CURRENT MISSION

To honour my own values no matter how great the adversity and achieve my dreams.

Whatsapp: +639554326222

ABOUT ME

I think... I don't fit in here. It is better to know and meet me in person. My colleagues would describe me that I am outgoing, very sociable, communicative, helpful, and always ready to serve others. They've told me that I really know how to interact with people, with the students, teachers, foreigners and even those professionals. According to one friend of mine, I am open-minded, a very generous man, even sometimes I forget myself. One of my professor told me that I have an attractive personality, kind-hearted and humble.

Elijah Daniel B. GeangaCreate Your Badge

PHILOSOPHY

ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!

Experience is everything!
Try to experience as much that life has to offer as possible, because your memories are the only thing that you can hold on to.
Live life to its full potential, because it's the only one you'll get.

Stay positive in both action & thought, whether it affects you or another.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I am the Volunteer Development Coordinator of AFS Intercultural Programs Philippines-Palawan. I had been meeting a lot of exchange students and volunteers coming from different countries, one of the volunteer from AFS Germany encouraged me to sign up.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I had been a member of CS for more than two years already. Even though that I had been meeting different foreign exchange students and volunteers, it is still such a great experience that I was able to meet travelers from different countries.

Interests

I am interested in the following:
-meeting people
-exploring places
-adventures
-technologies
-computer programs
-culture, values and traditions
-conversations
-life
-friendship
-beaches
-driving motorcycle
-traveling
-business opportunities
-languages
-etc.

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies - action, adventures, comedy, crime, fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery

Music - counrty music, reggae, rock, techno, blues and jazz

Books - fiction, novels, history, literature, adventure and ghost stories

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Travel is the only thing that makes you richer.–This is one of my favorite quotes in the entire world. However, the meaning of this quote does not imply the subject of luxuries in life. Travel makes you richer in ways that you would never realize until you have done so. Traveling is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and it taught me a lot lessons that I would never have learned otherwise. It educates and ofers life skills that one may not have known he had. It also enables you to build friendships around the world, memories that will last a lifetime and perceiving the world in a totally diferent perspective.

I am just your typical guy who loves social interactions and traveling. In my 21 years of existence, I have humbly visited 11 countries: Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Brunei, India and Taiwan. It was such a great experience to complete my tour of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries. I was able to travel to places I have only once dreamt of. The Angkor Wat, Temples of Bagan, Taj Mahal, and the Himalayas are just some of the places that I’ve read and studied in my history classes before. These magnifcent places were transformed in my mind from the history books I’ve read to actual physical experiences. During my travels, I have experienced adventures such as driving a motorbike to explore diferent places with intense urban trafc to dangerous dirt road on clifhanging mountainsides. The wildest drive I’ve had is when I decided to make the 6-hour drive through one of the most dangerous paths in the world to visit Pangong Lake on the India-China border in the Himalayas. The treacherous road was unforgettable and challenging. It is easy to imagine that an accident could easily happen if someone were to mistakenly turn and fall over the clif-side. These adventures are bloodcurdling yet they have made me a stronger and braver person.

Traveling enables you to learn new languages; explore and discover cultural diferences and similarities, learn various histories of diferent cultures and gain independence. It can enrich your life by exposing you to experiences you are not normally exposed to at home. There will be challenges that may come in many forms such as communicating in languages other than English, closely missing your fights, long bumpy bus rides, dealing with intense hagglers and struggling to acclimate between various climates. It is a test of one’s will, patience, and fortitude that will make you stronger and strive harder.

As I cross the border of my comfort zone, I had the opportunity to meet and connect with people from diferent parts of the world. Sometimes, I even got the chance to hangout and tag along with the people I just met on the plane, bus, train, or in ports. Some of these people still stay in touch and I can consider them as a friend for a lifetime from a distant part of the world.

