CURRENT MISSION

It used to be travelling, now moving more towards theatre.

ABOUT ME

Friendly, open-minded, very easygoing. I've lived in Paris for the past 10 years, but I'm British, from south-west England. I've just finished training at a theatre school, and I teach English in companies and at university to pay my rent.

PHILOSOPHY

Lève-toi et sors dans le vaste monde!

There is something to be learned from every experience.

Bisyor safar bayad ta pokhte shavad khami!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

We host a lot, but not so much through couchsurfing at the moment. We've got a long term guest staying with us at the moment.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've surfed and met up with people in most countries between the Balkans and Kazakhstan, and we've been hosting people in Paris since 2008.

Interests

New experiences, discovering new countries and cultures, meeting interesting people. Learning new things. Trying to communicate with people with gestures and a phrasebook. Picking up words on the go.

Theatre, ninjutsu, snowboarding, windsurfing. Traditional folktales. History. Drinks with friends, apéros. Being in the mountains. Trekking. Sleeping under the stars.

Paris in the sunshine.

The feeling when you get when you walk out of the door not knowing where you'll sleep that night.

The stories people tell, the little slices of life we share.

• culture
• theater
• running
• drinking
• traveling
• windsurfing
• snowboarding
• teaching
• history
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

All sorts, I read a lot. Here's a few:

Books: La faim du tigre, Océan Mer, The Naked and the Dead, The Catcher in the Rye, I Served the King of England, Catch 22, Kim, Malevil, Eastern Approaches, Maximum City. Readable history books. Old travel narratives or autobiographies. Decent sci-fi.

Authors: Iain Banks, Philip Pullman, Garth Nix, Roald Dahl, China Mieville, Amin Maalouf, Joe Abercrombie, Ismail Kadere, Tom Holland. I like going to second-hand bookshops and looking for translations of foreign authors.

Films: The Lives of Others, Little Miss Sunshine, Persepolis, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, Howl's Moving Castle, Spy Game. Many others!

Series: Utopia, House of Cards, Homeland, The Wire, Sherlock, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones.

Music, anything and everything. I listen to the radio a lot, normally www.fip.fr. Except in our kitchen, where the only station we can get is Radio Courtoisie - French Catholic fundementalists. It's good for laughs.

At the moment listening to: Nina Simone, The Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, and the soundtrack to the film I'm Not There. And I've swiped one of my housemates' entire music collection, so a lot of Chanson Française and French stuff I've never heard of. And Jaques Brel!

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

The kindness and hospitality shown to me by complete strangers, without the expectation of anything in return.

I was once (temporarily) marooned on an island in Fiji. The young children had never seen white people before, and they would sneak up behind us, touch us and then run away as fast as their little legs could carry them.

Teach, Learn, Share

My travel objective is to experience new things and to learn. I want to come back from each trip knowing a bit more about the language, history and culture of the place I've been to.

I'll be happy to share what I know about my own culture, and I've been an English teacher off and on for about 6 years.

What I Can Share with Hosts

English pudding.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

Countries I’ve Lived In

Fiji, France, United Kingdom

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