Hi, we're Phil and Jess. Our house is in suburbia on the northern outskirts of Sydney, an hour by train from the city centre, near a national park. We enjoy a chat over a drink and exchanging travel and life stories. We love animals, nature and the environment. When things are broken, we fix them instead of chucking them out. Our sense of humour is silly and dirty. Renovating the back part of the house and gardening often takes up our spare time.

Jess is flexitarian (Phil sometimes eats meat). We are up-to-date with our covid boosters.

We like our guests to be like housemates. We like it when they are mostly independent when it comes to meals. Yes, sometimes sharing can happen both ways, or if you feed us even better! We say this because often when we are busy we just eat leftovers or eggs and salad and it is hard to offer such things to guests when our eggs are like gold to us (we spend a lot of time and money on keeping our chooks happy and healthy). There is a supermarket 1km from our house that is open long hours every day. We like it when guests don't try to stay for longer without asking. If we don't invite you to stay longer, we probably need down time. Having guests is nice, but having time at home to ourselves is very important to us.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Meeting and spending time with others from around the world is always a learning experience, about: - other cultures, ways of life, fun facts, games, and actually we often get great ideas from chatting with other couchsurfers. Couchsurfing has made us a little bit wiser 😊

It's cool when sometimes you meet a stranger, and see off a friend!

We've been on this platform since the naughties and it's been through a lot of changes, and contraversy, to do with it becoming a company rather than a not-for-profit org. We were curious about why some things happened along the way and came across this video. She explains it really, really well. So if you're also curious, here's the video https://youtu.be/wddrm3wV20Q (Couchsurfing has Changed Forever by What A Shame Mary Jane)

Interests

• photography
• environment
• garage sales
• canoeing
• kayaking
• scuba diving
• swimming
• biology
• engineering
• languages
• science
• travelling
• astrophysics
• bushwalking
• vegetable gardening
• neurobiology
• op shopping
• fixing things
• bushcare
• fixing climate change

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Chill out, Coldplay, and heaps of other stuff.
TV: Letterkenny, Taskmaster
Movies: Jess loves foreign films that aren't violent. Phil likes boys movies and sci -fi.
Books: to be honest we aren't big readers but given the time, Jess likes reading foreign books to help improve the languages she's learning.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Dived in the Andaman Sea.
Seen the northern lights.
Built our own deck.

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: sustainability tip: carbon miles: always look at where the product comes from before you buy it, especially in the supermarket. Eg: why buy Kenyan macadamias when you can buy NSW macadamias?

Learn: If you know any of the languages we're learning, we'd love to practice with you! Phil knows some Japanese. Jess is proficient but not fluent in Spanish and German, and has basic Swedish. Also, if you have any sustainability tips, throw them our way please!

Also, if you have some cool travel photos to share, we'd love to see them. We have a big TV and Chromecast :)

How's this for sharing: I (Jess) got talking to a random man on the train in Germany once and after 15 minutes he gave me DM100 to enjoy the rest of my travels. Strange but lovely!

What I Can Share with Hosts

*English practice
*Cook a meal or two to share
*Housework and gardening, eg we like to do our host's dishes as well as our own.
*Strip our beds at the end of our stay, wash them and hang them out to dry if time permits.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, Fiji, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Japan, Malta

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