CURRENT MISSION

dodging London traffic on my bicycle

ABOUT ME

Helpful, generous, enthousiastic, optimistic, tireless, inexhaustible, resourceful, surprising, impulsive and sometimes reckless, that is how the people who best know me would describe me. I have also a quite inquiring and open mind.
What I like: travelling, spending time with friends (and family), cycling, swimming, skiing, playing games (including cards), watching movies and TV-series, reading novels, cooking, hosting parties...
What I don't want: settling down, being dull.

PHILOSOPHY

live the day, don't be afraid to take risks, don't be nostalgic, don't do to others what you wouldn't like to be done to yourself, listen to friend's and family advice but eventually make your own mind, always see the bright side

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I want to join the "couchsurfing community" because I would like to be able to host people and help them during their trip by giving them tips about the city where I'm living and possibly showing them around. I also think that it's much more interesting and convenient while travelling to sleep at someone's home and thus get to know a bit about the city and the people who are living there.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Some (five or six times as a host, twice as a guest). Very good experience so far!

Interests

movies, literature, politics, travels, holiday locations and accomodations, health, food, bicycles, cars, places to go out, music, streaming web sites, foreign languages...

• literature
• dining
• cooking
• partying
• motor boating
• boating
• politics
• movies
• reading
• tv
• traveling
• cars
• music
• cycling
• sailing
• skiing
• swimming
• bowling
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Out of Africa, The greatest show on earth, Gone with the wind, Into the wild, Fight club, Top gun, Titanic, L.A confidential, Usual suspects, Bridget Jones's diary...
TV-series: Friends, Desperate housewives, Sex and the city, Grey's anatomy, 24H, ER, Prison break, Heroes...
Books (authors): Paul Auster, Patrick Süskind, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Daniel Pennac, John Grisham
Music: pop-rock, rock, reggae, disco...as for singers/groups: Tracy Chapman, U2, The Police, Supertramp, Simon and Garfunkel, The Corrs, The Cure, Ben Harper, Bob Marley, Manu Chao, Jean-Jacques Goldman...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

What I have done: riding an elephant in Thaïland and a camel in Tunisia, driving a motor boat by night (Mediterranean sea), being caught in a storm on a sail boat (Atlantic ocean), swimming in very cold water, driving 13 hours while stopping only three short times, finding a job as waitress in New York (in 2000), playing "pétanque" (french bowling game) in Central Park, filling ten people in my old car (Peugeot 205), being stopped on a road in Mexico by protesting farmers holding ropes...
What I have seen: small fishers villages in Kerala state in India (south-west coast), many small islands in French Polynesia including Tahiti, Moorea, Bora-Bora and the "Bird's island" inside an atoll which had been own by Marlon Brando, the Twin Towers in the US, Aztech and Mayan temples in Mexico, pyramids and tombs in Egypt, cremation in Indonesia, Pamukkale (the "Cotton Castle") in Turkey, black sand on Santorin (greek island), lava in Sicilia (the Etna volcano, an autopsy in France, and also many European capitals (Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Prag, Dublin, Athen, Geneva) and lots of other places in France, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Mauritius...

Teach, Learn, Share

foreign languages (I know french, english, german and I would like to learn spanish, arabic, italian)
What else can I share: how to cook, how to play cards, how to drive, how to ski or water-ski, how to get useful information from anyone and about anything, how to write papers for a newspaper or any other publication, how to cycle across a city without ever putting a foot down...