Hi! We are Janelle and Ben, keen travellers making our way across the Earth. We left Sydney in January 2015 and travelled for 2015 Bangkok--> Copenhagen overland. (There were a few sneaky flights in the end!) and we had a blast! We enjoyed the home stays we did along the way and have made friends for life in many countries. We are two very friendly, caring and down to earth pair and we even ended up engaged at the foot of Everest and got married at Christmas in Gibraltar during the course of our travels so far!

We are currently living and working in the UK, saving up for our next big overland adventure! We very much treasure the experiences we've had staying with local people on our travels, and have quite a repertoire of stories ready to share!

We are calm souls, enjoying homely places, good food and music, the outdoors and a novel with a warm cup of tea. We make for very quiet, simple and appreciative guests. We are both non smokers, and carry minimal baggage when we travel (physically and psychologically!) Thanks for considering us! J&B xo

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

We want to see as much of the world as we can- and we find so much more enjoyment in staying with locals, and immersing ourselves in local daily life rather than hitting the hotspots and cities.

We have a house in Australia which is currently occupied but plan to settle in NZ in the future when we are back "home" and look forward to opening up both our households to couch surfers.

Interests

Janelle:
Hiking, swimming, the beach! , cafe culture, teatime, travel of course!, I really enjoy no plans- having relaxing days exploring, I find when we have strict plans we don't enjoy our travels as much :), I really enjoy food and cooking, although I can get stressed if I have to cook for a large party! I love going to farmers markets and picking up local delicacies! My biggest love is the beach- spending the whole day reading on the beach, and I miss Australian beaches terribly! Watching documentaries and movies,

Ben:
FOOTBALL- Ben loves watching, playing, coaching, music! Ben plays guitar and loves bumming around on his guitar - although we left the guitar in England with a previous host to teach and share :) , Ben is a huge movie fan, he can find you the most interesting movies and documentaries to watch. We have both recently discovered a bit of an addiction for "bouldering" and try to seek out a local climbing walk wherever we travel too :P

• culture
• books
• documentaries
• environment
• dining
• cooking
• vegetarian
• running
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• volunteer work
• music
• guitar
• outdoor activities
• hiking
• camping
• soccer
• swimming
• nursing
• volunteering
• au-pair
• beaches

Music, Movies, and Books

Too many to list! Ben could talk to you for hours about music and movies :P

Music:
Really hard to answer off top of my head! I'll give you our current car playlist that we are listening to- our old car has a CD player so we have picked up second hand CDs at charity shops- it just shows how diverse our taste can be!

Ellie Goulding, Queen greatest hits, Beatles, Thursday, The Used, BBC symphony orchestra /Scottish symphony, Songs from garden state (the movie), Audioslave, songs from Dawson's Creek, Athlete, 20 soul hits, Deltra Goodrem, Jose Gonzalez, Ref Hot Chilli Peppers,

Movies:
Absolutely cannot be narrowed down- some memorable ones for both of us include, Walter Mitty, James Bond films, Boy, Interstellar, 2001 a Space Oddysey, The Wave, The Beach!, My Idiot Brother (anything with Paul Rudd!!!), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ex machina, I origins, Lords of Dogtown, Double Jeopardy, 10 Things I hate about you (Janelle loves Heath Ledger), we have a wide ranging movie taste...we also love documentaries, huge fans of BBC and loving being in England and watching them all! Any travel docos are really inspiring and also anything related to space, Earth and the future.

Books:
Ben's reading "A collection of short stories" from H.G Wells at the moment but he reads all sorts of interesting books, novels, biography sand collections.

Janelle is reading "Sharp Objects" by Gyllian Flynn at the moment (a favourite author)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Everest base camp 2015 and survived the earthquake!

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach:
English
Australian cooking
Guitar
Travel tips
Bens done some football coaching
We don't know until we meet what we can learn from each other!

Learn:
We would love to learn Polish (Ben has family there), if we can be fluent in English and Polish we would be very satisfied- I am in awe of anyone who is multi lingual. We just enjoy other people's company- listening to their views and perspectives about the world, I'm sure we have many things to learn and are very receptive to bettering ourselves and broadening our own perspectives.

Share:
We can share food, any meals we cook, we often have a lot of tea that we collect as we are huge tea lovers, sometimes we accumulate stuff traveling so enjoy handing over belongings if we think you could have more use from it than us, we can share a ride I if we have our car, we can share our own travel advice and experiences, and link you up with other hosts we could recommend.

What I Can Share with Hosts

An enjoyment of cooking healthy and varied meals- if we are making something to eat of course we will make extra for our host so you don't have to lift a finger! We are not vegetarian but we eat a mostly plant based diet and are mindful of the environment around us. We enjoy a good cup of tea (with treats!)

We have lots of stories to share and have travelled to many places and can hook you up with other local hosts we have met along the way!

We are trying to learn Polish- and Ben is a dual Polish- Australian citizen so if you speak Polish we would love to share and work on this :)

We feel uncomfortable getting anything for free so we would love to be given anything around the house to help- putting on the laundry, tidying, running an errand, etc. We are tidy guests and very mindful of hosts space and routine.

We might be travelling around Europe with a car and if you needed a lift to work or any other close distances we could share this in exchange for the stay.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Cook Islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greenland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Laos, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, Vatican City State, Viet Nam, Wales, Åland Islands

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Wales