Peace to you, dear reader!

My name's Kelly Shai--I go by both names. My mama named me after my brother who passed away as well as a neighborhood horse. It's a sweet little story that I will refrain from telling here on my profile for the sake of brevity. I like to have wholesome fun, playing in the forest, splashing around in rivers+ the ocean. Maintaining a heart like a little child is my prerogative, meaning having curiosity and wonder for life and people. "VERDANT" is my favorite word right now as it inspires thoughts and feelings of life pulsating and bursting in song! I’ve met a lot of people while traveling around and I am always so inspired by each person I encounter and the stories and wisdom they carry within them.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

There are some incredible folks on here!

Music, Movies, and Books

My music taste spans throughout continents and times. From ancient Gregorian chants to bluegrass, Tuareg desert music, salsa+bachata, reggae. There's too much to list. My spotify: kellebelle324

Any movies from the Criterion Collection I like to watch

I tend to read non-fiction books about birth, permaculture, herbal remedies+history, faith, world religions, but lately I've been getting into fiction again, delving into C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series, J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings series, and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment novels

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Hitchhiking 200 miles alone . . . getting stalked by a man and almost maimed by a dog in the process

Teach, Learn, Share

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke

"God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His garden grew up and everything came up that could come up. But what grows lives and is alive only though the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, the heavenly growth will die away in you." -Fyodor Dostoevsky

What I Can Share with Hosts

Yummy meals--I have some pretty decent cooking skills, but beware because I like pretty much every seasoning.

Interesting conversations

If you have a garden, I’ll weed, seed, harvest!

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Netherlands, Peru

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States