Hello! My name is Julio. I am 22 years old. I attend university at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I love hiking, the outdoors, and dance and theater. Since starting university, I have also found great joy in white-water kayaking and rafting and sea kayaking. During holidays I go home to Santa Monica, California, a very interesting small city in the Los Angeles area that has a racially and socioecomically diverse population and gets a lot of visitors from all over the world. I am mature, adventurous, thoughtful, friendly, curious, always eager to learn new things, and hard working. Some of my most fun and memorable adventures have been long night hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains with my friends.

This spring, from late March through early June 2018, I plan to travel to Europe. The last time I went to Europe was in 2015. I went to Albania, Turkey, Croatia, Iceland, Poland, Italy, Germany and England over the course of four months. During my travels I did workaways at hostels and hotels, where I worked in reception, as a tour guide, and as a cook, among other chores, and also spent some time as an English-language teacher and camp counselor at a language-immersion camp for Polish teenagers.

My hope is to make new friends and to experience and learn from cultures different from my own.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I want to get fully immersed in the places I visit. I want to hang out with locals and experience life as they live it in their communities.

Interests

• chocolate
• movies
• reading
• outdoor activities
• hiking
• kayaking
• whitewater rafting
• trail running
• teaching
• performance art
• theatre
• activism
• outdoors
• contemporary dance
• writing poetry
• long distance running
• writing letters

Music, Movies, and Books

I like listening to lots of different types of music. Some of my favorites are the Beatles, 21 Pilots, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Fall River Footmen, the Hamilton Soundtrack, and Yo Yo Ma. I'm also partial to the Humpty Dance by Digital Underground.

I love most movies except for horror films. Some of my recent favorites include the Bourne films, Captain Fantastic, Iron Man, most of the Marvel superhero movies, and Swiss Army Man. I also love great documentaries. Recent memorable ones are Citizenfour, Point and Shoot, and 4.1 Miles.

Some of my recent favorite books incude Deep Work by Cal Newport, the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin, Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami, Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant, A Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan, You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski, and Sphere and Air Frame by Michael Crichton. An enduring favorite from my younger years is Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

For the past year I've helped and tutored students every week in bilingual English-Spanish classrooms in an elementary school in Walla Walla, Washington, where my college is located. This is amazing because I've gotten to work with kids from ages 5-10 and seen the positive impact I have on the ways they understand and process knowledge.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I am fluent in Spanish and English and enjoy talking about the environment and absurdity and telling stories about my adventures.

I'm spontaneous and love adventure and have great basic cooking skills especially when it comes to the oven. For example, cookies, cakes, quiche, slow-cooked meat, and roasted vegetables. I also make a mean cold brew (coffee).

I have a Wilderness First Responder certification, which is essentially comprehensive first aid for the wilderness. I have experience leading hikes in the mountains and have the skills to lead rafting trips.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Canada, Croatia, England, France, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Turkey

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States