CURRENT MISSION

Combining my interests in Nature, Movement, Design, Art and Communication...

ABOUT ME

I'm often quiet and reflective, but i also love to be with people and talk and listen. i keep discovering how much there is to learn!

i love nature, though, i'm also finding how much i want to shape the environment in ways that benefit people and interaction, making beautiful places.

Much of my life began with movement: gymnastics, riding bicycles and motorcycles, running through fields. I dropped out of the university to become a dancer in new york, and an adventurous life there for 10 years before moving to Europe.

I’ve been very fortunate to have meet so many good people in all my years of teaching and traveling around the world; and to have been able to make a life out of traveling, performing and guiding groups of people in the art of enjoying movement, communicating with each other and exploring the unknown.

I've now recently moved from Europe after a long time living there, and am traveling around North America, looking for the place that feels right.

PHILOSOPHY

be persistent. be appreciative. focus on the positive. love what is. be attentive to details.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I’ve enjoyed to learn more people through CS, it’s a wonderful venue for sharing. It’s been great to host, I’ve had only the most positive experiences with people. It’s always added a spark to the week when guests have been around. Traveling I find that being with CS’s provides so much richer and enjoyable experience than staying in the touristy anonymity of a pension. It’s so great to meet people living in the place, hear stories, feel that one is “there” immersed in the culture and life of a place…

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

before i knew about couch surfing I was traveling throughout Europe for 22 years or so, perhaps my first experience was with my 'second family' in Firenze, Italy, who took me in, put me living in their study, taught me Italian, and gave me a home and a start in Europe! (thank you dear Elsa, Francesco and Pietro!). While freelancing as a traveling teacher, I’ve had the great opportunity to meet so many people, and stay with so many different people while moving about this expanse of greater Europe and Asia Minor. Also in more recent years in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Since learning about couch surfing, I’ve had several weeks of wonderful stays in France, mostly with dear Henry and Tamary in Chamonix; and also developed a wonderful friendship with Fahri in Istanbul, who befriended me while I was stranded as the volcano exploded in Iceland last Spring. I’ve also met some wonderful people hosting in Germany. Every guest has a wonderful story to share, and I’ve enjoyed expanding my family of friends.

Interests

Skiing and touring in the mountains moves my dreams. Basically all my training is about this: i run about 100k/month, swim 20k and do a lot of mountain biking. This has become slowly, though, it's own reward. I also do daily pilates/yoga training, and love to teach it, as well as the movement research i also teach.
I also love writing, and write both professionally and for pleasure, working on poems and stories. another real interest is sketching and photography, which I do as hobbies. A big aim for my next years is also to integrate my work more with Architecture (which i studied and still keep up on.) This is a big dream project now.

• arts
• culture
• writing
• poetry
• performing arts
• architecture
• design
• photography
• sketching
• dancing
• environment
• exercise
• yoga
• pilates
• running
• motorcycles
• traveling
• socializing
• bouldering
• cycling
• hiking
• surfing
• skiing
• gymnastics
• swimming
• teaching
• freelancing
• science
• tourism
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Recent Reads: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Call of the Wild, The Amateurs, Lush Life, 1Q84, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen; The Amateurs; Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild, Into thin Air by Jon Krakauer; Wilderness Essays, The Wild Muir by John Muir (one of the first "Naturalists"); The Edge of Never by William Kerig (great piece about Skiing and Winter Mountaineering); everything by Haruki Murakami (including: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Wind up Bird Chronicles, Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, Kafka) Mary Renault (Historical Fiction, including: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, Funeral Games, The King Must Die, The Bull from the Sea), Khaled Hosseini; Frankie Machine & The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow; Cormac McCarthy (including Blood Meridian, The Road, The Border Trilogy); Books on Writing (including 'Wild Mind' and 'Writing Down the Bones' by Natalia Goldberg, 'On Writing Well' by W. Zinsser).

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

driving across the western united states in the back of a VW van with a good friend, Skip, who i met while working and studying at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

hiking 14 days from hut to hut on a hüttentour called the Dolomiten Höhenweg #1 from south of Munich to north of Venice and then taking the train to Venice for a few days.

Doing a ski tour in the area of the Groß Venediger in Austria with a mountain guide, Andreas Helmer. We didn't manage to take that summit due to weather, but the trip was a precious experience.

swimming with a group of 50 dolphins for over an hour in a bay south of Kailua Kona Hawaii this winter.

watching my two groups of students from KNUA university in Korea perform magically in their final project just before the winter break this past year.

Teach, Learn, Share

i love to guide people in learning about movement, exercise science, training, dancing, skiing, running. i love to learn about most everything.

Countries I’ve Visited

France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, United States

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