CURRENT MISSION

Europe mission accomplished, so...five more languages?

ABOUT ME

I'm a native Montanan with an English degree from Middlebury College. I moved to New York City the summer after I graduated, hated it, and escaped to France to work as an English teaching assistant in Besançon. I lived at home this summer (working as a pianist), but somehow managed to secure a job at a university in Bordeaux, where I live and work now!

I used to be self-deprecating and/or embarrassed when I told people I was an English and Creative Writing major, but now I am convinced that anyone who makes fun of English majors is just jealous that we got to read fun books and write screenplays for homework. So it makes sense that I am always reading at least three books and want to become a writer...but not before seeing as much of the world as I can.

I play piano and violin, and went to college under the mistaken impression that I could live without music. Now I play both instruments more than I ever have and unless I am reading, I am probably listening to music. I also just started learning to sing, and I am pretty excited about this.

I am also kind of obsessed with foreign languages and managed to use up all my free courses in college on French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese classes. Currently I am learning Serbo-Croatian and Russian, and then...who knows?

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Only surfing so far, but someday that'll change :)

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Surfed with Teresa in Lisbon, Abby in Clarksville TN, Antoine in Paris, Russ in Budapest, and Petra in Prague

Interests

Writing. Books, especially ones by Gabriel García Márquez. Every foreign language in existence. Montana. Los Angeles. The West. Music.

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Midnight in Paris, Silver Linings Playbook, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty, Easy A, Almost Famous, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Chinatown, Amélie, Lost in Translation, pretty much anything by Pixar, and countless others

Music: The Allman Brothers Band, The Who, Rolling Stones, Blur, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Alison Krauss, Abigail Washburn, Bruce Springsteen, Steely Dan, Lady Gaga. I also love pop music and am only slightly ashamed to admit it.

Books: Far too many. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Underworld, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Revolutionary Road, The Shipping News, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Love in the Time of Cholera, Libra, Shadow Country, Then We Came to the End, Blindness, Midnight's Children, The Millennium Trilogy, The Monkey Wrench Gang, etc. etc. etc. Also, pretty much anything by:

Gabriel García Márquez
Joan Didion
Don DeLillo
Richard Yates
Junot Díaz
José Saramago
Thomas Pynchon
Salman Rushdie
Marcel Proust
David Foster Wallace

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I met Dedé Mirabal, the only surviving Mirabal sister, while I was in the Dominican Republic. She talked to us about resisting Trujillo's dictatorship with her sisters and then helpfully pointed out that I was an americano auténtico because I am so white.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'd be happy to teach (and learn!) any and all foreign languages that I know, since the only things I like more than foreign languages are books and movies (and really, they kind of go together.)

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, United States

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