ABOUT ME

I grew up in small-town Ontario where everyone looks like a lumberjack & chainsmokes. I somehow managed to escape my destiny as a chainsmoking lumberjack lady & finished university in April 2008, when I put my engineering degree to work for six months on a drill in the arctic amongst the polar bears and the seals and the caribou before realizing that I'd rather travel around the world. I've been traveling since & have the new-found freedom of not being able to afford a ticket home...

When I ran out of money in a pretty serious way, I took a job teaching algebra at a Thai public school in Bangkok and have since decided that teaching > engineering, so I plan on scraping together my baht & heading back to long-lost Canada at some point for some teachers college action.

PHILOSOPHY

Don't judge.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Spreading the CS word to people who won't take advantage.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have met some incredible people through couchsurfing. From staying on someone's sailboat for a week in Australia to staying with an elephant-rescuer in KL, my verdict is that it's the best way to get off the beaten path.

Interests

Traveling, math, yoga, drinking an insane quantity of tea, dorky video games, papaya salad, scuba diving, snowboarding, hiking, running, music, surfing (trying), hitch-hiking, painting, dancing, geeky engineering stuff, meeting new people, cooking, eating, reading

• dancing
• cooking
• yoga
• running
• drinking
• video games
• reading
• traveling
• knitting
• painting
• music
• cycling
• fishing
• hiking
• surfing
• scuba diving
• skydiving
• snowboarding
• rock climbing
• engineering
• mathematics
• hitchhiking

Music, Movies, and Books

Some of my favourite books: Half of a Yellow Sun, The Time Traveler's Wife, Young Stalin, Einstein's Biography, A Fine Balance, Harry Potter, Shogun, Catch 22, Middlesex, Life of Pi, Freakonomics, East of Eden, White Teeth, On Beauty, Siddhartha, Mr. Nice, You shall know our velocity, On The Road, Slaughterhouse 5, The Fountainhead, Ender's Game, Into the Wild, Love in the time of Cholera, The Kite Runner, Three Cups of Tea, The White Tiger, The Red Tent

Some of my favourite music in no particular order: Ratatat, Grizzly Bear, Deadmau5, Four Tet, Emancipator, Animal Collective, Prince, Arcade Fire, Daft Punk, Elvis Perkins, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Biggie, Cut Copy, Discovery, Hot Chip, Joni Mitchell, Miike Snow, Phoenix, The xx, an embarrassing amount of kpop, The Knife, etc.

I grew up without a TV so I am seriously behind on movie-watching...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Can't choose one, so here's a million - giving blood at the sketchiest clinic in the world in Cambodia, climbing Mount Kinabalu, climbing Machu Picchu, diving Sipadan national park in Borneo, fishing for pirahnas in Brazil, trekking on the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, climbing Mount Cook, cycling across the south island of New Zealand, hitch-hiking the north island of New Zealand, skydiving, trekking the Tongariro Crossing, road-tripping up the east coast of Australia, the list goes on!

Teach, Learn, Share

Some random skills - I can cut your hair, bake you bread, and teach you to knit mittens. Does that count?

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Thailand, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, Thailand

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