots of desire to keep traveling.
He carried a ukulele with him everywhere he went, and it became his best friend. It was a very sociable friend too, starting conversations with musicians, artists, dancers, and wanderers from all over, irregardless of native tongue. The more he traveled, the more he grew to love the strange sounds that came out of foreign instruments, and found learning to play Turkish saz or a Thai sueng was much like learning a new language. It shaped and broadened the way you see the world.
He continued East, spending significant time in New Zealand and Cambodia, where he saw a new side of humanity and decided that he wanted to dedicate himself batmanlike to eradicating injustice from Every Corner of the Earth, preferably right away. A lofty but vague goal that proved difficult in execution, Jake instead became a preschool teacher, which was a close second to being Batman.
At the end of every school day, Jake was full of joy but also wholly exhausted, so naturally he started using all his free time to develop a hugely expansive musical project which would bring together all the sounds he experienced in his journeys, to explore the idea of "traveler's mind." Jake decided he would learn to play Every Instrument Ever, preferably right away. This too proved difficult, though he'd made it to around 80 by the time he finished recording his debut album wanderLOVE. (download free: www.walktell.com)
He stopped teaching preschool when an opportunity arose to travel back to Cambodia as a filmmaker, to document an engineering project with Batmanlike aspirations to better the world, which you can find here: http://vimeo.com/52046953
He decided he likes doing this very much, and spent a while makes short films for non-profits and educational institutions. He spent a year living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, teaching filmmaking to at-risk youth in the red light district, and adventuring plenty. The next adventures; releasing more music, and developing a Cambodian sci-fi feature film.
In summary, Jake loves travel, music, language, assembling complex wholes from disparate pieces, childhood, magic, love, strange foods, storytelling, and writing about himself in the third person.

PHILOSOPHY

when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

growth mindset

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

i want to teach as many people as possible how to play the ukulele. the world needs more ukulelists!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've surfed all over, from Italy to Istanbul, and though I am 6'8" (over 2 meters tall), I've gotten pretty good at sleeping in strange places. I used to live in a community in California that is constantly hosting couch surfers, which is great, because even when I was not traveling, I felt like I am always meeting new people from around the world.

Interests

music. learning to play every instrument, ever. (i play around 97 so far). finding the flow in jamming with other musicians. drum circles. spouting melodic gibberish. dancing blindfolded. compost. living close to the earth. covering long distances on foot. ascending to mountain tops. dabbling. travel. cooking for large groups of people. linguistics, learning new languages. buddhism. dragons. painting. hanging out with little kids. filmmaking.

• writing
• film making
• dancing
• cooking
• movies
• traveling
• puzzles
• painting
• magic
• music
• hiking
• buddhist
• teaching
• engineering
• languages
• psychology

Music, Movies, and Books

this is just a long discussion waiting to happen...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

hiking 5 mountain peaks in 24 hours in desolation wilderness, california it totally shifted my self-concept to realizing that things i had once thought were impossible were actually totally feasible, and in fact situations in which i thrive.

Teach, Learn, Share

i will teach you a song on the ukulele!

i will also teach you how to make an ambigram of your name!

...

i would love to learn slang and jokes in your language!

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Laos, Latvia, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State, Virgin Islands, U.S.

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States