Hi everybody!
My name is Santiago, and I come from Colombia. Right now I'm on an academic exchange in Poland, and I'm taking this opportunity to discover Europe, but not only taking selfies and posting them to Facebook or Instagram.
I want every single trip to be unforgettable, and learn as much as I can about different cultures and different people.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

In my opinion what makes cities alive is the people who are living there, and I think Coachsurfing can give me the opportunity to get to know better the culture and about local people's lifestyle.
I also think traveling allows you to find more about yourself, it takes you out of your confort zone, and for sure hosters here are global citizens who can to share with travelers, so I find this way of traveling simply amazing.

Interests

TAEKWONDO
I've been practicing taekwondo for 7 years, with some gaps, since I was too busy with the university and other stuff, but this is a very important thing for me since I enjoy it as a sport, but also it taught me discipline, to believe in myself, to never give up, and to always give the best I have.

CHESS
Yeah, some people might find it boring, but for me it is a very exciting sport (yes, it is a sport!), there is nothing better than this huge war of ideas and plans, to set traps to your oponent, to calculate a sequence, see further than the other person. Chess is also science, still the most powerful computers have not found a way in which you can always win. But it can be also art, some people enjoy making a queen sacrifice to go for a checkmate, to checkmate with a knight, a checkmate is a kind of picture, and a some people might enjoy to see chess as art.

LANGUAGE LEARNING/TRAVELING
I have to put them together, for me one of them wouldn't be that exciting without the other. You get nothing from learning a language if you can't use it, maybe it's a good exercise for your brain, but nothing else, or how can you really connect with a foreign culture if you don't know the language? So I like learning languages and traveling because I like getting to know new people and new cultures, I think it just opens your mind in a extraordinary way. One of my goals is to become a poliglote, and to visit as many countries as I can.

• learning languages

Music, Movies, and Books

BOOKS
My favorite book is Crime and Punishment, but in general I like Dostoievski's books like idiot, the gambler, white nights, and some of his short stories are very good as well. I also like Pushkin, I've read a lot of his stories including the most famous the captain's daughter and the queen of spades. Among my favorites you can also find 1984, and animal farm by George Orwell, and Brave new world by Aldous Huxley.
And then, other nice books I've read include all harry potter books, except the fifth part (it was quite boring at some point, it took me a while to read it), A world apart by Gustaw Grudzisnki, it's a very interesting book about soviet gulag during WW2, The sorrows of young Werther by Goethe and Opio en las nubes written by the colombian Rafael Chaparro, if you translate literally it means Opium in the clouds, so yeah it's quite a weird book, but very interesting. Maybe there are some other books, but for the moment those are the most important for me =)

MUSIC
Well I would actually said I have a particular taste for music, it depends on my mood, sometimes Iisten to metal bands, sometimes rock, pop, sometimes just what's on the radio.I was two times in a Jazz festival in Bogotá, two times in Rock al parque in Bogotá, once in Woodstock in Poland, I went to The Cure's concert, but I also have been to classic music concerts from the symphonic orquestra of Bogotá.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I have done a lot of nice things, watching the northerm lights in Norway, visiting the Panama Chanel, traveling alone to Lithuania, scuba diving in Gorgona (it's an island in the Pacific ocean in Colombia), hosted Jesus in my flat (seriously, it was a Spanish guy named Jesus haha), ate snails made by my french friend, and many more.

But the most amazing thing I've ever done was to begin my project "10% for..." which was to simply donate 10% of my earnings as a salesman for a good cause, I just did it once because after that I came to Europe, and I had to temporary stop, but in one month I managed to get enough money to buy a DVD player for a place helping poor children in Bogotá, I will never forget their smiles, we played during the afternoon, and then I helped some of them with their math homework, it was the best feeling ever, so I'm expecting to do some volunteering while I'm here in Poland =)

What I Can Share with Hosts

A chess match, a nice conversation (I am very talkative and curious, but I'm also prudent), a cup of tea (I don't like cofffee haha), I'm not very good at cooking, but I could try something, language exchange.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Panama, Slovakia, Spain

Countries I’ve Lived In

Colombia, Poland