CURRENT MISSION

Enjoy life, make the most of every day, and expeience new thing/places/cultures/people. Professionally, I want to jumpstart the renewable energy revolution & take over the world (or at least travel it)

ABOUT ME

By profession, I am a political and environmental organizer and entreprenuer determined to help our country regain its sanity. I am passionate (and a little obsessive)about my work, so I work really hard and play almost as hard. I have an insatiable appetite for travel and am fiercly independent by nature. I am constantly in search of new places to explore, generally the more off the beaten path the better. My desire to escape our quotidian surroundings and my love for the obscure often leads me to remote locations. I don't desire material things but my desire for exploration far exceeds my meager means, a combination which often finds us on the road much, much less travelled (often less travelled for a very good reason). My ambitious undertakings have landed me in some pretty sketchy situations:
-surrounded by a shark feeding frenzy in our canoe in the florida bay as we searched in the dark for a place among the mangroves to set up camp
-fighting 4ft swells in a canoe as we tried paddling our way to/from a national park on some remote islands in the pacific ocean off the BC coast in Canada (we couldn't afford sea kayaks or the motor boat ride to the calmer waters of the national park, so we paddled our canoe instead-the first ones to take a canoe in those waters we were told)

All in all, I am a curious, passionate, and laid back person. I love to meet new people, see new places, and take advantage of every opportunity we get to explore this amazing and crazy world we live in.

PHILOSOPHY

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.” - Kurt Vonnegut

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” -Dalai Lama

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." -Mahatma Gandhi

"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it'd be easy, they just promised it would be worth it."

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."

"Don't gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold...” -Bob Marley

"(Wo)men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.”

"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them." -Paul Wellstone

“The future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” -Paul Wellstone

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Currently, Billy is working in DC to help businesses become environmentally and socially responsible corporate citizens. Julie works for the City of College Park as a greenhouse gas emissions analyst, helping to get the city to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Julie is deciding where to go to grad school in the fall, but will likely end up at Harvard.

We have a new tiny apartment in the heart of Washington, DC with a great couch (it's a big, comfy, purple couch that folds out into a double bed).

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

We've definitely slept on our share of couches that we found through friends, and have had friends and friends of friends crash on our couches/floor many times. Used couchsurfing across Australia, Ecuador, and the US, and met some incredible people, so now I'm hooked!

Have also hosted surfers when I lived in DC, and look forward to hosting more in Cambridge (although I just moved here so I don't think I'd make the best tour guide; but hey, we could explore together!)

Centres d'intérêt

Backpacking, hiking, camping, scuba diving and snorkeling, canoeing, kayaking, exploring, travelling, experiencing new cultures and meeting new people, drinking good microbrewed beer and good red wine, snowboarding, reading, environmental and social justice activism, political and community organizing...to name a few :)

• animals
• birds
• photography
• beauty
• cumbia
• wine
• red wine
• beer
• drinking
• motor boating
• boating
• politics
• reading
• traveling
• guitar
• hiking
• backpacking
• canoeing
• kayaking
• camping
• scuba diving
• snorkeling
• snowboarding
• rock climbing
• religion
• tourism

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

I have really eclectic taste in music-basically like a little bit of everything and am open to all types of music. I especially love live music, and it isn't unusual for me to be the only one dancing (or to get the dancing party started!). I like good rock music (classic and modern), Dylan, other "hippie" jam bands, Sigur Ros, Bright Eyes, Johnny Cash, and live blues and bluegrass, to name just a few...

Une aventure extraordinaire que j'ai vécue

Canoed along the East Coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands- a 10 hour ferry ride from Prince Ruepert-the most northern port town in British Columbia, Canada, about 50 km south of Alaska (I think that's what the town is called). The islands are beautiful, and if you can make it all the way to the park (the southernmost part of the islands), you'll find thousand year old trees in a remote temparate rainforest. We had curious seals following us the whole way and saw all kinds of birds and aquatic life. The area is very pristine and it really felt like we had the whole world to ourselves out there.

Also, spent 2 months travelling all over Costa Rica.The entire trip was amazing, but especially memorable was climbing Mt Chirripo (tallest Mt in costa Rica), spending the night in the cabin near the peak, and then waking up at 2am to hike (in the dark)to the very peak to watch the sunrise. On a clear day it is said that you can see both the pacific and atlantic oceans, but the clouds that were present when we were there made for a beautiful sunrise.

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

To learn: Spanish, the harmonica, the guitar, photography, plant and animal identification in Ecuador, and some better Cumbia moves!

To teach: Environmental policy and politics, intro scuba, and canoeing (both), and probably lots more that I haven't thought about

Pays que j'ai visités

Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, United Kingdom

Pays dans lesquels j'ai vécu

Canada, France, United States

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