Hi! My name is Henrique and I'm a PhD student of Philosophy of Law at Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

I like literature, movies and music... and beer! - like most humans, I guess. =p

I also like sports a lot. I'm a huge soccer fan, and also an unprofessional soccer player twice a week. I did some horseback riding in the past too, and I'm still passionate about it.

I like writing too. I'm a fairly good writer when it comes to essays and legal articles, and I really like reading and writing poetry, though I cannot assess my own poems.

I also love to sing, and I firmly believe more karaokes are the path to world peace. I'm a lousy singer though. I enjoy humiliating myself by singing badly in public. I can trick people into thinking I can actually sing though when it comes to certain Pearl Jam or Sinatra's songs - don't ask me why, I myself don't fully comprehend how this strangeness works.

I enjoy meeting people from different places and cultural backgrounds, so my hope is that Couchsurfing will help me experience this more often.

I'm fluent in English and Portuguese. I also understand Spanish pretty well, though my writing and speaking skills are still in development.

My Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/hnapoleaoalves
Fell free to ckeck it out or contact me on Facebook as well.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I like to travel a lot and I love learning more from other cultures; it's something that moves me. I hope CS can help me do that, especially because it seems to be very helpful when it comes to meet local people.

Interests

Art, Literature, Poetry, Cinema, Law, Politics, Philosophy, Sociology, Epistemology, Sports, Soccer

• arts
• culture
• writing
• literature
• poetry
• singing
• architecture
• festivals
• wine
• beer
• politics
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• music
• equestrian
• sports
• soccer
• teaching
• law
• sociology

Music, Movies, and Books

Some of my favorite music groups/artists:
Green Day, Johnny Cash, Jorge Drexler, The Strokes, Bob Dylan, Nelly, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Cole Porter, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Racionais Mcs, Nina Simone, João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Paulinho da Viola, Beth Carvalho, Onda Vaga, Zeca Pagodinho, Novos Baianos, Secos e Molhados, Milton Nascimento, Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder...

Some of my favorite movies: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Braveheart, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, Amélie (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain), Lost in Translation, Paris - Manhattan, The Motorcycle Diaries, Casablanca, Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Inception, A Clockwork Orange, Robin Hood, Modern Times, Into the Wild, The Great Dictator, The Story of Stuff, The Corporation, Central Station, The Departed, Forrest Gump, A.I., The Constant Gardener, Gangs of New York, La Marseillaise...

ome of my favorite authors (fiction/non fiction):
Jorge Amado, Machado de Assis, Noam Chomsky, William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Eduardo Galeano, Mario Quintana, Vinicius de Moraes, Mario Benedetti, Julio Cortazar, Augusto dos Anjos, Leon Tolstoi, Fiodor Dostoievski, Charles Bukowski, Norberto Bobbio, José Saramago, Manoel de Barros, Karl Marx, Sebastião Salgado, Richard Dawkins, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, George Orwell, Carlos Calica Ferrer, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Octavio Paz, Oscar Wilde, G. A. Cohen, Paulo Freire...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was in a hostel in Brussels once. Fellow guests were mostly young; there was this old mister though, a retired argentinean architecture professor who was about to finish an amazing trip throughout Europe. He was actually doing again a trip he did fifty years before that, when he was roughly the same age as I was.
The old fellow told us he'd taken literally thousands of pictures, but lost them all when his camera was taken from him the night before.
I had already befriended some folks from Chile, and we all decided to go on a mission to gather as many pictures as we could of the places the old man had visited. And so we did. =D I was responsible for taking some very special pictures in Paris, some of which related to a tiny hotel where the old man shared a beer with famous writers (including Cortazar, Sartre and Jorge Amado) back in the day.
I went there, took the pictures and sent them to the old man. It was hard not to be emotional while taking the photos; after all, I fell I'm about as nostalgic as our senior hero is, plus Cortazar and Amado are among my favorite writers, and I just couldn't help but thinking about how happy that old man would be with the chance to "recover" such emotionally significant photos.
He never replied me though. I like to think that he got the chance to see them.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I can share some good stories. Poems. Good travel tips as well. Insights to Brazilian culture - music, arts, literature, popular festivals and so on. And hopefully wine and many laughs! =D

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay

Countries I’ve Lived In

Brazil, United States