When I was in Myanmar, I volunteered in the International Buddhist Education Center, a monastery and a school. I had the opportunity to teach English and share my experiences in the Philippines. My students were generous enough to show me around the city. As you meet people along the way, you get to build your network wider across the globe. It is amazing to recognize the wonders why people come into your lives, even just for a day, a road trip to the next village, or a whole trip. You have to appreciate what you can learn from them and also what you can share with them. Enjoy those you’re with, if even for a moment. For me, the best part is the engagement with fellow travelers. Isn’t it exciting to make friends with diferent perspectives of life from around the world?

Another passion that I have aside from traveling is photography. What I cannot put into words, I capture through photography. I rely on a Nikon D5100 to capture these unforgettable moments and will soon have these photographs printed and archived in an album. I don’t really need photos or videos to remember these once in a lifetime memories, but it certainly makes it easier for me to share and illustrate my stories. Words are not enough to describe how amazing my adventures were. I will remember each and every beautiful moment I had with the people I met and how breathtaking landscapes made me feel. The things that I’ve learned in my journey are priceless and can never be replaced.

Overall, traveling across countries and stepping out of your comfort zone will enable you to see the world in a diferent perspective and it will somehow change you in a way you’d never expect or imagine. The world is huge to just stay in a single corner. Explore and understand other cultures, places, people, and traditions. Through travel we will be able to discover the meaning and purpose of life as we produce our own defnition of it. The more we travel, the more we see. The more we see, the more we grow. The more we grow, the more we evolve as human beings. One of the things that I learned in my journey is that we may identify ourselves by nation, race, or religion but we are all human and we are globally connected to each other no matter how or what the diferences are. We all work hard for the common good. We strive for the best from within ourselves, which keeps peace and humanity alive. Life is an adventure. Dream. Explore. Discover. Life is short and the world is wide. Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

Teach, Learn, Share

Here are some of the essays that I've made. I know this will be a great help and I wanted to share it with you.

Tick of Time
“Now is the only time you own,
Live, love, work, and with the will
Place no faith in the morrow.
For the clock may then be still.”
Time is gold. Time wasted can never be anymore retrieved. Every second counts, every minute is important. So, we must do what we must do today so we would not regret in the future. That is the simple message the poem tells us.
Sad to say some of us indeed taking time for granted. Many of us are fond to procrastinate - that is we always leave task undone and promise to do it the next day. Honestly, I must admit that I am one of them. In my 21 years of existence, I realized how much time I have wasted. If only I’ve made use of my time wisely, I might not have a lot of regrets today.
Sometimes when I have nothing to do, I imagine myself justifying the mistakes I’ve made in the past and accomplishing all the things that I should have done before and seeing myself in the future happily enjoying the rest of the time left. But all of those are just dreams. I can never turn back time. All I can do now is to accept the consequences of what I’ve done and hope that no one would meet the same problem I had.
Time is precious. Time is fixed. No one can manipulate it nor control it so we must always bear in mind that to have no regrets in the future, we should spend each second, each minute or hour wisely because if we don’t, in the end, it will be too late to realize our mistake.

Mistakes
Have you ever tried solving the Sudoko puzzle? In this puzzle, I can strongly say that your patience can be tested in order to succeed. This puzzle requires trial and error. At first, you may think that the numbers you have been writing are correct. But as you continue to fill up the entire boxes of the puzzle, you would realize that the numbers should be rearranged again so that the number will not appear twice in each row, column and in each 3x3 box. However, you shouldn't get discouraged because at the end you will surely be able to think of the appropriate numbers in order to complete the puzzle.
Same is to life. We learn from mistakes. As we encounter different mistakes in our lives, we also improve ourselves - our personalities and our beliefs. We often think that mistakes are failures; although what best describes mistake is challenge. Mistakes are our ways to succeed. They make us stronger every time we encounter them.
However, we should think ways in order to avoid committing the same mistakes that we had. We should be careful in the choices we make. We will never know what danger lies ahead after making the wrong choice.
In our lives, we should not be taken off by the winds that blow us to a wrong direction. We should always remember that regrets will be at the end of each failure. So, if ever we made an error, let us not get discouraged. Instead, let us not look back and see on how we can correct our mistakes and take this saying as a great reminder; “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, yet, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I can show the Filipino culture, tradition, education, values and etc.

Countries I’ve Visited

Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Philippines